The Sunlight Basin

Sunlight Basin, Wyoming


Cowboys drift around a lot looking for new country to ride and new knots to tie. After I left active duty in late 1974, I headed back home to my beloved west to get back on a horse chasing cattle and starting colts. First to Texas along the Brazos River starting colts for Old Man Seybold. Then along the Mexican border in Arizona working horses and babysitting dudes. April of 1975 found Chance, my red bone hound, and me crossing Dead Indian Pass on what was then a badly maintained Forest Service road north of Cody, Wyoming. Thirty years old and loose as ashes in the wind.

Negotiating our way down the west side of the pass, we dropped down into the Sunlight Basin and some of the prettiest country out of doors. The ranch, once featured in a National Geographic Magazine article, lay along Sunlight Creek and was still deep in snow. Two other hands were on the place and would be pulling out as soon as I got the lay of the land. I was assigned to a tar paper cowboy shack that was six feet wide by ten feet in length - the same approximate size as a prison cell but without insulation or bathroom facilities. It was typical for hired hand quarters and I had seen worse. It always struck me as odd that I lived better and cleaner in a sandbagged tent at an FOB (Forward Operating Base) in the jungles of Viet Nam and Central America than in a typical western cow camp or headquarters outfit.

It made me determined that if I ever had an outfit of my own that I would provide decent quarters for my hired hands - a policy I have assiduously followed and regretted with every employee I have had over the past eleven years leading me to consider the conclusion that the ranchers I worked for knew something I didn't.

As soon as the two hands that had wintered on the place pulled out, I moved into the Chef's cabin and put up a cot in the combination sitting room and kitchen that was reserved for the ranch chef, when he or she might arrive. The cabin also served as the dining room for the ranch staff. It had a wood stove for heat and its own bathroom. Definite upgrades. In those days, hired hands, white or Mexican were viewed more or less as disposable and were treated accordingly. There were lots of cowboys and folks willing and able to work. The Nanny State was still in its infancy and welfare was not as easy to come by. Folks had more pride and would rather take a job they were overqualified for than take a government handout. But, it was certainly an employers market. Pay was low, benefits nil, but being horseback in God's country was the draw.

The job required that the cattle be fed each day using a sled pulled by a team of draft horses. The horses knew the drill better than I did, so I just hitched them up, drove the mile or so to the winter holding pastures, loaded the sled with hay and turned the horses loose. They just slowly plodded around in a great circle while I pitched hay and looked for new calves.

There was a piece of pipe stuck in a hole on the back of the wagon to use as a snubbin' post. When a momma cow with a new calf would come up to the wagon for hay, I'd holler at the team, and they would stop and stand quietly while I roped the calf from the back of the wagon. All the momma cows would get right on the fight when the calf started bawling and doing somersaults at the end of the rope. I'd run down the rope and leave Chance to head off the mother while I gave the calf an injection or two and put some iodine on their umbilical. I was pretty helpless kneeling in the snow holding the calf down with the mother bellowing, charging and generally raising hell.

Most of the other mother cows would come running up to see what all the uproar was about and a cowboy had to have eyes on all sides of his head if he didn't want to get hooked or run over. Chance did a great job of staying between me and the irate mother and getting their attention on him. I'd release the calf and while mother and young were getting reunited, Chance and I would sprint for the wagon where the drill would start over. We'd head back to headquarters and get the team unhitched and fed with the other horses. Until evening feeding time there wasn't much else to do except chop wood, read, and stay warm.

Ten days or so into the routine and I was down in the snow with a new calf when I was suddenly launched into the air and slammed face down in the trampled snow. The mother cow was a mean old bitch but a good momma and she was serious about protecting her calf. Fortunately, Chance got back into the game and went after her. I was lucky in that her horns went on either side of me and she hit me just over my right kidney. I wobbled back to my feet and wrestled the calf down again, finished the doctoring and got the lariat off the little guy before I staggered back to the wagon, finished the feeding and headed back to the cabin. Knowing I was hurt more seriously than usual but with no phone, no radio, and the roads snowed in, I was on my own. I forked down several days worth of hay for the horses and made my way back to the cabin.

