Baca Spring

Lancer and Stryker

Baca Spring

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Baca Spring

Type: Scout

Date: Monday, 02 February 2009

Time: 1300 – 1600 hours

Location: Launch site is approximately 1.5 miles north of the junction of US 60 and NM 36 in Quemado, New Mexico.

USGS Coordinate:

34 Deg 21’ 29”N
108 Deg 28’37”W
Elev 7012’

There is room for several rigs, vehicles and horse trailers, just inside the gate on the north side of the highway. Land Status: BLM

Target: Baca Spring.

GNIS coordinate:

34 Deg 22’ 46”N
108 Deg 28’ 48” W
Elev. 7296’

USGS Map Ref: Mariano Springs 7.5’ Quadrangle
Coordinate:

34 Deg 24’ 46.1”N
108 Deg 28’ 46.1”W
Elev 7300’

BLM 1:100,000 Land Status Map: Quemado, New Mexico 1983

Land Status: BLM* The area is a mix of BLM and private. I contacted the private land owner and asked permission to cross private ground horseback. Land owner does not want quads or any other mechanized travel crossing his ground. If you are planning a private ride in this area, contact Far Rider for information. Email: far_rider@live.com

GPS: Recommend settings at NAD27 for use with USGS quadrangle maps. Check the map datum information in the lower left of the map sheet. Virtually all USGS maps are set at the NAD27 datum.

http://rockyweb.cr.usgs.gov/outreach/gps/gps_questions_and_answers.html

http://www.maptools.com/UsingUTM/mapdatum.html

Note: The westering coordinates can be over 200 yards off and northing can be several hundred yards off if the map datum on your GPS is set to the wrong standard.

Weather: Upper 50s. Slight breeze SW (note: wind directions always indicate what direction the wind is blowing FROM). Clear.

Posse: Far Rider, Stryker, Lancer, Caesar

Narrative:

We arrived at the launch site at 1300 hours. Stryker was saddled and Lancer was saddle packed. It was a perfect day for the ride and though the location is close to the ranch, it is a piece of country I have never seen. Can’t have that. The spring, summer and autumn hard riding season is approaching and the horses, Caesar’s paws and I need to get hard and fit for the long hours in the saddle.

Lancer gets nervous in a trailer and short hauls are a good way to acclimate him to the scary business of traveling in a side by side. Rides like this are great because everything that is done on a longer ride, with the exception of night picketing is done. The horses are loaded into the trailer, transported to a strange area, unloaded, saddled, ridden, and returned to the trailer for the trip home. Doesn’t seem like much, but horses need to know how to do this. It is part of the required skill set that horses must have, at least for hanging out with me.

A word about “Scouts.” I use the term “Scout” when I am working out a new piece of country by horseback as opposed to VR, recon, or patrol all of which terms have specified and bounded meanings. Maps tell but a small part of the tale. Here in New Mexico, as in most of the modern American West, land is fenced with lots of locked gates – if you can even find a gate. This country was settled by sheep herders and bean farmers and they just did not believe in gates. Growing up in the land the Spanish once called the Northern Mystery, fences were few as it was open range, and locks were considered rude. On what fences there were, a gate was mandated every mile and gates were in all the corners. It was the only way a cowboy could find his way home in a blizzard. Two of my many prejudices are sheep – next to turkeys, the dumbest critters on God’s green earth - and bean farmers. Sheepmen put up boxwire fencing with no gates and bean farmers turn the grass upside down. This is cow country. Leave it the hell alone.

A Scout is not a fun ride for social or urban raised riders. Often, I find myself wired out, rim rocked, locked out, or dealing with man made hazards like downed barbed wire, trash, toxic ground (southern New Mexico and Arizona especially due to illegal alien traffic), and even clandestine drug operations. It requires back tracking, walking or climbing and leading horses over ground you would not ride because of a fence or a locked gate. But, my worst day riding is better than my best day doing anything else.

Some days, the simplest things go south when horses are involved. It took me three tries to get my saddle with the britching on Lancer. Every time I threw the saddle across him, it moved the saddle blanket. I worry about soring my horses, so I had to pull the saddle off and try again. Jeeeez.

I managed to finally get the horses saddled, my chaps and gun belt on and was about to put the hackamore on Stryker when Caesar lit up. It was his “Come quick Dad, somebody’s comin’” bark. I peeked over Stryker’s hip and saw Bub driving through the highway gate. Bub has the cow permit for this BLM land. I walked up and said “Howdy.” He said he didn’t recognize the rig and wondered who was back in here. It is public ground, but it was wise for him to check as it is his money that is climbing around the country getting ready to drop their spring calves.

He explained a bit of the lay of the land to me and said that back in 1958, a T-38 Trainer had crashed on top of the escarpment that drops off to the west. He noted that they had recovered thirty-three pounds of the pilot to tag, bag and haul out. I’ll just bet. I have responded to several plane crashes as a law enforcement ranger and plane wrecks sure do make folks just fly apart. He also said there were still bits and pieces of the wreckage scattered about.

Bub departed and I slipped the hackamore on Stryker. Gathering up Lancer’s lead we lined out up the draw to find Baca Spring. Born and raised in the wild country of the American West, I am obsessed with water sources, especially for my animals, so looking for springs, wells and water points are good excuses for wandering around new country.

Baca Arroyo is a pretty canyon, unless you are from Tennessee or other places that have lots of green and the bugs to go with it. The canyon walls are compacted mud stone, sandstone and conglomerate rock. Natural desert grasses cover the red dirt meadows cut by arroyos and separated by small hills dotted with cedar. In the sandy wash bottoms of the canyon floor, there are tall, dense thickets of annual brush that is dry and ugly at this time of year.

We located a two track leading up a small ridge that would take us up and around towards Baca Spring and get us up out of the soft sand fetlock deep on the canyon floor. I rested the horses at the crest of the gentle ridge as they are fat from three months of little riding and good eating to keep them warm during the bad weather and snows of December and early January. We continued on and the two track quit in a washout and the horses snorted and skidded down the rutted path. Looking to the west, the oblong concrete drinker that marked Baca Spring was right where it was supposed to be according to the USGS map. Moss was growing in the cold, clear water and the nightly formed ice was all melted for the day. Stepping off, I dropped Stryker’s mecate and gave Lancer enough lead line to put their noses to the water. It is a pretty spot, boggy and muddy from the spring overflow on the south side that Caesar immediately made it his business to tromp through. Unless you are a horseman travelling in empty country, you cannot imagine how much it means to come to such a source of life giving water, especially here in the desert Southwest. A hand dug well covered with tin lies a few yards west and there is an abandoned barbed wire fence around the original dirt tank that was dug to hold the spring water. Bad place for horses because of all the downed wire.

The horses were sweating a bit due to their heavy winter coats and the climb up the canyon. It was enough for their first real ride of the year and we began the return trip to the launch site.

The eastern wall of the main canyon is a long series of broken ridges. As we ambled eastward I could see the faintest sign of a trail heading up the side of the ridge. An unmarked trail is more than I can stand to pass up. We crossed the sandy bottom of the canyon and began working up the side of the ridge until I found a cattle and game trail. It was ten inches wide, steep and rocky. I see no reason for my horse to pack me up such a trail and if one of them tips over, I don’t want to be on the downhill side if we fall off the mountain. Taking two loose wraps around the horn with Lancer’s lead rope and leading Stryker we set off. By the time we reached the top, we were all breathing hard. My brand new titanium knee put in last October performed flawlessly.

