The Cowboy and his Elephant

by Malcolm MacPherson

  With skill and speed Bob moved Coyote out of the way, as the steers kicked up a cloud of dust. Everything had happened fast. Bob spurred Coyote, who knew what he was being asked to do. They ran along with the stampede over a mile. Bob and the two other cowboys slowed them down by turning them, and finally stopped them.

  The ranch manager, whom Bob looked up to, told him, “You know how to cowboy now. Come on into the office later and I’ll start to teach you the ranchin’ business.”

  The next summer he worked for the legendary cattleman Colonel Jack Lapham on the Flying L Ranch in Bandera, Texas. Lapham was a fighter pilot in World War I and a flying instructor in World War II, and halfway through the summer, he saw promise in Bob, deciding that the time had come, of all unlikely things for a cowboy, for him to fly.

  Bob had no burning desire to learn; indeed, at first he had the impression that the colonel was taking him up for a joy ride in his wood-framed and fabric-covered Piper Cub J-3. Up in the air the colonel told him to take over the controls. Bob’s cowboy boots were too big to fit the rudder pedals on the floor. As the Cub waffled in the air, he hurriedly slipped off the boots and flew the plane barefoot in a wide circle, with the colonel quietly instructing him over his shoulder. And when they landed, after three hours of instructions, the colonel got out and lit a cigarette and took a couple of drags.

  “Take it up,” he told Bob, sitting in the airplane.

  “What did you say?” Bob asked.

  “The airplane. Take it up.”

  “You think I’m ready for it?” Bob asked, because he certainly didn’t think so himself.

  “Yup,” said the colonel. “You just take it up, and don’t go flyin’ around the country, neither.”

  “Well, all right,” said Bob. He shut the window and somehow left the ground. He didn’t fly around the country. Yelling out loud with relief, he brought the Cub in to land with a bump and a shudder. He taxied up to where the colonel was standing, cigarette still in his fingers. He opened the window and smiled, and asked the colonel what he thought.

  “Now you can fly,” he told him.

  When he had calmed his nerves, Bob had the sense that the experience of flying solo applied to being a cowboy too. You didn’t talk about it or study it, you just did it.

  Girls went weak in the knees at the sight of Bob and his brother, Lester, Jr., nicknamed Brud. The girls’ parents, though, often went weak in the stomach at the mention of their names. The boys’ reputation for recklessness preceded them: They rode horses fast and drove cars faster, and they chased girls with lightning speed. They played hard, and fought with bare fists over girls, and often won their choices. Bob knew what young women looked good to him. Because he knew he had a fine eye for horses, he believed that he had a fine eye for women. He appreciated both on approximately the same terms, as he said, “with no disrespect meant to either one.” He knew horses even better than women, and when choosing a woman, he compared her with a filly. He looked for style, class, and spirit. He said, “If a woman has class and style, she stands out. You know, eye appeal. That’s different for every man alive. What suits me to a T may not suit you to a T. And that’s why everybody doesn’t want the same woman.”

  A young lass whose beauty turned others pale had already caught his eye in high school. Jane Wright suited every boy’s dreams, but Bob was the only one with the nerve to tell her so. He walked her home from school, and he carried her books. Before they had even kissed he made up his mind to marry her. He was a realist who knew that his parents would not let him elope. He set a date in his mind, June 10, 1950—six years away. “I just hoped I’d live to be that old. I just wanted to live long enough to get married to Jane. I prayed for it—‘Just let me, Lord.’ ”

  In the meantime Jane chose to marry another man. The betrothed couple signed the deed on a new house. Invitations went out; flowers were ordered; wedding gifts piled up on the Wrights’ dining room table. Jane bought a gown with a long train.

  Bob was dreaming up ways to split them apart.

  “I might have killed him, or he might have killed me. I think I’d have killed him. He was a no good sumbitch. No, I know I would have killed him. But anyway—I got lucky.”