By that evening, I could barely stand or walk and I was burning up with fever accompanied by bloody urine. Not good. Dragging the cot up next to the stove, I put the tea pot on top with all the tea bags I could find and lay back down. Throughout the night, I wandered between burning up and violent chills. Shock was taking its toll on me and all I could do was keep my feet elevated and myself hydrated with tea.

That night a storm roared in out of the north west with howling winds and heavy snow. By morning, I was light headed and very sick. I am not sure if I passed out or just slept like a dead man on and off for the next day. Worried that if I died and Chance was confined inside with me, he might gnaw on my bones to stay alive and when we were eventually discovered, if such was the case, they would probably destroy him so I propped the only door open, just wide enough for him to get out. I could no longer make it to the bathroom so I got a thunder mug and didn't leave the cot for the next three or four days.

When I finally began to recover there was a razor backed snow drift across the kitchen floor broken only where Chance had plowed through the door to take care of business. I was out of commission for at least five days. By the time I made it back out to the barn to hitch up the team the horses were plenty hungry and the cattle were starving. That was the last real snow of the season and when the owners and summer help arrived about a month later, things were back to normal. I never mentioned it to the owners. Fortunately, the Good Lord looks after drunks, fools and cowboys.

The Far Rider

See to your weapons and stand to your horses

Birthrights Lost

Growing up in pre-Ritalin America, I was fortunate to have several wonderful elementary and high school teachers. They figured out that when I became disruptive in class that sending me to the library rather than the Principle's Office was a much more efficient method of controlling my hyperactive exhuberance. The librarian was scarier by far than the principle and the library was interesting and kept me quiet. I gained a passion for the written word.

I have scribbled stories since I was in the 3rd grade. I loved graduate school because of the prodigious amounts of required reading and the endless, lengthy scholarly papers that had to be written. When I was seventeen I read Herman Wouk's Youngblood Hawk. I knew right then that I would never be a writer if it meant living in a walk up, cold water flat in a tenement in New York City. Nor, like Louis L'Amour, could I sit in the middle of Sunset Boulevard with a typewriter and successfully write. Nonetheless, I continued to write prose and poetry and managed to get a few things published.

In 2006 I attended a Writing the Rockies Seminar in Gunnison, Colorado. Among a distinguished panel of instructors was poet Laurie Wagner Buyers and her significant other, author WC Jameson. Laurie's poetry is the most moving I have ever read and she and WC both made a great impression on me. With the exception of Robert Service, I had never much liked poetry until I read Laurie's. I have read three volumes of her poetry and it is the stuff of life in the modern west that has been lived, not imagined. I recommend her work to folks that like their poetry emotionally raw and can appreciate a talent for word craft that is breathtaking.

http://www.lauriewagnerbuyer.com/

The seminar was a humbling experience. I found myself in the presence of real literary talent and I quickly realized that while my life had given me lots of great stories, I lacked the talent, sensitivity to inclusiveness and, most of all, the necessary qualities of subservience to political correctness to be successful in the contemporary world of publishing.

In my conceit that I might have something to offer in my writings, I sent a packet of my work to Ms. Buyers for review. During the seminar, the most memorable thing said to us was that in writing, you must "open a vein and let the blood flow." I queried her about this, and she responded by telling me that a writer should "write from the heart" and not worry about the audience. I was encouraged because my experiences with artistic and academic types has been that they are overwhelmingly of a liberal Progressive frame of mind. Their ideas are usually antithetical to my traditional view of America and pre-1960 American values. I was disappointed but not really surprised when I received Laurie's comments back on my writings.

The technical deficiencies she pointed out were excellent and helpful, but, to my bewilderment, she pointed out the lack of political correctness in some of my expressions, particularly in a story about training a Morgan mare entitled "The Bag Lady" that had been published some years before. Well, what the hell? Which is it? "Let the blood flow" or be politically correct?

