The Pastures of Beyond: An Old Cowboy Looks Back at the Old West
Page 19
There is something powerful about the place that attracts me. Not long ago, seeking a better understanding of the cave’s energies, I made a tobacco offering at the entrance, hoping that the spirits of the cave would welcome me. Many years ago, I had a young Blackfoot friend named Robert Butterfly, who eventually died of alcoholism on Seattle’s skid row. As I entered the cave, I was feeling very white, and asked Robert Butterfly’s spirit to join me.
I had scarcely seated myself inside when a small black skipper butterfly appeared before me and, for some minutes, danced before my face. I thought I heard the guttural murmuring of Indian voices, and saw unexplained facelike shadows moving on the rock walls. When the butterfly left, a group of seven rock wrens flew into the cave and hopped about me, showing no fear. They perched on my legs, my arms, my head, and my shoulders, and peered at me from adjoining rocks. When they departed, a sudden blinding wind filled the cave, choking me with dust, and obliterating all traces of the bird tracks in the sand. Then, as suddenly as the wind had started, it was gone, and out of the starkness of the silence there came the deafening roar of cicadas from the surrounding pines and hackberry trees. The shadows of the Indian faces flickered for a moment on the rock walls, then all was quiet and the cave seemed deserted. But I was filled with peace. It was as though the ancients knew my love for this great sanctuary, and were thanking me for protecting it.
As I left the cave, a haze of old friends sat there on their horses waiting for me, smiling. I might have gone with them at that moment, but I knew that the wild horses still needed me, and that my job here on the sanctuary was a long ways from being finished.
Chapter Twenty-Four
HERE IN THIS OLD PRAIRIE HOUSE, as I lie in my old bedroll, I hear voices in the night. I know it is only the muttering of the winds in the eaves, but it’s mighty good company. No one lived here for twenty-six years, and there is still lots of repair work to do, much of it on the clapboards where windblown sand made lacework of the wood. I’ll do it a few boards at a time, and work until I get tired. No sense getting in a rush. I’d guess it will be a few years yet before I too ride the pastures of beyond, but not a day goes by that I don’t think about death and wonder.
If I were a praying man, I’d say, “Lord, be kind to this old cowboy. Don’t send me to a land where there are no horses running wild and free, and no cattle to care for, or a place where there are no cowboys and no Indians. There are folks in this life I cared for and would like to see again. Maybe some of them weren’t considered good enough in this life to go to your special place, but ’cept for one or two I could name, they were all good men and women in their way. Consider the time they were born to and the way they were raised. The best of them never had much except a good horse between their knees, a slicker, and a bedroll, and the endless sky overhead, with maybe a good roof and stove as comfort in the winter. Now that I’m seventy-nine, Lord, with two titanium hips, I can’t for the life of me remember the mean things they did. All I can think about is the good times, the pranks and laughter of friends like Slim and Mel.
“I’d like to think of heaven as a place where everyone can go and live equal and forgiven, regardless of the color of their skin, how much money they gave the church, or even the bad, thoughtless things they sometimes did. When I go, Lord, I want everybody there I ever knew, even the folks I sometimes could have done without, and especially the girls who loved me enough to say ‘no.’ Yes, Lord, I’d like to see my pals again. And my old horse pals like Red and Willie, the first wild horses I ever broke, and Whingding even, though it might surprise a lot of cowboys if that old rascal made it up your way.”
Sometimes as I sit before the old Majestic woodstove my mother cooked on over a hundred years ago, one I tracked down at the old Hyde camp in northern Michigan and brought to South Dakota, I think of my folks and wish I could fill them in on all the things I’ve done. They died before my life was fully formed. They worked so hard to raise me; it doesn’t hardly seem fair, unless they’re looking down from above, watching the playout of my days.
And Rose. Last I heard she’d retired after a career of nursing, married a guy who was nice to her, and together they went on to fosterparenting a whole passel of Indian kids. I’m proud of Rose and what she managed to do. There was no feeling sorry for herself, no “pity me,” blaming other
people for her troubles. She just went and did it. And never looked back.
I think a lot about Felix Cooper, that great black rodeo contestant and clown.
Not long ago, Mel Lambert told me that Felix was living out his days in a Louisiana nursing home. I tracked him down and got him on the telephone.
“Felix,” I said, “do you remember those two old Brahma bulls Mac Barbour had, Impossible Ike and Double Trouble?” “Who’s that callin’ old Felix?” he said. “I know, gotta be that big tall Hyde kid from Oregon. Only cowboy still alive would remember them two bulls!”
“Felix,” I asked, “is there anything you need — anything I can do?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “Just one thing. I want you to talk to this head nurse here. I want you to tell her about old Felix Cooper, that I’m not just some old black shoeshine boy off the streets gettin’ ready to die. Tell her that in my time I was one helluva rodeo cowboy!”
I told the nurse that she had a celebrity on her hands, that Felix Cooper, great athlete that he was, had been a respected cowboy in rodeo back in the forties. Not long after we talked, Felix went to his reward. I hope that in his last days he got some of the attention he deserved.
I feel a restlessness tonight. Tomorrow I will saddle up my old blue roan mustang mare, Lark, and ride west into the backcountry. From on high I will be able to look south and see Nebraska, and look west and see Wyoming. And maybe, someday, Lark and I will just keep riding on and on. Riding west over the Continental Divide, and the Bitterroots, across the Owyhee country and the Oregon desert, until at last I can show that old pony the land I knew and loved. Yamsi Ranch, Fuego Mountain, Wildhorse Meadows, the Tablelands, Calimus, the old BarY range, and the lovely headwaters of the Williamson.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Book One
CHAPTER 01
CHAPTER 02
CHAPTER 03
CHAPTER 04
CHAPTER 05
CHAPTER 06
CHAPTER 07
CHAPTER 08
CHAPTER 09
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
Book Two
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24