  At the last moment Jane realized that she was making a mistake. She called off the wedding, and as soon as her parents recovered from the shock, she accepted Bob’s proposal without regrets in 1950. A couple of years went by, with Bob managing a farm in Illinois, before he decided that his future lay in the West as a cowboy, and he and Jane drove out to Colorado to find a place to start a ranch and begin a family.

  In time they settled on a spread near Colorado Springs, which would become one of the larger cattle ranches in the whole of Colorado. Bob registered the “T Cross” brand for his cattle. The ranching life was all that he and Jane had hoped for. The wide-open spaces were a blessing to Bob, of animals galore, blue skies and vast horizons, tumbleweeds and sage, children and family. The great Texas longhorn herds had once traveled to railheads over their land, and the Western legends of Cripple Creek, Pike’s Peak, and the Black Forest gave it spirit. On their own ranch, and with their own cattle and horses, they lived as people of that region had lived for a century and more.

  Bob set out to raise a family, earn a reputation, and make a living as a cowboy.

  He and Jane were noticed as different from the start, however. With her beauty and his handsomeness, they were as striking as any couple ever seen in that part of Colorado. His Wranglers and boots, a plain-fronted shirt with mother-of-pearl snaps, and a Resistol brand hat somehow looked better and more natural on his thin, muscular six-foot-two frame. He was handsome, with a broad, lazy smile, hooded brown eyes, and a complexion that the sun and wind off the Rockies had etched with ruggedness.

  Jane was more muted. With the birth of their children she had matured into an elegant woman with black hair and delicate features. Anyone could see that she was besotted with Bob. She laughed at his jokes, thrilled at his daring, admired his constancy, and, always—behind the excitement and the glamor, the hard work and hard times—worried over his safety. Only part of her, the part that loved the ranch life and endured its hardships willingly, accepted the risks. A worrier with much to occupy her, as a mother of four growing, healthy children and a husband who believed in the virtue of self-sufficiency as an article of faith, Jane drew a sharp line between which risks seemed necessary and which seemed mere bravado. She and Bob never saw eye to eye on this issue, which remained with them for years to come.

  She had always known what animals meant to Bob, but she was still puzzled by the time and the energy he gave them. He just sometimes seemed to lose touch with people, even with her and the children, when he was around his animals. She was almost certain he would not know what she meant if she brought it up.

  She had her own work to do as a homemaker, and the days were filled with activity. She understood his business was to raise animals on 63,000 acres of grazing land, with three thousand mother cows, and thirty to forty horses in all stages of wildness and temper. She also accepted that horses injured their riders. When Big Bob kicked Bob full in the chest and smashed his ribs and sternum, Jane nursed her husband back to health without a scolding word. But when her sons rode recklessly and fell, and came home with broken bones, she could be less understanding. Adverse to risk herself as a mother, she did not understand when those she loved took chances that she considered unnecessary.

  In their community their neighbors respected the Norrises for their honesty and character. They lived as people who “wouldn’t mind selling [their] pet parrot to the town gossip,” to borrow a line from Will Rogers, whom Bob sounded like when he talked with the same honeyed drawl. He lived by his word, which was the bond of the Western landowner. He attended church regularly with his family, though he said that his T Cross ranch served as ample evidence of the Almighty’s hand. He knew its contours as other men knew their own signatures. He watched how it was rapidly changing with the arrival of
families who also wanted a piece of the West. Almost as soon as he began to ranch, Bob saw himself as a member of a vanishing breed.

  A cowboy was judged above all else on the horses he kept, and the thirty or so in Bob’s barn were deemed exceptional. His breed was the quarter horse, “America’s horse,” it was called, the first one native to the United States, with bloodlines that had been mixed with several European breeds. Andalusians from Spain, Arabians from the Middle East, or pure English or European horses held no particular allure for Bob. He said that he was an American, and his horses would be American as well. Generations of cowboys had admired, and even sung, the quarter horse’s virtues. Heavily muscled for endurance, and with compact bodies and calm dispositions of use around cattle, they ran short distances faster than any other horse, and easily kept pace with the short, erratic bursts of speed common to cattle. They had a so-called cow sense, with which they anticipated the reactions of cattle.