Those of us from the "old school" growing up in the 1950s when we, as a people and a nation, were filled with hope, knew where we were going, knew who we were, and we recognized that while all humans may be equal in the eyes of the Almighty, nevertheless, we also had the common sense to recognize that there were differences in the quality and ability of people and cultures just as there were differences in the quality of horses. More importantly, we still believed in the principles of the Founding Fathers and did not have to go into therapy for guilt over our defense of a way of life and a set of values that had made us the greatest and most powerful nation on earth. We were the envy of the entire world. We must have been doing

something right.

We have departed from our origins, and for those of us that know the difference, it is obvious that we are on an express elevator to hell. Our liberties have been embezzled, camouflaged in the rhetoric of tolerance, diversity and inclusiveness. The tragedy of the phenomenon of political correctness is reflected in the historically unimaginable censorship being imposed upon the American people in the form of "progressive" standards of art, social responsibility, and education that has crept into the very fabric of our national lives. Traditional liberties are being stripped from us as we are being told what we can say, how our facial expressions are grounds for being subjected to body searches at airports, what sorts of heretofore deviant behavior we are expected to not merely tolerate but to embrace, and what demographics we must like. Failure to accept as equal all forms of behavior puts us at risk of civil or even criminal sanctions. Look at what can happen to you in Colorado:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=67799

If we dare to independently express ourselves in a manner not considered appropriate by the progressive elitists that run this damn country we may find ourselves the target of scrutiny by the thought police, charged with hate crimes or terrorism. The freedoms so dearly paid for through the last 200 years have been eviscerated of their real meaning. Our Founding Fathers would start a new revolution if they saw what has become of us today.

With the exception of those actions considered mala en se, I encourage civilized dissent. However, I'll be damned if I will yield to the extortion of political correctness imposed for the advancement of the liberty stifling agendas of the progressive left. If that is what it takes to be published, the hell with it.

As a professor, despised by the hairy-legged, radical Marxist feminists that were in the majority in my department, I urged my students to adopt the following critical thinking standard: On issues of social and political policy, have an attitude of "convince me". If presented with overwhelming evidence and a compelling argument to a position or sentiment, change your mind. However, real dissent, especially that based upon traditional American values and the Judeo-Christian tradition are not permitted in most academic environments or in the social and political policy arenas. It seems that most of America today, and especially the generations born after the 1950s, have no idea of what real freedom means. They don't miss it because they have never known it. They are quite happy with cell phones, ipods, and the endless drivel of feel good politics and social activism. The chains of slavery rest easy on their shoulders. No more pitiful statement can be made about a people that have traded the priceless birthright of individual liberty for the illusion of security. The pathetic bastards are too stupid to realize they now have neither liberty nor security.

Far Rider

See to your weapons and stand to your horses

Caesar and Osama

Caesar is my 28 month old Presa Canario. These are very rare dogs in the United States and they have a bit of a bad rap similar to the Pit Bulls that they resemble in certain traits.


http://www.akc.org/breeds/perro_de_presa_canario/history.cfm


These are serious dogs and not for everyone. Like Pit Bulls they need to be managed by competent handlers. They are bred to be extremely protective and can be a problem if they are not socialized properly. When trained correctly, they are, like any of the Bully Breeds, marvelous dogs - loving, playful, obedient, gentle and loyal.


http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&rlz=1T4RNWN_enUS243US244&resnum=0&q=Presa+Canario&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title


Failure to train discipline into the breeds can result in disasterous results. The wrong kind of folks now want these incredible dogs for all the wrong reasons.


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/02/07/MNW32356.DTL


These dogs are like young men in many respects. Without sufficient supervision, discipline and training, they can be dangerous. In today's namby pamby social environment the typical reaction of the meek and timid is to seek to ban the breed. Makes as much sense as gun control.


Living on a ranch in the remote and wild country of west central New Mexico, I have six large dogs of various breeds including Rhodesian Ridgebacks, pit bull-mastiff crosses and the Presa. Law Enforcement response is literally hours away so we have to take care of ourselves out here. Truth is, it works better in a day when cops cannot tell victims from suspects and your chance of having a gun pointed at you or being tazed by a badge wearing thug is pretty high. Most of the cops I know are good guys, but, if it is some kid dressed up like a Nazi and I don't know him, my chances of being shot or tazed if I do not knuckle my forehead appropriately are pretty good. So, the dogs are the first line of defense. I depend on them to alert me and I will deal with whomever or whatever is prowling about. They don't see many people and are thus slow to warm up and they react to aggression with aggression. Not all that different from myself and most of the guys in my closest circle of friends. Birds of a feather and all that.


