Abandoned Horse

Sin, the mare nobody wanted to ride

After my remark to Ms. Cracky questioning her concept of "equality" as I rode through the last gate on the Forest Road, we turned the horses due west and headed over the shoulder of Dead Indian Peak. It was a relief to be in rough country without Yale 1939 looking over my shoulder.

The ranch was still some 20 miles away but the lead bell mare had done this trip for many years and she knew exactly what trail to take down the rough and broken west side of the peak. We picked up the Forest Road twelve miles from the ranch and the ponies got into goin' home gear proper.

The horses came to a very narrow, rough spot in the road and some sort of ruckus ensued causing one of the smaller geldings to get knocked off of the road and down the steep bank through a barbed wire fence. The horse was bleeding from wire cuts and showing signs of distress and shock by the time I got to him. The boss pulled up on the roadway and told me to leave the horse because it was more important to get the rest of the horses back to the ranch and into fenced pastures before dark. I figured the horses would go straight home on their own as they had made the last forty miles with little help from me, but he was the boss, and I reluctantly followed orders.

We arrived at the ranch and pastured the horses at four o'clock in the afternoon with the sun rapidly sliding behind the high peaks of the Absaroka Range to the west. Darkness was only a couple of hours off and the temperature was dropping quickly under the now clear skies. It was going to be a frosty night. By the time we got to the ranch I was pretty wound up about abandoning the horse and everything else to do with the outfit including the arrogant damn Yankee that owned it. It wouldn't be the last time I would have to deal with Eastern money out in sagebrush country.

Observations on personality and character:



During my life I have discovered for myself a truism about folks as follows: "You are now what you were when." If somebody is dishonest, tempermental, easy-going, generous, selfish, cruel, kind or whatever in their youth, they will not depart far from those traits as they travel through life, especially when the chips are down.



One of my less than stellar characteristics is that I am "twitchy." Meaning, it just doesn't take much to get me wound right the hell up about things. I don't let anything slide and if I think something is wrong, I will step up and confront it. I am not always right and have made mistakes. I have paid dearly for my refusal to go with the flow or to not make waves. One reason I never wanted a family was so that I could not be held hostage for the sake of a paycheck. I learned early on that if you want to stand on your own, never have a job, home, possessions, or anything else that you are not willing to walk away from for the sake of principle.


Some folks call my approach intolerant, others call it passion. I call it conviction. Right is right. Wrong is wrong. Moral relativism is the religion of those without integrity and the character to do the right thing regardless of the cost. Admittedly, my conceptions of right and wrong were formed between 1945 and 1960 when we, as a nation and a people, believed in the historical traditions of our founding. I am the product of the Judeo-Christian tradition and the intellectual values of the European and Scottish Enlightenments.




The aforesaid influences have provided the industry, intellect, morality, political concepts of individual autonomy, sovereignty, accountability and liberty that propelled this once great country into the most powerful and envied nation the world has ever known. Our values and our soldiers have provided the moral imperatives and the blood, sacrifice and treasure to bring freedom to more people than any other political system ever devised. Just because this country has abandoned those principles, like we abandoned the little gray gelding, does not make it right or mean that each of us does not bear the responsibility to continue to bear the standard. This country has sacrificed a Constitutional Republic based upon individual liberty for the pottage of a democracy where equality, regardless of competency, is the standard. Free men are not equal and equal men are not free. Damn right, that makes me twitchy.


Meanwhile, back at the ranch:


I changed horses, saddling Sin, a big sorrel mare nobody else would ride. We had had a couple of wrecks early on and found out we liked each other. She would do anything I asked as long as I understood that she was going to buck when I threw my first loop of the day. She would pitch a time or two and then settle down and work all day for me.




I stuffed a halter, bandages, ointment and a nosebag with grain into my saddle bags. Everybody was heading for supper when I rode down the muddy track leading from the ranch to the Forest Road with Chance, my red bone hound, trotting along behind . The boss intercepted me as I passed his log home and he asked where I thought I was going. I explained I was going to go get the injured horse and bring him home. He questioned my judgement leaving at that late hour of the day. I just shrugged and moved on. I wasn't afraid of the dark and I figured he could fire me when I got back.

I rode down the road and it was nigh onto seven PM and getting near full dark when we got close to where the horse had fallen over the edge of the roadway. I didn't know the country and had no idea where a gate might be that I could use to get to the other side of the fence where the horse was located. I didn't think he could make it back up the bank to the road even if I cut the fence and I was concerned that my own horse might fall and get torn up in the fence if I tried to go down where he had fallen through. I wasn't even sure where the horse might be given the six hours or so that had elapsed since we had quit him. I felt guilty about leaving the injured horse, embarrased that I had not stayed with him and not just a little bit angry at myself. I also knew that if I did not return with both horses and myself in one piece that I would never hear the end of it from the experts back at the ranch.