  Cows resisted separation from their own, and moved in tight groups like schools of fish. To “cut” one from its herd was hard, exhausting, and violent work that called for a close “coordination between horse and cowboy. Bob and his cutting horses worked cattle with balletic grace. He commanded his mount with a slight pressure of his thighs, or spurs, or a light touch of the reins. The horse’s eyes never moved from the cow. By feinting with its head it made the cow commit itself to a direction; then the horse exploited that opening to its advantage, and the job was done.

  Bob trained his own T Cross horses, from “breaking” them to the saddle to training them to perform as champions. Over the years he acquired his own methods of making the horses do what he asked of them. He began by following one simple rule: Never punish a horse.

  He used carrots instead. “You get more out of anything alive with a carrot than with a stick,” he said. He recalled how Colonel Lapham at the Flying L came out of the house each morning to greet his horses with a pocketful of carrots. “Every living thing in nature responds to kindness,” Bob said.

  At the start of the day out by the barn, he whistled and held a fresh carrot up for the horses in the pasture to see. They flared their ears and raced to him. He made the horses anxious to do what he wanted them to. He trained horses to the saddle by using common “horse” sense, starting in a pen.

  He entered with a saddle over his arm, a hackamore, and a short rope to lead the horse. The horse was usually skittish and shy. Its eyes bulged, and it sought out the corners of the corral. Bob walked like a man with nothing to do. He talked softly, touched the horse, and at the moment when the horse relaxed, he placed a saddle on its back and ran a lead rope through the stirrups and under its belly. Then he held the horse on long reins. If the horse ran off, Bob pulled its head around until it stopped. He had control, giving voice commands and hand signals; he turned the horse to the right and to the left, and lunged it around him. This was all groundwork that paid off when it came to mounting the horse’s back. Bob got up halfway in the stirrup and talked to the horse, and then swung his leg over and sat down. He repeated that four or five times. The horse understood what he was doing; there were no surprises. The horse started walking alongside another horse and rider, with the young horse’s head usually forced with a rope up to the horn of the rider’s saddle. If the horse reared and tried to run, it could not go far. The rope was loosened, and Bob took the reins and rode it around the corral. Now when he gave a command, the horse obliged.

  “Common sense,” he said.

  Outside a rodeo ring, Bob did not understand the logic of the bucking bronco. He hated getting bucked off a horse: The ground was hard, and as he grew older it got harder. “That bucking that they used to do just always seemed stupid to me,” he said. “It was cruel and stupid, because once a horse knows he can buck you off, you’ve got a problem. Teach him a good habit that you don’t have to undo instead.”

  Bob allowed his horses to develop their own personalities and react in their own ways to the world around them.

  “Every horse is built differently in its muscle and bones,” he said. “So why shouldn’t every horse move different?”

  Big Bob, his champion quarter horse, had a character that was full of surprises. One day on Big Bob, down near a waterhole in a pasture, with two dogs along for company, Bob rode up to a steep bank. He was dozing in the sun. Suddenly Big Bob shot up the bank. With an explosion of energy he turned 180 degrees, and Bob only had time to catch the saddle horn to stay on. He knew better than to doze on Big Bob, so he didn’t blame the horse at all.

  Another time he was riding Big Bob, and his cowboys were pushing cattle toward him. He did not see an all-white heifer that popped over the bank “like a ghost.” He was sitting lazily on Bob one moment, and the next, he says, “I was sittin’ in the air ahold of my reins.” He smiled at the memory. “That’s Big Bob. He’s grabby-assed. It comes to him naturally. His surrogate mother was goofy.” And then he adds, “But his mother was a real genuine beauty.”

  Bob went into ranching as much to be with his children as to be with the animals. The family lived in a house that cost only thirteen thousand dollars to build. The grandeur of its setting, with the Rockies in the distance, gentle hills between, here and there covered in spring with blankets of wildflowers and in winters with sheets of whitest snow, made the house, in Bob’s eyes, into a mansion. With the animals around them, Bob and his family lived together, cooked, ate, and slept, played, cried, and laughed; got sick and recovered, all within each other’s sight, sound, and reach. When the children were not attending school, they were on horseback with their father and often with their mother, as Bob says, “cowboyin’.”