Caesar is particularly cautious and watchful as is the nature of the breed. He is not a fight starter with other dogs and would actually rather play, but he is definitely a finisher. He rather likes it. Like young men, a chance to roll around in the dust is considered an opportunity. He thinks that cats are to be played with, much to the cats' annoyance. He chooses whom he will befriend and whom he will not tolerate. He is particularly edgy around folks of color. Goes back to his breeding. The PC version of these dogs is that they were bred as "estate guard dogs" in the Canary Islands. Fact is, they were bred to run down runaway slaves. Being a criminal ethologist by academic training, I am keenly aware of the role of genetics in the behaviors of men and animals - much to the dismay of my liberal colleagues in academe that put all blame for deviant behavior on the environment and Republicans.


For over eleven years there was a huge, black. feral cat living around the ranch headquarters. I named him Osama bin Cat after 9-11. He was a savage predator and had killed over half a dozen of the cats and kittens I had gotten for the ranch and he was hell on rabbits. I am not a cat kind of guy but the three cats that live here are legal residents. Osama was a criminal alien. His method of predation was to bite his victim through the base of the spine causing paralysis and then proceed to eat them alive. I respected his ability to survive in this tough country even through its serious winters but I could not abide his method of killing. It is the sort of savagery I associate with Islam. I never could get a clear shot at the damn thing and he was cagey, tough and smart.

A couple of weeks ago I went out to the hay barn for some tools and Caesar the Dragon Dog lit up around my Goldwing Motorcycle. The bike had a cover over it and the dog was persistent about trying to get under the cover. I have had a problem with pack rats getting inside the engine compartment and thought that was what it might be and I was concerned they might be starting to chew on the leather seat. I pulled the cover back and there, sitting on the seat and definitely on the fight, was Osama bin Cat. He must have weighed close to twenty pounds. Let me tell you, twenty pounds of feline fury can cause serious damage in an all out assault and I sure as hell did not want to go for rabies shots. I backed up and Osama and Caesar squared off.

Caesar plays with the house cats (granted he does so in a manner they consider inappropriate) but he means no harm and the only consequence is that they get slobbered on - much to their disgust. He was unsure what to do with this black monster but he seemed to know that this was a cat of a different color. I was armed but shooting my motorcycle didn't seen like a good idea and there was no safe impact zone in the barn for the inevitable through and through shot of my .44 special reload consisting of a 180 grain flat nosed lead bullet travelling just over 1000 feet per second.

We all looked at one another and Osama blinked. The cat leapt over Caesar but the dog is very fast for his 100 pounds and he had him by the neck. Osama was not going to "go quietly into that good night" and he nailed the dog with teeth and claws. Caesar, still a bit of a puppy, yelped once and dropped the cat with a look of bewilderment that was soon replaced by one of "you have soooo had it." The fight was on and the cat finally got away with the dog in hot pursuit around the corner of the barn.

But, the lethal damage of the huge jaws and teeth had been done. The cat was dead on his feet and just running on the oxygen that was left in his brain. The old warrior expired at the rear of one of the horse trailers. Good damn riddance.

Well, then again, maybe not.

I rather miss the old predator and I am sad that he was killed though I know it was necessary for the health and safety of those animals under my protection that live here. For me, it is always regrettable to see one of God's four legged critters die which is why I do not hunt. I rationalize that Osama's death was relatively painless and quick. His dying in the wild would have been a whole lot harder I am sure. But, that doesn't make me feel any better about it. This country is as harsh as it is beautiful. It is good for men, dogs and cattle but hell on horses and women. Cats don't do so well either.