The view was great. 50 miles eastward stretched the long jagged line of the Saw Tooth Mountains. To the southeast snow covered Allegre Mountain reared over 11,000 feet, and Escondido Mountain, a thousand feet or so less stood sentry to the south. Lots of country. Very few people. A good place to live but not for the faint of heart or those that need urban conveniences.

Time to head for the home corrals. The top of the ridge is typical of this country. Covered with volcanic brecia, it is hell to walk on for men and horses. There is no place a horse or man can step without being on a fist sized or larger stone. I don’t want to cripple my horses so I continued to lead them and we turned back to the northwest and worked our way down the steep slope to the canyon floor. Blisters burned on both feet when I stepped back into the saddle and the horses were grateful for the soft sand as we proceeded south to the horse trailer and the trip home.

By 1600 hours, the horses were unsaddled, damp backs curried, trailer loaded and we were heading home. The sun was still an hour an a half above the western horizon but the temperature quickly dropped into the forties promising another cold night in the low teens.

It would require several more rides to work out ways to get down or around the Mariano Escarpment so that I can ride over to Ken and Lisa’s place where they raise Rocky Mountain Horses and there is always a cold beer available.

Pavorotti’s incomparable voice and the brisk afternoon breeze filled the cab as we made our way north. My urban friends tell me the wonders of the new malls, restaurants, cinemas, and so forth. They have no idea just how deprived they are.

Far Rider
See to your weapons and stand to your horses

Hot Iron - Part III of III

Far Rider and Sensei Robert Koga. Forty years after meeting at the Los Angeles Police Academy and thiry years after the incident relayed in this story. Robert Koga is known worldwide for his teachings and development of the Koga System of Weaponless Control, Police Defensive Tactics and the Koga Method of the Police Baton. During Far Rider's assignment as a counter-terrorist undercover operative, Sensei Koga often provided over watch and protection for his young student.

http://www.kogainst.com/

Ten years as a Green Beret and Special Operations soldier, and two years working the mean streets of Los Angeles as a police officer after returning from the bloody killing grounds of Southeast Asia had taught Far Rider much about brutality and men like Clete. He had arrested many of them. They were the kind of men that beat up women and bullied smaller and more timid souls. He had done his share of killing Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army soldiers that practiced cruelty and butchery for the sake of cruelty and butchery. For as long as he could remember, and particularly after seeing so much cruelty in the blood soaked jungles of South East Asia, he could not abide suffering. To witness the unnecessary infliction of pain on any helpless creature aroused a murderous rage in him. Trouble was coming. He could feel it as one feels and senses an impending lightning strike. The problem was that he could not initiate a deserved preemptive assault without ending up in irons himself. Clete and men like him only understood physical force as a means of restraining behavior.

Gritting his teeth, he concentrated on his breathing to slow his respiration and the wicked increase in his heart rate as anger pushed the adrenal chemical cocktail through his system. He could hear Bob Koga, his Sensei, echoing in his head “You must be in control of yourself in order to control others.” Well, right now, he felt more like going into Spec Ops mode and applying sudden and terminal violence against a brute that took pleasure from inflicting needless suffering.

By nature, training and experience he was not prepared to be a street fighter. The training he had rigorously undergone and used for so many years was confined to two distinct modes. The application of lethal or crippling force against an enemy or the restrained application of control techniques designed to place a suspect in custody without injury. Being witness to countless incidents of violence and violent death, he knew that in the absence of weapons, size, speed and strength were enormous advantages. The risk of losing an eye, teeth or sustaining a crippling injury in a brawl never appealed to him. However, he also adhered to the idea that there are times when an honorable man needs to step up, regardless of the risk.

The afternoon wore on until the last calf of the day stood glaring warily from a corner of the large holding corral. He was a handsome, strapping red brangus bull yearling and easily pushing 600 pounds from the look of him. Eight inch horns topped a magnificent and belligerent face. It was obvious he was a remnant missed in the preceding fall gather. One of the ropers shook out a loop and laughingly hollered “Any of you boys have the huevos to flank this bad boy or do we need to head and heel him?”

Everybody moved back along the fence to watch the show as another rider eased up with his loop down to heel the big beast.

The accumulated affects of the afternoon’s conflict and pent up anger had Far Rider thoroughly wound up. He eyed the juvenile red bull and thought, What the hell? He was either going to set an example or make a complete fool of himself and possibly get hurt in the process.

“Un macho hombre” the header said and nodded to him as he quietly moved his horse towards the wary animal standing now with his head up looking defiantly at the approaching horse and rider. A soft whir and the loop gently settled around the animal’s horns. The rider spun his horse and dragged the bucking, bawling red bull yearling out into the middle of the corral.

Far Rider sprinted towards the 600 pounds of twisting red hide, flying snot and horns. Grabbing the lariat just above the hondo and waiting until all four of the animals feet were in the air, he grabbed the right flank of the animal with his right hand and heaved backwards with every ounce of his hundred and seventy five pounds. The red brangus crashed neatly onto his left side emitting an audible “whoosh” as the air was partially knocked out of him. Far Rider quickly trapped the right foreleg and sat on the enraged animal’s neck. Other cowboys rushed forward to help restrain the animal and the branding procedure began. A few congratulatory remarks were directed towards his accomplishment as work proceeded.

Far Rider thought they might let the big yearling keep his horns but somebody brought out a set of horn shears that looked like large bolt cutters. Better than a saw but not much. The horn crunched sickeningly and the red bull bellowed in pain and rage as the blood squirted into the air staining Far Rider’s chaps and quickly soaking his shirt front. After the second horn was cut, the castrated bull lay with the whites of its eyes showing and groaning with deep panting moans. Clete approached with the cauterizing iron glowing an ugly dull red with heat smoking in wavy lines from the tip. At the application of the searing heat, the bull jerked violently and a sound that Far Rider had heard from men having their throats slit burst forth from the animal. The red bull’s tongue hung out coated in dirt and cow shit as the hissing iron smoked and burned into the raw horn.

“Ease up. It’s done” Far Rider said and twisted the suffering animals head up so the other bloody horn was exposed. The young bull was panting quietly and long swaths of silvery snot ran down the side of his jaw and across Far Rider’s chaps.

Clete brought another iron from the fire and applied it to the animals remaining bleeding horn stub. The bull reacted only slightly as if the stress and pain had succeeded in sending him to some other place.

It’s a wonder this shit doesn’t kill him Far Rider thought as he turned his face away from the stinking sizzle of seared horn. Clete continued applying the iron for several seconds longer than was needed and Far Rider, having had enough, angrily slapped the iron away with his gloved hand. “That’s enough you sonofabitch.”

Clete gaped momentarily at Far Rider as if he could not believe what had just happened. As his thought processes sorted out the event, his face took on a look of rage and he squared up in pre-attack posture. Far Rider released the bull’s head and stood up backing away out of range of the iron in Clete’s right hand. The other hands working on the animal also stood and stepped back watching the two men. Soon the entire crew, including the boss, was forming a rough circle around them.

Far Rider found himself facing a bigger, stronger opponent with a three foot piece of red hot iron in his hand. He looked towards his gun belt hanging on his saddle horn, judged the distance and realized there was no chance of getting to it. Quickly glancing around for another iron or something he could use as a baton or staff proved fruitless. He considered the ball point pen in his shirt pocket as he watched the center of Clete’s chest but decided to keep both of his hands clear. A stab to the eye or throat of his adversary would be the end of the fight for sure, but would see him arrested. Glad that he had removed his spurs, he thought, I’ll be lucky if I get out of this without a broken arm or burns. He checked the ground out of the corner of his eye for obstacles that could cause him to trip. He surely did not want to be on the ground with Clete coming at him with the iron.