  “We worked together. We didn’t have to make things up to keep us together as a family. We were fixing fences, working the cattle, doing all sorts of general ranch work, mostly around the animals; the kids helped with branding, gathering, and doctoring of the cattle. You could say I kinda grew up with my kids. Jane was a mother and homemaker. Twenty years went by, and she didn’t put the same meal on the table twice. She made a career out of it. We were lucky.”

  From time to time, early in the mornings, the family took to the saddle and rode to a favorite wateringhole that was stocked with trout. They threw in their lines and caught breakfast, which they cooked in a skillet over a campfire. At those times Bob inspired his children with simple, homespun truths and lessons to live by:

  Always keep your word.

  A gentleman never insults anyone by mistake.

  Never tell a lie, then you don’t have to worry about what you said.

  Don’t look for trouble, but if you get into a fight, make sure you win it.

  Fun is the main thing.

  Don’t complain. Complaining is what quitters do.

  If a man doesn’t respect a woman enough to clean up his mouth, he doesn’t respect himself.

  Be kind to children, old folks, and animals.

  The whole family took part in the spring roundup, roping the calves, branding them, injecting them to keep them healthy, then setting them back with their mothers. The work was hard, and the days were long. They ate around campfires and slept under the stars.

  “The kids and me,” Bob says, “we worked out our problems together, ropin’ and brandin’ and ridin’, always around the animals. On a ranch you eat together, you work together, and play together. You’re happy and sad as a unit, and it’s like the modern psychologists say, ‘quality time.’ Hell, I knew that they’d be up and out soon enough. They’d be gone, and then it’s lost. It’s lost forever and for all time.”

  The boyhood fantasy of the mythic cowboy was never meant to be real. But for Bob it became even more real than for most other cowboys of his generation, when one bright spring day, when he was pushing quarter horses from the pasture toward the corral, he saw strangers arrive in cars near the barn. He had been expecting a visit from advertising agency men from Chicago—someone who knew Bob in Denver had recommended the use of Bob’s ranch as a background for
a series of still photos that the agency was shooting for Marlboro cigarettes.

  Bob watched from a distance as a cowboy model took his duds out of a trunk and prepared to change. He had a bright, new neckerchief and new jeans, a shirt with ironed creases, and shined boots that were new out of a Lucchese box. Riding nearer, Bob saw that the model’s complexion was strictly indoor. He carried a little suitcase for makeup that he applied with a brush.

  “Howdy!” Bob greeted him from horseback.

  Meanwhile, another man hurried around the corner of the barn and introduced himself as Neil McBain, from Chicago’s Leo Burnett Advertising Agency, which had created the “Marlboro Man.” He put out his hand as Bob dismounted. He praised the beauty of Bob’s T Cross. The setting would help create the right mood. Needlessly McBain pointed to Pike’s Peak to the West and the foothills of the Rockies reflecting light and shadow. The skies lit up the color of amber.

  “So you figure on what?” Bob asked him.

  “Shooting some photos of the cowboy here, with the barns and horses and the wildflowers in the fields, if that’s okay with you.”

  “Be my guest,” said Bob.

  Following the direction of Bob’s gaze, McBain said, “He’s the model.” He knew how painfully obvious he was to a real cowboy: The man was too handsome to be real. McBain had sought to create a cowboy out of a trunk, and clearly he had failed.

  It was not the clothes, or even the handsomeness of the professional model, that bothered him. A real cowboy had a connection to the earth and to life that only a cowboy knew. When a real cowboy rode a horse, he belonged there, and a real cowboy was as one with the animals he rode and roped. No one had thought before of using a real cowboy. It just hadn’t occurred to anyone in the advertising world. Models were still the standard. But the real cowboy was the figure McBain was looking for and patterning his models after.