I eased Sin off of the road and, following the fence, we trotted back to the west looking for an opening. Fortunately, we hadn't gone half a mile before we found a Texas wire gate and, stepping down, I led Sin through latching the gate behind us. Swinging up in the failing light we jogged back to the east and pulled up at the edge of a meadow where I quietly sat the mare listening to the country and watching her ears. She swung her head staring intently in the direction of the fenceline. I touched her with a spur and gave her the reins. She moved purposefully with ears pricked toward a stand of trees at the edge of the meadow that was, as near as I could tell, just about where the horse had originally gone down.

We passed through the trees and there in the dim light stood the little gray gelding. He nickered a greeting to the mare and it was plain as newsprint that he was glad to see one of his own. He had wire cuts on a shoulder, his neck and the inside of a foreleg. The leg wound was open and still leaking but it did not appear that any tendons or subcutaneous structures had been badly damaged though he had lost a lot of blood. He was beat up from his tumble through the rocks and had a knot over his right eye that had probably knocked him silly.

I haltered and hung the nosebag on him. He munched quietly while I put ointment on his wounds and bandaged the leg to hold the torn flesh in place. Sin grazed quietly nearby and Chance stood watch while I doctored the little horse. After he finished the oats he looked like he was fit to travel and we slowly made our way back to the ranch in the darkness. It was a beautiful, clear, cold and moonless night. An elk would occasionally bugle and coyotes barked their greetings. The only other sound was the creak of saddle leather, the blowing of the horses, and the click of steel shoes on rock. The starlight cast just enough light to make the muddy road appear as a dark ribbon winding through a landscape of shadows.

Not a light was on as I turned the horses into a small corral with hay and water. I went to my bedroll with an empty belly satisfied that I had done the right thing for one of God's critters.

Far Rider
See to your weapons and stand to your horses

"I didn't know cowboys were smart"

Rex Ranch, Amado, AZ.



February 1975. I hired out as a dude wrangler at the Rex Ranch in Amado, Arizona. Never having herded dudes before I was not sure what to expect. It would prove to be a less than successful experience.

The Rex Ranch was a grand old place in the tradition of the mid-twentieth century dude ranches. Like everything else, the place has changed to keep pace with the changing demographics of those that now come out West for recreation. It is promoted as a haven for the urban yuppie elite seeking pampering in a socially and environmentally correct atmosphere. The advertisement says it comes complete with spa, bird watching and other heart pounding events. There is not even a mention of a horse. Good Lord, but the West is truly gone.


The description on the current Ranch History page reads like a diversity seminar. It is enough to make you vomit.


http://www.rexranch.com/history.html


The ranch provided nice quarters, great food, decent horses and a nice selection of pretty and accommodating female staff for after hours recreation. Most of the guests, at least the ones that rode horseback, were very nice people. The ranch paid a small wage and I was expected to make my money on tips. I was never comfortable accepting tip money. It is servile and an affront to the dignity of an independent man. Some of the guests from back east that were of a more timid nature found me a bit too edgy. I could not and would not play the phony, blustering Old West character that so many of these places expected. I did not get on well with the owners, and that was mostly my fault because I just do not have the personality to be properly subservient to my economic betters. I had been places where things really mattered, and this wasn't one of them.


In an earlier post, On Aggression, IQ & Social Policy July 12, 2008, I discussed my introduction to and interest in ethology (the comparison and study of predatory habits in upper mammals including man). Included in the course content, were issues addressing violence and killing in the animal and early hominid world. Additionally, the role of sexuality, natural divisions of labor, the power of sexual politics, and the establishment and defense of territory were discussed from a cultural anthropological and ethological point of view. Throughout my university years as student and professor, the principles of ethology would provide a focal point of intense ideological enmity, and established the battleground for the intellectual warfare between myself and the social architects and moral entrepreneurs of post modern, deconstructionist, Progressive social policy. In particular, the radical, Marxist feminists absolutely hated the ideas, and by extension me. Most of the students, however, loved the ideological contrast with the nonsense they were receiving at the hands of the mainstream academic community.


As the winter dude season wore on into early spring, I found myself one warm day herding three female members of a very wealthy and prominent American family on a ride into the Upper Sonoran Desert. The border area in those days was still a relatively safe place and citizens on both sides of the cultural and geographic border lived in quiet harmony with one another. On Saturday nights, in the company of two Mexican vaquero friends, we would ride across the border to an old time cantina. The beer was cold, tequila cheap, and the food was great. The men were tough, the senoritas warm and everybody damn sure knew how to have a good time. Of course, if you were inclined to insult someone you had to be prepared to defend or pay with your life. Them Mexican boys know about knives and the women aren't too shabby either. Kept everybody polite.