Clete had obviously been in his share of barroom brawls but did not appear to be a trained fighter. Not that that meant much as Far Rider had seen street fighters that could whip most of the dojo black belts he had worked out with. There were a few martial practitioners like Ed Parker, Joe Lewis, Bob Koga, Bobby Haynes, Brad Steiner, Richard Ryan, Troy Coe, Dennis Laycock and several other world class fighters he had known and trained with that could take this guy down without any problem, but he did not possess their level of skill for this sort of brawl. Everything he knew would be lethal or result in serious physical injury if he was able to apply it and that could mean jail time or worse.

“Nobody slaps my iron away.” Clete spat.

Far Rider remained silent and hoped none of the rest of the crew would get involved. Clete dropped the iron and moved forward raising large knuckled, scarred fists. Clete stepped in and threw a couple of feints with his left and Far Rider circled counter clockwise to stay away from Clete’s right hand. He had no doubt that one solid blow from Clete’s huge fists and it would be over.

Clete suddenly lunged forward with a straight right. Far Rider leaned back and stepped to the outside as he had practiced for so many hours in the dojo. He deflected the right slightly downward with his left hand and, launching himself over the top of Clete’s arm, struck him in the trachea with the inside of his right wrist and applied a bar arm choke. The blow staggered the bigger man and Far Rider folded at the knees taking them both to the ground with his knees on either side of Clete’s hips. Violently slamming his right bicep into the side of the cowboy’s neck and the point of his shoulder into the back of his head further stunned the man and Far Rider transitioned to a carotid compression hold locking down with a classic chancery. He applied pressure to both sides of Clete’s neck restricting the flow of blood to his brain.

Clete clawed frantically at the arm locked like a steel vice around his neck but weakened quickly as he began to lose consciousness. Easing the pressure slightly to allow blood back into his brain Far Rider said “Put your hands behind your back or I’ll put you out.”

Through the fog of partial hypoxia, pride prompted Clete to hesitate. Far Rider reapplied the pressure on his neck and the big man immediately placed his hands behind his neck with a gagging noise as he attempted to get more oxygen into his lungs. Far Rider rolled him none too gently onto his face and applied a twist lock to his right arm behind his back. As oxygen filled blood rejuvenated his brain Clete made a reflexive effort to get up but a quick twist and upward pull on the arm trapped behind his back brought a groan of pain and a cessation of struggle.

Far Rider wasn’t quite sure what to do next. He did not have handcuffs to finish the job of controlling Clete as he had so many times on the streets and in the alleys of Los Angeles and even if he did, what would he do then? He wasn’t going to arrest the man. He just wanted the fight to be over. Keeping an eye on the other cowboys standing around with looks of incredulity on their faces, he quietly said to Clete “If I release you, do I have your word that this is over?” He was putting his faith in a code of conduct that some in the American West still respected.

“OK. OK” came the muffled response as small clouds of dust puffed away from where Clete’s face was pressed into the dirt. Far Rider was struck by how similar those puffs of dust were to those made by the calves as they endured their misery.

Carefully releasing his grip on the big man’s hand Far Rider stood and backed towards where his horse was tied with his gun belt hanging from the saddle horn. Clete did not look at him as he got up and picked up his hat rubbing his shoulder. The boss inclined his head slightly in puzzlement and said “Let’s make sure these critters are separated and kick them out. Weanlings go east to the next cross fence. Just open the gate and let the mothers find their own way out.”

Work continued for the next three days but the other crew members conspicuously avoided him as much as possible. Clete and Far Rider worked together in a quiet but tense truce and nothing was ever said about the incident. Far Rider never removed his gun belt and was glad to draw his wages at the end of the gather. He did not bother to ask if there might be more work in the future.

As he headed his pickup north towards Phoenix, the desert rolled away in its timeless desolate beauty and the hot evening breeze blew in the window. He idly stroked Chance’s head resting on his thigh and thought that the whole incident was probably pointless. It was doubtful it had changed anything or reduced the suffering to any of God’s critters. But, he also knew he would do it again. Sometimes, doing the right thing is not always the safest or smartest thing. Bob Koga would shake his head disapprovingly if he was there, but he also knew that his old friend, mentor and teacher would understand.

Far Rider
See to your weapons and stand to your horses

Hot Iron - Part II of III

Note the stress on the calf's face

Two and a half weeks into the cycle and the crew was working a large bunch at a remote set of corrals far from the headquarters. At midday, the owner’s wife had showed up with sandwiches and several gallons of ice tea. A welcome treat as the cowboys normally skipped lunch and worked through until dark. After lunch was over the men headed back to work. It was approaching ninety degrees and everyone was tired, hot and banged up. The previous seventeen days of eighteen hours a day on two meals and little rest was making tempers short. After herding the sixty pair of mother cows, calves and remnants into the large holding corral from the trap where they had been gathered during the morning, they tied their horses to the branding corral fence and received assignments from the boss.

Two crews were working using one branding fire. Far Rider drew out as flanker for his crew. It is the most physically demanding of the ground work assignments and is usually given to hands with low seniority or the younger guys. The flanker was required to run down the rope and drop a bucking and bawling one to two hundred pound calf onto their side quickly trapping the nearest foreleg and putting a knee on their necks to hold them down. Flankers are always grateful to see a calf that has been heeled dragged to the fire rather than one that had been headed and is turning inside out at the end of the rope.

Spring branded calves are usually much smaller than fall branded calves, but for whatever reason, the calves on this outfit had some size on them. The cattle were Brangus; Angus mommas and Brahma bulls. The calves were long eared and bred for the toughness required to do well in the harsh environment of the Sonoran Desert.

Dust roiled and blew through the sweating mix of men, horses and cattle. The stink of burning hair, hide and horn was pungent accompanied by the deafening bawling of the calves and the stressful cries of the momma cows. The calves were roped, wrestled to the ground and for the next couple of minutes hurt all over their body. As painful as castration and hot iron branding is, dehorning is the most painful procedure done to them. It is akin to having a finger cut off or a knuckle dug out with a sharp spoon. The poor critters bawl piteously with the terrible pain and their eyes roll up in their head. After the horns are sheared off or the nubbins are dug out of their skulls, the raw horn is bleeding and must be cauterized with a red hot iron. The rule on every outfit that dehorned their cattle that Far Rider had worked was to apply the iron just long enough to stop the bleeding and seal the end of the severed bone enough to prevent infection. The iron was to be kept on just long enough to turn the bone "Mexican brown" then removed as quickly as possible to end the suffering of the animal.

The raw, exposed horn sizzles and squeaks as the heat is applied and the calf's bawling changes tone into one of pure agony. Far Rider hated it. He figured that the Good Lord hung horns on them for a reason. They needed them for protection out on the range where they would spend their short lives before being gathered up to be shipped off and butchered in another ordeal of terror before turning up wrapped in cellophane at the super market or pushed across the counter at Mickey D's. He really did not like cowboy work. Looks romantic as hell in the movies but it is just hot, hard, brutal and cruel work.