Osama was a vicious predator but was without guilt. The loss of him is just that, a loss in a tough world. We have predators of exponentially greater savagery prowling our inner cities by the tens of thousands proudly flaunting the uniforms, colors and tattoos of their criminal affiliations. The suffering they cause to individuals and to society in general is massive. When they kill each other, like the savages in the Middle East, not a problem. But, increasingly, their depredations fall upon the innocent. From my antiquated perspective, the situation is intolerable. Unlike the innocent predators of the four legged world, the urban barbarians bear guilt for their criminal conduct and depredations. The faint hearted in our society, filled with misplaced compassion, veritably swoon at the very idea of meaningful predator control.

As honorable men, it is my conviction that we have a duty to deal premptively and terminally with those that infect our society with the scourge of wanton and gratuitous violence committed against the innocent.

Put them to the sword. Their victims deserve to be avenged, the grief of those close to the victims should be assuaged, and the concept of "specific deterrence" would assure their inability to perpetrate further insults to humanity. Harsh as it may seem I would feel no remorse at their removal. Their elimination would be the result of choices they have made. 'Bad people force good men to do bad things to protect other good people and we are all injured in the process.
Those that choose to live outside the bounds of civilized conduct renounce their right to civilized treatment and the right to associate with civilized men. It is the difference between Animals and animals.

Occasionally, ideas do change with real time experience. My experience in academia and with my Progressive acquaintances has been that most of them are decent, kind, intelligent people that have no real world experience. Their ideas are the product of the isolation of the ivory tower, privileged upbringing, and or angst and guilt at the way the world is. They have no idea what it is like to actually deal with and confront the savages of the inner city on the street. But, on the rare occasion when reality slam dunks them on the pavement, they often have a real come to Jesus awakening. It has been noted that a liberal is a conservative waiting to be mugged and a conservative is liberal once arrested.

Caesar understood the difference between the house cats and the feral status of Osama and reacted accordingly. It seems reasonable that we should expect man to be at least as smart as Caesar.

Far Rider

See to your weapons and stand to your horses

Why "Far Rider"

(Far Rider, Trooper and Stryker on the trail in west central New Mexico Territory)

I chose the name Far Rider for this journal because it describes what I most like to do - far rides on my horses roaming about the American West. The name also has a mystical history with me in the tradition of the northern Cheyenne. Additionally, I wanted to be sure I was not trespassing on those that are designated as Long Riders through the Long Riders Guild :

http://www.thelongridersguild.com/LRG

The technical difference is that my rides vary from just a few miles to several hundred, but have never reached 1000 miles in a single ride as required by the Guild.

An interesting incident involving the name Far Rider occurred recently.

In 1975, shortly after leaving active duty with the United States Army Special Forces (citizens refer to us as "Green Berets", though we never referred to ourselves that way) I spent the next few years travelling around the western United States working as a cowboy and starting young horses for various outfits from Texas to Washington and Idaho. My ex-wife (every Special Forces trooper seems to have at least one or two) managed to track me down where I was working on a very remote outfit that had been featured in National Geographic Magazine located in the Sunlight Basin north of Cody, Wyoming. My tenure there was short - stuff of another post another time. After being fired from the outfit, I made my way back to Sonora, California where I had served as a Sheriff's deputy and where I had met the lovely creature that had had the bad judgment to marry one of those men that mothers warn their daughters about.

We had both had our share of experience and hopefully had grown up a bit during our separation, so we thought to give it another go, at least that was her approach. Me, well, I sure won't ever go to hell for lack of trying and I had been in cow camps for the past year where feminine companionship was as rare as a smart democrat. She was a stunningly beautiful girl and looked like the model Cheryl Tieg. I had learned early on that the warmth of a beautiful woman is truly a gift from God.

In those days many of the old traditions were still respected in cow country, one of those being that women were never allowed overnight in a cow camp. The same tradition applied to the old sailing ships and it was based on common sense. Having a bunch of testosterone driven males snortin' and pawing the ground with not enough female company to go around is a recipe for trouble. Men were still men in those days and were not all sensitive like the lap dogs the marxist-feminist-deconstuctionist movement has turned a good many of them into.