The three silver spoon females in my care were a mother and her two college age daughters. Both of the young women were pretty and, as might be expected, a bit spoiled though not in the malicious sense that so many privileged youth often exhibit. Mom was well kept as only real money can do. The young ladies were students at Brown University and Vassar College. As we rode along towards Tortilla Well, I did the usual guide thing explaining the flora and fauna of the desert and a bit of the local history. The conversation became more animated as the young women began to grill the cowboy about his political and social views.


The ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) was the big domestic issue at the time. It had piggy backed onto the Civil Rights Movement. Somehow, in the confused politics of the time, the Viet Nam War, and by extension, those that fought in it, was thrown into the mix. Politics was becoming about blame and group identification. The political philosophies connected with these movements were based on various forms of Marxist ideology. The lexicon of the Left began to be filled with terms that were mandatory in conversation to demonstrate one's political enlightenment. Emotionally based arguments filled with accusations of oppression, exploitation, environmentalism, American imperialism, racism, ad naseum were the stock in trade of those whose real motivation was to realign the power base from the competent to the incompetent based upon gender and skin color. It was the beginning of victim hood politics and cry baby activism. The real hidden agenda that we see maturing today and will see even more so in the upcoming election with its probably disasterous results is about income redistribution and transfer of wealth.


The engaging young women were eager to point out the backwardness of traditional male thinking. Sex was a tool of oppression and the male libido was the cause of racism, war, environmental destruction, starvation in the Third World, leprosy, mental retardation and every other known evil past, present and future. Until that time, I had no idea how awful we Anglo-Caucasian guys were. Damn. The inevitable nonsense about full physical equality was the mantra of Feminist politics. I could understand the ugly broads feeling that way, but not the pretty capable ones. Particularly bewildering was the fawning acquiescence of a good many of the new generation of psychologically neutered post-adolescent males to the same stupid ideas. Then again, it made sense if they wanted to get laid.


Men are not really, on average, bigger, stronger, and faster. That was just a construct of male patriarchy and a further example of white, male-dominated oppression of women and people of color. Women were just as capable of being soldiers, cops, firemen, steel workers, and professional hockey players as any man - and, if there were some disparity in physical ability and or strength, they should be given special considerations and allowed to participate regardless of the negative effects upon efficiency. Gender and race norming of testing and qualifications became all the rage. If some people died or were injured due to incompetence or lack of ability to perform to standard, that was the necessary price of a more harmonious world. And, if they happened to be white males, and especially if they were baby killing Viet Nam veterans, well, they deserved it. Bloody Hell.


I countered with ethological arguments regarding the obvious quantifiable physical differences and divisions of labor found throughout the natural world. The socio-biological principles offered were met with sniffs of abrupt dismissal. It was obvious to these privileged women that I was a prime example of a knuckle dragging misanthrope. I was devastated. Male chauvinism and domination had to be stamped out regardless of the assault upon logic and the prima facia evidence present in the natural order. The young ladies were not to be confused by facts that went against their firmly established ideological bias.


We arrived at the well and as we stepped off our horses, I knelt and drew a mathematical matrix in the sand illustrating the biological basis for a portion of my argument. I gathered up the lead ropes of the horses and led them off to the well for water. A subtle shift of the wind allowed me to overhear a whispered remark that would provide the motivation for me to sacrifice nearly everything I had to achieve a University education. One of the young women said to her sister and mother "I didn't know cowboys were smart."


It isn't what she said that pulled my trigger, it was what she did not say. Until our intense and animated conversation, these people, and most others just like them, assumed that if a man made his living in boots and spurs on the back of a horse, he was stupid. As pampered elitist products of the Eastern Establishment, they had no idea about cowboys and ranchers. Anybody in the livestock business that can make a living inspite of weather, market conditions, the harsh and often dangerous working conditions, environmentalists, and the damn government is hardly stupid. Something I have learned in a life spent around those kind of folks and ranchers is that ranchers could learn to do and be successful at most of whatever the fly over crowd does, but based upon experience, the fly over crowd does not do well at ranching. They have to rely upon a rancher to run their weekend outfits for them.


A kind, older friend would later note while I was attending university that I was seeking education for the wrong reasons. He said I was seeking it as a form of revenge. Maybe so. But it worked. When you start out in life with less than others, you are faced with a choice. Submit to your circumstances and blame the unfairness of life or, you can tighten your cinch and get the hell on down the road. It is a matter of character. Somebody might point that out to Chocolate Nagin, Jesse Jackson and the denizens of New Orleans.


Far Rider
See to your weapons and stand to your horses