Far Rider enjoyed beef but was dismayed by all of the suffering that got it to the table. As he watched the antics of the calves as they played and frolicked out on the open range he thought that they ought to be allowed to grow up on good grass and that their end should be humane. He had made the mistake of expressing such sentiments a time or two and had been held in thorough contempt by other wage earning cowboys. Nonetheless, privately he refused to accept suffering as a necessity to put money in the bank.

Clete was one of the day work hands that had been hired for the roundup. He was known to most of the other members of the crew that had been drawn from the local area. He was in his mid-thirties, six feet tall and carrying over two hundred pounds with the broad fleshy face of a serious beer drinker and his eyes were hard. He was a good cowboy, tough and strong. Far Rider had not had any conversation with the man but had listened to him at meals and during breaks. He wasn’t exactly a braggart but he was crude and had the shadow of meanness about him. Far Rider pegged him as someone that would be a mean, ugly drunk and prone to physical violence.

Clete was the hot iron man responsible for cauterizing the horn stubs on the calves. Far Rider would flank and hold the animal down while other hands branded, castrated, ear marked, inoculated and dehorned the animal. The last operation was the application of the hot iron to the raw horn.

The calf let out a guttural bawl and struggled when Clete put the glowing steel rod down on the horn and wiggled it around. He left it on longer than Far Rider knew was necessary but he held his tongue. After several repeats of the same procedure Far Rider quietly said “Don’t hold the iron on so long. It hurts these guys.”

Clete looked down at him as he was turning away with the smoking iron in his hand with a contemptuous look that said “You must be kidding.”

“College boy” he muttered as he returned the iron to the fire.

Far Rider released the calf and it staggered to its feet wobbling off towards its mother and shaking its head. The terrible pain in the critters skull could only be imagined, not to mention the smoking burn from the brand and the bloody sack where his nuts had been less than three minutes past.

Spring calves usually run about Two to three hundred pounds, but most of the calves being worked on this outfit were over four hundred. He began to suspect that calves had not been gathered or branded since the previous spring. Not knowing the management or conditions at the ranch he could not make a judgment and it was none of his business. Just get the job done and move on was his attitude.

One of the ropers on a big gray horse rode by dragging the smallest calf Far Rider had seen yet. The calf had been heeled and was sliding along through the dirt and dry cow shit on his belly with his head up calmly looking around at all of the action. Far Rider rolled him onto his side and patted him sympathetically as one of the other cowboys undid the loop on the calf’s rear heels.

“I’m sure sorry son” he said under his breath while trying to believe the old cow country saw that it was the calf’s tough luck for being born a cow.

The branding procedure started again and because the calf was smaller, the dehorn man had to use a dehorning spoon to dig the nubs out of the little critters skull. The agonized bawling from the calf began to infuriate Far Rider and he swore he would never again work for any outfit that cut the damn horns off of their cattle.

Clete approached and put the red iron down on the bloody depressions in calf’s skull from which a tiny stream of blood was squirting six inches into the air and dissipating in the breeze as a fine red mist. The calf was panting in agony and stress as the smoke rose from the burned hair, bone and flesh in the bloody socket.

“How do you like that you little shit?” Clete said as he bore down on the iron.

Far Rider looked up into Clete’s face with its crooked, yellow toothed grin and said “I’m not telling you again. Get the goddamned iron off his head.”

Looking at him with good old boy contempt, Clete cursed and walked away. Far Rider massaged the calf’s neck and had to prod him to get up. He appeared stunned nearly into unconsciousness. Standing, Far Rider peeled off his gloves and angrily slapped the dust from his chaps. Nobody appeared to pay any attention to the brewing storm as the work continued.

Hot Iron - Part I of III

Baboquiveri Mountains

Note to the reader: The stories posted to this blog are true. It is hard for many folks in contmporary America to realize that even in 1978 this was a much different country. It was a better place. Pockets of the Old West with its codes and values remained. There were far fewer cops and lawyers meddling in people's lives. Out in cow country, problems were settled among the participants without the interference of government bureaucrats and social engineers. The names have been changed to protect the guilty.

My thanks to my close friend LB for her editorial assistance.






If Creation is God's handiwork, cruelty is the province of Satan. The unspeakable barbarity committed by mankind, individually and collectively, has left history awash in death, blood, misery and suffering. It is one of the great mysteries that the magnificence of the human mind granted by the Creator is so often used to devise ways to inflict suffering, pain, and agony upon fellow humans. Usually unnoticed and ignored by everyday folks is the gratuitous and ceremonial cruelty inflicted upon the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, and the denizens of the deep and watery places. The butchery inflicted upon sentient beings is justified in the name of economic efficiency, superstition, and sport.

Cowboying is tedious, hard and often hazardous work. Most things in cow country are bigger, stronger, and faster than the cowboy. The horse he rides and the cattle he works can be explosively dangerous. When a one to two thousand pound animal collides with a human, the winner is unanimously predictable. Some of the cruelty exacted against cattle and horses by cowboys is pure revenge for the bumps, bruises, broken bones and peeled hide that is the inevitable result of working with livestock. The infliction of cruelty for the sake of cruelty upon an animal makes an unequivocal statement about the brutish and brutal character of the perpetrator.

1978 found Far Rider attending Phoenix College and struggling to make ends meet. In early April, Alfred Haught, owner of the Triangle K Ranch in Pleasant Valley, Arizona site of the Pleasant Valley War in the late 1880s, and for whom he had worked, called him and told him about an outfit down in southern Arizona that was looking for riders for spring roundup. Spring gather coincided with Spring Break and Far Rider was able to work it out with his professors to take an extra week off so that he could finish roundup. Cowboys that still followed the old Code of the West did not hire on and then quit in the middle of the work. Living below the poverty line, a cowboy had his word and his saddle and precious little else. He could not afford to have either one of them in poor condition. Far Rider contacted the owner of the outfit and hired on.

The ranch was a hard-scrabble cow-calf and steer operation spread out over several hundred square miles of the tough, dry country that was the Sonoran Desert. The only way cattle could be worked and gathered in the desolate country was by men on horseback. Cactus, greasewood, palo verde and desert grasses grew profusely across a rugged landscape cut by deep arroyos, rocky canyons and steep broken hills that struggled westward towards the Baboquiveri Mountains. The country was hotter than the hinges of hell in the summer but spring was merely warm with daytime temperatures hovering near the ninety degree mark in mid-afternoon. A dozen other day-work cowboys had been hired to help out and along with the boss and two permanent hands the crew was filled out. Sleeping quarters were typical which meant they weren't fit for white men with any sense of hygiene. His dog, Chance, was not allowed indoors and over a number of years and outfits he had grown accustomed to taking his comfort curling up with the dog in the back of his pickup for the night

A cowboy was something Far Rider had never really wanted to be. He wanted to work horses in rough country and work as a cowhand provided the saddle time and experience not available in a show barn. The 1970s saw irreversible changes affecting the traditional role of the American cowboy. More work was done in a pickup and a cowboy was expected to do maintenance chores more like a common field hand. The handwriting was on the wall for a way of life that had captured the imagination of the world for over a century. No other icon in the young Republic’s history had so defined the American character of independence, self-reliance, freedom and rectitude.

The skill set of the working cowboy began to deteriorate as the competent and prescient ones adapted to the changing world and moved on to other occupations. The caliber and character of the cowboys he met and worked with were not the same as the men he had known growing up in northern Nevada and the mountains of east central Idaho. Wannabes and riff raff began to infiltrate the ranks of a once proud and honorable trade.