I found myself a room that was actually an attic over a bar in the historic mining town of Twain-Harte and started training horses to pay my bills. It was in this way that I met an extraordinary woman of Native American background who was a Shaman or Holy Woman. She was a teacher in the local high school and had raised a wonderful family there on the west slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We became great friends and I admire her deeply to this day.

I would work her horses and then we would spend hours on her front porch in the heat of the afternoon drinking iced tea and chatting about literature, art, horses and history. She also began to teach me about Native American ways particularly of the Northern Cheyenne. She renamed me as an honorary Cheyenne Dog Soldier in the native tongue which, as is their custom, I was never allowed to tell anyone. She prepared me for my first vigil and gave me the necessary sacred items to conduct it. My medicine bag is still a prized possession.

I wondered off into Utah in what is now the Grand Staircase National Monument north of Kanab and conducted my first vigil accompanied by my dog Chance. We came off of the bluff three days after we had started. We were both hungry, and I was nursing a massive food deprivation headache, was sun burnt to a crisp but with a deepened awareness of the link between nature and man in the tradition of the aboriginal Americans. In later years as I undertook status as an Aspirant for the Priesthood in the Orthodox Anglican Church, I appreciated why Christianity has such appeal to so many Native Americans on the reservations, and why CS Lewis, the greatest theologian and apologist for Christianity in the 20th Century, appreciated the link of traditional religions to Christianity.

Shan and I lost contact over the years as I cowboyed in the remote stretches of the West and later pursued careers in law enforcement and academe. We reestablished contact within the past year. She is quite aged now, has lost her husband and is nearly blind, but her mind and spirit are as sharp as they were over 30 years ago. After several communications and without any alluding to it on my part, she, out of the blue, informed me that I would henceforth be known as Far Rider. Spooky to say the least. The translation of my original Cheyenne name, "Walks Many Trails," was very appropriate to me at the time it was given, but my mature name of Far Rider was what I had used as a horseman for many years. It reconfirmed to me that there are forces at work in this world about which modern man knows little or nothing, and, some things are just best left alone, should not be analyzed and "deconstructed", but simply be allowed to take their own course.

PS: Things did not work out with the blond. I valued the liberty of a cow camp more than a white picket fence so I headed back to Wyoming to start young horses on the plains west of the Wind River Mountains.


Far Rider
See to your weapons and stand to your horses

Cimarron Rose

Cimarron Rose is a registered bay mare that I have raised from a foal. Born in 2000, I had high hopes for her as a riding horse, but she started out as a hard luck filly just like her momma, Shiloh. This little mare is affectionate, willful and smart.

She was born here on the ranch in west central New Mexico Territory. She is the smallest horse on the place, going at 900-1000 pounds. Her momma was a Doc Bar granddaughter from Texas, and her daddy is a registered Paint and American Quarter Horse out of Arizona.

One late summer evening when she was a long yearling I went out to let the horses in for their evening feed. I found her standing at the gate bleeding badly with terrible tears on one of her hind legs. Tendons, muscle and tissue were exposed. I cleaned and wrapped her leg, administered 20ccs of penicillin and isolated her in a holding pen for the night. The nearest veterinarian at the time was 60 miles away (now veterinary help is 75 - 115 miles away).

Here is where the story gets "interesting", for lack of a better word.

At the time, I had a fellow working on the place that can best be described as a troll. He was physically very strong, short and built like Quasimodo without the hump. He was also so dyslexic that I had to replace an analogue watch I had given him with a digital one as he could not tell time. He was mentally and emotionally challenged but functional most of the time. He was also extremely talented with wood and was a very hard worker when he was stable.

I am a former professor of criminology and forensics and currently semi-retired as a homicide forensics and reconstruction consultant so my skill sets in this beautiful but backward country are not the norm. Of course, I cannot do what most of the competent folks around here know how to do such as fix cars, run chainsaws, etc. In fact, if I get out tools, women, kids and small animals are best kept away. I looked at the wound on the little mare and it was obviously a barbed wire injury. I was in the process of replacing all internal cross fencing on the nearly 3000 acres that comprises the ranch with smooth wire for the safety of the horses but had not yet been able to do the Shiloh Pasture. This historic old ranch was a working cattle outfit since the early 1900s and barbed wire is a necessary evil when trying to contain the obstreperous bovine.