Never a top hand but considered competent and a good hand, was the best he could manage and as far as his aspirations took him. Roping was part of the trade, but unlike most cowboys, he didn’t care to know more about it than was necessary to get the job done efficiently. Ranch roping is unlike calf or steer roping competitions. Range cattle require a gentler approach to avoid injuring them. Turning the stock upside down or crippling horses in the process will get a cowboy sent down the road in short order. Heading steers was easier for him by far than neck-roping calves. When it came to roping calves he threw enough loops that eventually something would run into it. If he didn't rim fire his horse and get bucked off the job was a success. He could, however, throw a hoolihan loop for catching remuda horses. This rare skill got him noticed along with his ability to start young horses. If the place had colts to start, he usually got the job. It suited him just fine as it beat hell out of looking at the messy southern end of northbound cattle and it often paid a bit more.

During brandings, the job of roping and dragging calves to the fire was reserved for the older and most experienced cowboys. Day workers and younger cowboys made up the ground crews. Ground crew work is hot, physically demanding and beats the daylights out of a cowboy's body. Tasks include handling sorting gates, flanking and throwing calves, branding, administering inoculations, ear marking, dehorning, castrating and dressing the wounds inflicted during the process. It is hard on cattle and it is hard on cowboys.

Every crew has its own personality. Some run like clockwork while others are staffed by sullen, unpleasant and crude fellows. Like a police or a military unit, the crews reflected the caliber of the leadership or lack thereof. Poor crews are often marked by cliquish behavior where new hands are belittled and not helped to understand the particulars of working a new outfit, sometimes to the point where new guys would get hurt. This was viewed as a source of amusement by the rest of the hands. Far Rider despised such attitudes. Similarly, he detested those cowboys that liked to “rope and choke” cattle for pleasure and that treated their horses like tools to be used and tossed aside when they were no longer able to meet the rigors of range work.

That spring, roundup proceeded with grueling and monotonous regularity. The horses were grained and saddled by four a.m. and by five the riders were mounted and moving out a full two hours before the sun was up. The crew was one of those where there was not much personal interaction except among those that had worked together before. Far Rider didn't know any of the other hands and, as was his nature, kept to himself. He was ignored by the regulars except when work demanded communication. Before the roundup ended, there would be physical violence prompted by what little communication there was.

Far Rider
See to your weapons and stand to your horses

The Bag Lady - Part III of III

Tassie, Far Rider & Zulu near Fig Springs (1994)




Leading the way as Tassi followed, I chose a serpentine path weaving between the creosote, palo verde, mesquite, cactus and rocks. She actively maintained a two pace distance in a relaxed and willing manner.

Sudden explosive movement of gray-black camouflage thirty yards away in the chaparral, accompanied by the noisy snuffling of a small herd of stampeding javalina startled all of us. Tassi's instinctive reaction was to shy away, however, her training has taught her that the rider is her security. She closed up and touched my shoulder with her muzzle.

Riding as I do in rough country this is the response I want. I don't want to be afoot and I want my horse to trust me. There is no more demonstrable proof of trust from the equine than their coming to you voluntarily, especially when the closure response overrides the strongest of equine defensive reactions -- flight.

The rowdy little pigs disappeared and things settled down. I checked my cinch and swung back up. Twenty minutes later I reined up on the ridge overlooking Fig Springs. It was easy to see why the Essary's had chosen this place to settle. In the dryness of the upper Sonoran desert, Fig Springs is an oasis of mesquite trees and, incongruously in this rough place, an enormous clump of fig trees. Most importantly, it was a source of the earth's lifeblood -- water.


We sat a spell and enjoyed the view. The mare stood quietly as she alertly surveyed the surrounding country. A delicate touch of the spur and we headed down the slope with Tassi’s shod hooves clicking on the rocky ground. The sounds of rough country riding are part of the pleasure of being surrounded by the Good Lord’s handiwork. Steel shod hooves on rock, a lever action rifle jacking a round into the chamber, the four clicks of a Colt single action being brought to full cock, the blowing, snorting and neighing of a horse, wind in the sage, water tumbling over rock or leaking from a spring pipe, the crackling of a campfire, and the creak of saddle leather is a symphony unknown to urban dwellers.


A small herd of cattle were resting in the corrals east of the well. Tassie and Zulu watered at the trough keeping a close eye on the cows. The windmill creaked as the fan slowly turned and cool, clear water ran from a pipe jutting out of an enormous rusting water tank. I enjoyed a refreshing drink from the pipe, stepped down, loosened the cinch and tied Tassi to an ironwood tree.

An abandoned wellhead and the foundations of the original homestead gave mute testimony to the efforts of the original homesteaders. First opened to homesteading in the early 1930's, Fig Springs was settled by Fate and Della Essary. He was a former Texas Ranger and had served as a deputy in Douglas, Arizona before hitching up his wagon and coming north. The account by Pauline Grimes of her families' experiences in settling this piece of country is a tribute to the qualities of perseverance and courage these people possessed. Pauline’s manuscript is well worth reading for history buffs. It is depressing in its own way in that it paints a very clear picture of how nice this country was before it got all cluttered up.

In Ms. Grimes' book, she described how they used the well to provide swamp cooling for sleeping during the hot summer nights. The concrete slab where they put their beds was still present along with bits and pieces of the wooden frame surrounding it. Muslin cloth was hung from the frame and the pipe from the well provided water that kept the cloth soaked. As the breeze blew through, the air was cooled and dampened. Comfort in a harsh land.

A foreign, mechanical sound grated against my ears. I quickly glanced to see if Tassi was secure, commanded my protection trained K-9 to heel and stepped into the concealment of the chaparral. Ten years experience as a Special Forces soldier in hostileplaces around the world and several more years as a remote country law enforcement ranger have made me very cautious when I'm out in rough country.


My reaction to this invasion was irritation as I recognized the growl of an off-road vehicle. A moment later, an ATV hove into view from the southwest with a man and a young boy aboard. There was a high-powered rifle in a forward mounted scabbard on the vehicle and I could not see any other weapons. I slipped the hammer thong off of my five and a half inch barreled .45 Colt single action and stepped out into view.

The ATV rolled up and after "howdy's" the driver asked how to get through the cattle pens to the eastbound trail. I pointed out the gates and we discussed javelina hunting, weather and terrain as men do when they meet in this country. I bid him “adios” and he drove up to the first wire gate and his young companion got off to open it.


Some of the gates in this country are tighter than a bull’s ass in fly season and it takes some stout to undo them. The youngster lacked the strength, so the man dismounted the four-wheeler and went forward to assist. As he stretched to unfasten the gate, I could see the print of a shoulder holster harness under his jacket. That is why I go armed. I thoroughly approve of law abiding folks carrying weapons. If you don't carry a weapon when out in remote areas, or in town for that matter, I am suspect of your good sense. I'm a great believer in equality. Not the rhetorical equality of the noisy breast beating political activists, but the equality assured by Colonel Sam Colt. The identification of the weapon under his coat reaffirmed my practice of being civil but cautious with strangers. Maintain a safe contact distance, keep your gun side away, be sure your weapon is ready for deployment, and keep your gun hand clear.

The sun was plunging rapidly into the mountains on the western horizon. Eventide's deep purple and darkening shadows were stealthily creeping into the small, narrow valley that spilled southwest from the spring. The quickening breeze held a sharp warning of the coming night beginning to stalk the desert. I retied the silk wild rag around my throat, buttoned my jacket, pulled on elk hide gloves, reset the hammer thong on my .45, rechecked Tassis' equipment, led her out and mounted.

Horses are a prey species and nature has equipped them with acute faculties for the detection of danger. Night is a dangerous time for any prey species because it is the killing time. All of us were more alert as we started down the trail. There is an excitement and exhilaration brought about by the forces of nature that makes life truly worth living. The cold wind and coming darkness made me feel more alive with an increased awareness of my own vulnerability.

The overflow from the windmill had created a half-acre of boggy ground. I stepped down from the saddle on the off side, dropped the mecate to let the mare know I expected her to remain in place while I checked all of her shoes for tightness prior to riding into the muck. I used this opportunity to handle her all over her body including under her tail and flanks, and between her hind legs. I pulled on her tail, flapped my saddlebags and popped my saddle leathers. She paid close attention to me but remained nailed to the ground.

I gathered up the mecate, looped and tucked it into the thong at the front of my chaps and stepped back into the saddle. There are common things we do in everyday life that provide us with sensory as well as symbolic pleasures that transcend the action itself. Things like lighting a campfire, slipping a finely balanced weapon into a holster, pulling a favorite book from the shelf. Every time I throw my leg over a horse I get a thrill. Horses, like weapons, are enduring Western symbols of freedom. Something neither understood nor shared by urban dwellers and those in other parts of this land.

I brushed Tassi forward by lifting the reins softly against the right side of her sleek neck. This asks her to move her nose just off centerline so that she can see exactly where she is stepping. She responded correctly by moving her left front hoof out at a slight angle. She eyed the bog warily and hesitated. This is where timing and proportionality are so important. She needed the freedom to evaluate the obstacle to determine how best to negotiate it, but she didn't need enough time to decide she could refuse. I firmly nudged her forward with verbal encouragement and just a touch of the 1888 silver dollar rowels set in my Crocket spurs and she stepped out into the dark and watery ground.


She sank into the muddy ground and snorted as she hyper-collected trying to get all four feet out of the black, sucking muck at the same time. Sinking just past her fetlocks must have seemed to her as if she were sinking into a bottomless pit. For a young horse, that was enough for her first experience.


Backyard raised horses don't know about most natural obstacles. It is the trainer’s obligation to deliberately expose the horse to a variety of natural and man-made obstacles the horse does not encounter it its home environment. The trainer must have the experience to teach a horse how to deal with obstacles in a manner that does not injure or frighten the horse. It is the building of confidence and it doesn't happen overnight.

After successfully crossing the bog, we worked back and forth across a small gravel bottomed stream that she handled easily, grateful for the firm footing. Going home is the best time to get the horse to walk right out. I hate to ride a lazy horse. This is also a time when in the attempt to develop a fast, smooth walk, lots of bad things can happen. Riders get to banging and jerking on the head gear and the horse starts learning to anticipate by raising their head out of position, wringing their tails and just plain getting mad. Bad habits are often not merely reinforced, they are actually created, and, much good training is undone.

It was full dark when we reached the horse trailer. We pulled up about a hundred yards out and sat quietly in the wind and broken starlight. I slipped the thong on my Colt and we listened and watched for any activity near my rig. After a few moments we rode in. I unsaddled Tassi, curried the damp saddle mark and loaded her.

Standing in the cold, dark silence of the Sonoran desert winter night listening to coyotes yipping and calling close by, my Rhodesian pressed close to me trembling with the excitement of primordial emotions as he too listened to the call of the wild. I drew tranquility mixed with the excitement of the hint of danger present in the darkness. As I stood listening to the sounds of Tassi munching hay in the trailer and feeling the reassuring warmth of my dog pressed against my leg, I was reminded of the words to a song performed by Ian Tyson about why men like me "ride for short pay."


Standing in the pale blue wash of starlight, it was difficult to believe over a million people were crawling all over one another in the rat race of modern urban life less than thirty miles of an owl's flight under the smeared glow visible on the southern skyline.

I envied the prospectors, pioneers and frontiersmen who had first come to this place on foot, by wagons and on horseback. They had endured the hardships and earned their place in this inhospitable and beautiful land. The desert, if it doesn't kill you, gives rewards that far exceed anything our manicured modern comforts can provide. Harsh land builds physical and spiritual strength. It is heartbreaking to watch the land’s natural beauty destroyed at the hands of dirt pimp developers and a species without the sense to limit our own numbers to the available range and water. As Will Rogers noted "They ain't makin' any more of it." Instead of the pioneers and stockmen of earlier times, financiers, government bureaucrats, and an endless variety of cops, lawyers and ribbon clerks now infest this broken land. Future generations won’t miss the wild, rough country of the West because, like freedom, they will have never known it.

I checked the position of the Big Dipper and noted that I was four hours closer to dying than I was when I first saddled Tassi. All of us were healthy, happy and I was forty dollars richer. As the cowboy said after reading a big city newspaper "Hell, they all must be crazy back there."

The Bag Lady - Part II of III

Pepsicap Mountain

A distinct butte, identified as hill 3291 on modern topographical maps, thrusts up half a mile northeast of where I stood. In archeological terms, it is a fortified hilltop with Hohokam ruins dating from the 10th through 13th Centuries perched defensively on its crown. The country around these parts contains numerous reminders of the earlier inhabitants from the ancient indigenous peoples to the rugged Spanish and Anglos of the 19th Century.

The monograph mentioned earlier, has a hand drawn map showing a peak to the southeast of Table Mountain called Pepsicap Mountain. Modern topographic maps show Table Mountain as Table Mesa, an arrogant redundancy of the Spanish by ignorant Anglos. The settlers of the 1930's, when this area was first opened to homesteading, referred to hill 3291 as Pepsicap. The cracked and fissured rim rock "cap" of this old volcanic cone does look very much like a bottle cap.

The indigenous inhabitants and early settlers of the West were straightforward about naming places, as a review of the historic literature will reflect. Their prose was more literate and expressive than what we are used to seeing today and they were less pompous about giving names to the landmarks of this harsh and beautiful land. Contrast that approach with the grandiose names given the endless ticky-tack subdivisions scarring the urban landscape. It is another example of corporate mentality "progress" where the market rhetoric of shallow and artificial descriptions has replaced a true connection to the land.

I climbed a small rise fifty yards from Tassi. I sat and listened to the wind in the palo verde trees watching the cloud shadows play hide and seek in the canyons of the surrounding mountains. The contrast of light and shadow gives the desert its most striking character. A Harris hawk silently drifted past, cottontails hopped about, and deer and javalina had left their script printed in the sand of the creek bottoms.

After a few moments, Tassi unclamped her tail and stood hipshot and relaxed enjoying the meager warmth of the afternoon sun. She had passed another lesson. It was not a lesson completely learned by any means, but successful nevertheless. I walked back to her speaking softly as I checked my equipment and untied her. Carrying my rifle, I led her across the slippery bedrock to a place where she could drink. Ever the opportunist, she opted for a snack of some tender grass shoots growing nearby instead.

Young horses getting started under saddle need practice being led in rough country, especially where the footing is loose and steep. Over the years I have seen more riders run over leading a horse uphill than downhill. It all goes back to training. Horses do what they know. If horses are allowed to speed up every time they come to an incline while being ridden, why expect them to know the difference when they are being led?

My training philosophy begins with the concept of teaching a horse to “follow” rather than be “led.” It is a crucial distinction. Just now, I needed to get up a steep ten foot bank on the edge of the draw without getting run over, or worse, having the horse run around me and get into cactus or loose footing and tumble back down the slope on top of me. It has all happened to me many times over the years and I didn't need any more practice.