I asked the Troll if he knew anything about the incident. He had been working that day cutting cedar in that particular pasture. He was an inveterate liar - usually harmless tales of an errant and simplistic imagination. His self-image was of a mountain man and he patterned himself after a historic local character named Ben Lilly that made a career of slaughtering mountain lions. He denied knowing anything, but his body language was questionable during his responses.

I hauled Cimarron to my veterinarian the following day and he sewed her up. He said there was considerable damage to tendons, muscle and ligaments, but nothing had been completely severed. All we could do was haul her home, keep her as quiet as possible and hope for the best. Upon arriving at home, I saddled Stormy, and patrolled every inch of the pasture looking for the site of the incident. No hair or blood was found in loose or damaged wire on the pasture perimeter. No scuff marks where she might have slipped or rolled into the wire. I did eventually find blood near tire tracks and boot prints matching the Troll's out where he had been cutting cedar. Circumstantial evidence to be sure but insufficient for proof or even enough to confront him with an accusation.

I have spent a significant part of my life in law enforcement in one way or another and am very sensitive to the use of unsubstantiated accusations on the part of cops and prosecutors. I find the willingness and desire on the part of agents of the state to accuse, arrest and convict someone without genuine proof objectionable in the extreme. I am often accused of helping the guilty to go free, but my retort is that, like Hammurabi, thus will also the innocent go free - a concept not particularly important in the quantitatively driven bureaucracies of the contemporary legal system.

Cimarron never fully recovered from the wound and her days as a riding mare were over. This past spring, I started her out learning to be a pack horse - a mutual learning experience for us both and the topic of another post.

In 2003, after I had fired the Troll for theft, lying and sexual perversion, I was able to help prosecute him for animal abuse. He had a burro that had lived in a shed for several years that had never seen the light of day and when the animal was finally confiscated it was standing in years of poop near the roof of the old shed. He also had an emu in a cage that was so low the great bird could not stand up. When confronted about it during the prosecution of the case, he cut the bird's head off and stated that now it would fit in the enclosure. The final straw was his taking a beautiful young horse that he had somehow acquired and tying it to a tree out in the woods leaving it to starve to death. After his jail term - which was not nearly long enough - he was ordered out of the county never to be allowed to return.

This fellow came from a genetic toxic waste background. According to reports, his father was extremely abusive. His mother was nearly illiterate and was physically challenged in shape and size. His brother was a drug addict. The bunch of them reminded me of the depictions of the inbreds in the movie 'Deliverance" with Burt Reynolds. A case for eugenics if I ever saw one.

Based upon the animal cruelty committed by the Troll, the evidence at the scene in the pasture, his response to my questioning and my own intuition, I am convinced that he took a piece of barbed wire and deliberately wrapped it around Cimarron's leg and sawed away. He walked on this crime and my mare pays the price to this day.

I have done my share of killing as a special operations soldier in various ugly places around the world and I have no problem with it. But, I cannot abide suffering -- one of the many reasons for my absolute hatred of the Islamists we are currently at war with. Suffering of any sentient being produces wrath in me like nothing else. In a perfect world, the justice for the Troll would have been delivered with barbed wire in a manner consistent with what he did to my loving and trusting little mare. Absent that possibility, he and all those like him should be summarily shot and left for the coyotes.

As a teenager, I attempted to intervene in an incident where a Mexican fellow was beating his dog. This particular Mexican, as it turned out, was a Golden Gloves boxer and he left off beating the dog and beat the living day lights out of me. It was a valuable lesson that was eloquently confirmed in a passage by Camu I believe where he noted that in this world, having courage and being right are not nearly enough.

As we have become more "civilized", we have acquired a penchant for excusing all manner of aberrant behavior and have lost the moral certitude necessary for the application of meaningful justice. Every time, I halter Cimarron and take her out I think about the Troll and am reminded of how little real justice there is in this world.

Far Rider

See to your weapons and stand to your horses