I am a traditionalist. In some circles, that is a euphemism for being outdated. I train "practical" horses for use in rough country. The traditional methods and philosophies of handling horses have been developed over the centuries because they work. Born and raised in the land of the Nevada and Idaho buckaroo, where the California Bridle Horse tradition was followed, I am a hackamore man. Whether I'm riding a horse in a hackamore or a bridle, my horses wear a bosal and neck rope with a twelve to fifteen foot mecate or "get down" line attached. My horses are trained to be led cavalry style with their nose about two feet behind my shoulder and to increase the distance when going up and down steep slopes. They are taught to stand and hold their position while I negotiate an obstacle first and to come to me on command guided by the lead line. This method saves a lot of wrecks and reinforces the transference of leadership and trust from horse to rider. This is not accomplished without some exciting moments now and again. But that is why I train horses. I like the excitement and I'm less likely to get hurt or to injure the horse in the process than someone less experienced.

I chose a spot with reasonably good footing and no serious obstacles. In this country, cactus and large rocks are some of what I consider serious obstacles for young horses. I turned to face the mare and gently waggled the mecate back and forth. The action causes the bosal to tap her on both sides of her jaw. Her ears pricked forward and her head came up in a full alert posture as she shifted her weight slightly to the rear. If I were to keep this up, she would back up. It is a handy way to get a horse to move backwards by remote control and continue to face you at the same time.

I scrambled up the incline making sure Tassi did not attempt to follow me until invited. Once I reached the top, I asked her to join me by slapping my chaps once and speaking encouragingly. She quickly began her ascent. Horses see the world differently than we do. With her athletic ability and a very determined sense of independence, she veered sharply to her right up a steeper but shorter portion of the cutbank. I corrected her with the mecate, timing the correction to create a minor loss of balance and footing for her. To regain her footing, she had to reenter the path I wished her to take. It's not that she couldn't handle the route she chose with ease. The purpose of this exercise is to teach her to do exactly what I ask. In her career, this obedience may save her life and that of her rider.

I do not advocate this kind of exacting performance for all of her ride time. Horses need to be able to make their own decisions and be allowed to relax and enjoy their rides. Most trail riding is best done under "general orders". But, on demand, the horse must do precisely what is asked of them.

Most folks just sit on a horse. They don't ride them. It is only the generous, kind and gentle nature of horses that prevents more people from getting hurt. My experience teaching traditional western horsemanship classes is that most people sitting on a horse think they are riding if they can keep the horse between the ditches. This underachieving approach to horsemanship is because a large number of horse enthusiasts have no idea just how sensitive and capable of precision the horse is.

Tassi and I repeated the slope a couple more times and she quickly understood what she needed to do. I patted her neck affectionately and blew in her nostrils. She nuzzled me in return, raised her head and gave me a haughty glance very clearly stating "I knew that".

Many people have a romanticized view of what horse training is all about. Few of them realize it is tedious and repetitive work. It is this fundamental nature of horse training that accounts for why so many horses are under-trained. The repetitive nature of horse training can be extremely boring and physically demanding. Take the last drill of scrambling up and down the slope for instance. Pleasure riding is supposed to be exactly that, "pleasure." Repeatedly negotiating a steep bank on loose footing wearing boots and chaps is not much fun, at least not after the first time. But, that is what a horse trainer is paid to do. They will repeat the necessary drills, no matter how tiring, for as long as it takes to get the point across. The backyard trainer will often get a horse through a situation and then congratulate themselves and the horse for a job well done believing the horse now knows all about it. Usually, they won't ask the horse to repeat the drill again, or, they will avoid teaching the horse to deal with the obstacle and instead, teach the horse to refuse. Ergo, an untrained horse, or worse, a horse trained to resist.

I carefully slid my rifle back into the scabbard on the off side and dug a small coil of parachute 550 cord out of my saddlebags. I attached one end to the mecate guide loop on the fiadore and looped the mecate around the saddle horn.

I want my horse to follow me rather than be led. The definition of terms is necessary to understanding the concept of “follow” vs. “lead. Follow: "to come or occur after." Lead: "to guide, or cause to follow one, by physical contact." The essential distinction between these two terms turns on the voluntariness of the action. To "follow" implies a self-directed, voluntary act. To be "led" means some sort of physical connection with its subtle threat of coercion.

As a young wrangler and apprentice trainer I had to occasionally ride and repair fence. I didn't have to build them, you understand. The code of the western cowboy still meant something even back in the 1960s. One of the elements of that code was that if it couldn't be done from horseback, cowboys didn't do it. We had "rosinjaw's" or "hired help" to do such undignified work. Cowboys, rough string riders, and wranglers rode. None of this running errands for the boss in a pickup, and, perish the thought, nothing to do with a shovel or hammer. Times have changed, and not for the better. As the horse wrangler and rough string apprentice, I was low man on the totem pole of the rigid aristocracy of cow country. "Hired help" wasn't even on the pole.

It didn’t take long for me to figure out that when I had to do chores I wasn’t getting much done working one-handed -- the other being employed in holding my horse. Hobbling took too long and I still had to retrace my steps. Tying a horse to a barbed wire fence wasn't an option. I wanted to train horses and the sooner I got my chores done, the sooner I could get back to working colts.

These circumstances demonstrated the importance of “liberty training.” A horse that is not easily caught or one that will run off is one of the most irritating habits a horse can possess. In the remoteness of western cow country, such a habit can be life threatening. It should be obvious that two-legged drive is no match for four-legged drive. Yet, it just amazes me how many folks will chase a horse. Like they think they're actually going to catch it. If a horse will not voluntarily come to you, you better have hold of him, or corralled where you can corner him. Riding fence, checking and doctoring stock, putting out salt, or other range work often times two days ride or more from the barn is no place to be afoot. Horses need to come to you of their own free will.

Parachute cord is so light compared to the mecate that it creates the illusion of no direct connection to the rider and the horse thinks they are actually free. As long as the horse stays within two paces of me, I make no corrections. This business of "correction" is a whole lot more complicated than it seems. Training horses, like anything else, is a matter of technique and timing. I've learned lots of technique in my forty odd years of starting and riding horses. I'm still working on timing.

The Bag Lady - Part I of III

Tassie, "The Bag Lady" and Far Rider

Strands of rusted and broken barbed wire sagged in tangled confusion from rotting mesquite posts staggering like so many drunks across the rocky soil. Abandoned vehicles and dead appliances decorated the beaten ground around the hard worn dwellings scattered among the greasewood and palo verde trees. The area reminded me of some of the country I had seen in the mountains of West Virginia during military training. It was hard to believe that white folks would live like that. An occasional neatly kept cottage or mobile home stood in stark contrast to the harshness of the rough country lying hard against the southern flanks of the New River Mountains.

Fig Springs Road is a rough, rutted and potholed track following an old wagon road lazing eastward away from the usually dry course of the Agua Fria River. I drove slowly to ease the ride on my horse standing spraddle legged in the trailer behind my rig. I had become interested in the area near Fig Springs after reading a privately published monograph by Pauline Grimes (1987), A Land of Our Own. The work is a biographical account of the first permanent Anglo settlers in the Fig Springs area after the turn of the century. Fig Springs lies roughly five miles, as a hawk flies, northeast of the old New River Stage Station along the banks of the Agua Fria River north of Phoenix, Arizona.

I am an avid historian of the Southwest, circa 1873-1911. I also raise and train horses, specializing in working trail horses. As soon as the young horses I am starting under saddle or those that I am re-schooling quit trying to stick my head in the dirt, I get them out into rough country. It works out all around. I have found that horses learn a whole lot quicker when they have a reason to do something on demand and I use the opportunity to explore the out of the way sites of yesteryear in the same manner as those who came before. That is how I happened to be rattling along the old wagon road to Fig Springs. About a half a mile east of Soda Springs across a very beat up and narrow cattle guard, I off-loaded a spirited Morgan mare and saddled up. Tassie is a horseman’s horse. You cannot just sit on her. You have to ride her. She is quick, agile and intelligent with an extraordinary presence about her.

The cool February air was clear with an intermittent breeze blowing from the west. A gray, broken weather front stretched from the Bradshaws eastward across the New River Mountains. The clouds thickened to the north and rain appeared to be falling where they collided with Red Mountain. The dampness and scattered clouds occasionally drifting across an anemic winter sun gave the breeze enough of a bite to be grateful for my split-leather riding jacket.
To the northeast, New River Mesa rises some 1700 feet above the surrounding desert. Local Old Timers have told me that there is a hidden trail that negotiates its massive, lava strewn slopes from the New River side. I've ridden most of this country and glassed the mesa looking for some sign of a trail, but without any luck. There are a couple of places near West Point that look like a working cowboy on a rock-wise horse might make it. Riding other folks' horses for a living, I don't take the kind of chances I used to have to take as a working cowboy pushing range cattle. I didn't like it much then, and I sure don't like it now. I have never seen a cow or a trail worth crippling a horse for.

In addition to working horses, I guide folks into the remote and not so remote areas of Arizona and the Southwest where evidence of the Old West is still to be seen. I call these excursions Ghost Rides. Along the old wagon roads and outlaw trails lie the relics of yesteryear -- mining camps, stage stops, ghost towns and the long dried bloody ground of gun fights, robberies, massacres and other events that we call "adventure.” Life-threatening trouble is a more accurate description of such events. Seeing these places in the often harsh and beautiful country in which they occurred from the back of a horse, just as the participants did over a hundred years ago, brings history alive and makes for a great ride. Today's pre-ride was in search of the first Anglo homestead in the New River area.

Zulu, my big Rhodesian Ridgeback and trail companion, trotted ahead of as we headed east towards Skunk Creek. We crossed a dry wash and turned north paralleling the creek bed along a worn cattle trail. A mile later we swung east skirting a small hill and turned off the trail easing down into an arroyo where several clear, shallow pools fed by a seep reflected the branches of the mesquite trees along the banks.

Training horses is a conditioning process and every ride or handling session with a horse is a training session - good or bad. Horses are creatures of habit if they are anything and consistency is central to the training process. Horses are most secure when their lives are filled with constants. In my experience, horses, like kids, don't learn anything by having it defined to them. They learn by trial and error. Whatever produces not so much the greatest pleasure, but the least amount of discomfort is how a horse prioritizes it's responses to the environment and the events within it. During the training process, horses must learn that when they do the things we ask of them they will not be hurt.

There are a number of fundamental activities a horse must learn in order to have a safe and successful partnership with humans. Among the first things a horse must learn to accept is being tied to something. As a young man back in the sixties, I was privileged to have apprenticed under three of the finest horsemen to ever fork a horse; Ed Connell, the last of the old time Reindores, Del Combs, a 1900's era cowboy, stunt man and head horse trainer for Universal Studios, and Ramon Banuelos, a true Mexican vaquero with hands “as fine as a dealer in Reno.” All of these extraordinary horsemen agreed that three things modern, back yard horses don't get enough of is "walkin', rough country and standin' tied." After forty-five years of riding I couldn't agree more. How many times have you seen horses digging a hole deep enough to bury themselves in when left tied? Horses that paw when tied to a trailer or on hard surfaces run the risk of injury from this annoying habit.

Horses do what they know. If they don't know patience, they will, as often as not, paw the ground when tied. Even with a rider up they will often paw and be foolish. Rather like a kid in church. Most problems with a horse are not the fault of the horse, but rather the ignorance and incompetence of the people handling the animal.

Tassi knows how to stand tied at the rail or to a horse trailer because she has been taught to do so, but that does not mean that she will also quietly stand tied out in the middle of nowhere, on uneven ground with leaves and branches scraping against her and her rigging. Whenever possible, I use any opportunity to help a horse learn something. After first making sure that all sharp projections upon which she might hurt herself were broken off, I tied her to a mesquite branch above the height of her withers in such a fashion to insure that if she moved small limbs and leaves would touch her.

The perfect horse has never been foaled. Emory Henderson, an old-time local horseman once remarked to me "every horse has a hole in it." This little mare's problem is a violent pathological response to certain sounds, most notably the rustle of plastic bags and such. In her early training, I had tied bags and bits of plastic all over her. She had resisted mightily and I had taken to affectionately calling her The Bag Lady. She would strike and kick at the plastic no matter where it might be. This made for a very dangerous situation and we had worked long and hard to change her behavior.

I carefully eased my Winchester model 1873 lever action rifle out of the saddle scabbard and walked off. The sound of steel brushing against leather, while perhaps pleasing to anachronistic ears such as mine, could, if I were not careful, cause this powerful little mare to blow up. She humped up a bit and I gingerly stepped away. She fiddled and fidgeted, as young horses do, and every time a branch would scrape against the saddle, she'd clamp her tail, scoot her hind legs up under herself and stand poised to launch herself into the branches of the mesquite.

She is a sensible little horse and soon realized that there just wasn't any place to go. This good sense cannot be taken for granted. It must first be a genetic characteristic of a particular horse and then it must be developed through training. Horses, dogs, men. I have found there is not much difference when it comes to genetics and conditioning. Her reactions were a study in competing inclinations. Her instinctive reaction, which I will define as reflexive, was to flee from the unusual touching and rustling of the leaves and branches in this unfamiliar place. Her trained reaction, which I will define as a controlled, specific response to a stimulus, and predicated upon her previously reinforced learning experiences, was restraint. She has learned to respect a lead rope, in this case the hackamore’s mecate tied to the tree limb.

Unfortunately, in today’s modern world, most people are far removed from the natural order more commonly found in pre-WWII America. The only interaction with non-human species for most urban and city dwellers is with a domestic pet dog or cat. Horses do not learn like dogs, nor do they possess the same degree of reasoning ability. Reason, as we use it in everyday discourse, means the ability to draw inferences. However, noted California horse trainer Frank Evans says that after fifty years of training, he is convinced that a horse does not possess any ability to reason. In my experience, horses learn through association and pattern development as evidenced by Tassi's reflexive reaction to the strange circumstances but overridden by her respect of the mecate'. For our purposes here, we will take that as evidence of a primitive reasoning ability, at least in the colloquial sense.

Horses worry, and with good reason given their evolutionary history, about being eaten. After a several minutes of trembling, snorting and general wild eyed looking about, she figured out that standing absolutely still was the best way to keep whatever it was that was scraping and rattling from devouring her. Such has been her previous learning experience conducted in the controlled environment of a training arena. She firmly set her ears at a forty-five degree angle, tucked her tail and waited for what she was sure was her impending doom. I chuckled at her interpretation of her state of affairs and reflected on how much pleasure horses and their antics provide for me. I wandered off where I could survey the country and still keep an eye on her.