by Mark Gannon
Chapter 5
Ned Tanner Ranch Inspection – A Week Earlier
The week before the trail ride I had been out to Ned’s ranch to complete an inspection. The view from the hill above Ned Tanners ranch was a slice of western South Dakota at its finest. The ranch headquarters were old fashioned with two-story Victorian style traditional white house, a large red barn and red sheds right out of the early ranching days. There were no metal grain bins or pole barns reflecting the afternoon sun. These were substantial wooden buildings covered with the traditional red paint. A small creek with its border of cottonwood trees traipsed through the east side of the valley. The pastures were dotted with livestock enjoying the welcome warmth of a summer afternoon. The buildings were at the end of a creek drainage where it widened into a beautiful valley protected by rolling hills and rock rims capped by Crow Peak on the far side. It had all the makings of a picture post card. The whole scene was a combination of The Virginian, Bonanza and Little House on the Prairie all rolled into one. My job took me to many ranches over the years and this is the one I coveted the most.
Working at the Bank of Spearfish as a commercial loan officer for the past twenty years was a job envied by many of the other bankers in the region. The bank was solid, the customers were usually great, the wages were livable, the benefits better than most, the bank was profitable and Charlie Gearets, the manager, was gifted at leading his bank team. Loan officers from the surrounding small dying prairie towns regularly told me how lucky I was to be in a growing town at the edge of the Black Hills with a solid bank and could I please let them know if a job came open in our bank or any others in town.
Spearfish, South Dakota has absolutely fantastic scenery and I will never consider living anywhere else. The city of ten thousand sets on the north end of the Black Hills. The ‘hills’ are small mountains or big hills depending on your point of view. Harney Peak, the highest point, is seven thousand plus feet in elevation. Beautiful tree covered Crow Peak, Spearfish Mountain and Lookout Mountain surround this small rural town on the west, south and east sides with rolling prairie running to the north.
The crystal clear Spearfish creek runs right through the middle of town. It is one of the few creeks that flows so fast that it freezes from the bottom up. Spearfish was a sleepy idyllic ranch town of four thousand people until the 1990s when it caught on in popularity with the Yuppie crowd. Now you can find more tree huggers than ranchers and lumberjacks. The cowboys are still there they’ve just been pushed into the background by the drug store cowboys from the east and west coasts.
Tourism has become permanent. Within one hour you can get to Devil’s Tower, Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse Monument, Wind Cave National Park or Rapid City. Close by is Spearfish Canyon with twenty miles of limestone cliffs soaring a thousand feet above the winding highway. Spearfish creek tumbles and plunges beside the twisty road through the entire canyon. Gorgeous views wait at every bend. Deadwood, once the historical home of Wild Bill Hickok, is now turned into a legalized gambling resort town, only fifteen minutes away in the high parts of the Hills. During the summer there is the Corvette Rally and the nearby Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. During the winter there is downhill skiing at Terry Peak and Deer Mountain with groomed snowmobile trails all through the Hills. Spearfish was a great place until everyone else started to find it.
Since turning forty it is a lot harder to keep the extra weight off the middle of my five foot ten inch frame. When I played college football nothing stuck to my ribs, now everything seems to go right to the middle. Loosing ten pounds would sure help but it never happens between the beer and poor diet. These thoughts rolled across my mind as I parked my pickup and trotted to catch up with my ranch customer. Hopefully I never let myself go like him.
Ned Tanner was an overweight, cigarette smoking, bowed leg, Tom Seleck mustached, bald headed, tough as leather real life cowboy. His weathered sweat stained hat and walked over cowboy boots came the honest way, from working thousands of hours on his ranch. He was a longtime friend of my boss, Charlie Gearets, and put up with me as his loan officer only because Charlie asked him to fifteen years ago when I was a wet behind the ears beginning loan officer.
Ned huffed and puffed whenever he talked while walking like now puffing smoke as he let out a stream of information about his prized possession – his stud Quarter Horse. “You are about to see the best damn horse alive. They don’t come any better than this here stud of mine” Ned sputtered as he led me around the pole barn to the working corrals. He always got excited talking about horses, but this was the most wound up I had ever seen him. “There he is – King Ernesto! Ernie for short. He is one of the best cutting horses in the United States.” Ned presented the horse like he was introducing the president of the United States. “
Ned had a right to be proud of Ernie. Standing across the fence was an absolutely gorgeous palomino stud Quarter Horse. Ernie had his head up and ears forward with his intelligent eyes fixed on Ned. The horse was well proportioned and powerfully built. The muscles rippled under his skin making his golden hair gleam and shine in the sunlight. The white-blonde mane and tail were groomed to perfection. He was a candidate for the Stud Horse Calendar.
Ernesto pranced right up to the fence and leaned his neck across and nickered. For a while, I was nonexistent to Ned. As he stroked the horse’s neck he muttered “Hey baby. How’s my fella? How you doing today?” I am guessing Ned never talked that nice even to his wife, Louise. The baby sweet talk kept up until Ned remembered I was there and he gave a sheepish grin. “He always has that effect on me. You know he can change direction on a dime. His line has world champion cutting horses up the wazoo. He’s smart too.” I naturally stepped forward to pat Ernie on the neck. Just being close to a horse this fine was an uplifting feeling.
“Ouch!” The damn thing nipped me right on my shoulder. Jumping back out of reach I sheepishly looked over at Ned. Experienced cowboys don’t give horses a chance to nail them like that. I was feeling rather foolish until Ned’s eyes sparkled. “You knew he was going to do that didn’t you?” The grin spreading into a big smile told me all I needed to know.
“Well Mitch, he just doesn’t like bankers any more then I do” and then his smile boiled over into a belly laugh. “Like I said – he’s smart.” I didn’t mind the ranch humor, that was just part of the normal ranch inspection, but my pride was hurt getting caught out that way by a horse. Having grown up on a ranch and riding since I was four years old gave me the idea that I knew something about horses. Normally a bite from a horse would be met with a heavy-handed retaliation. However, it is not professional to slap your loan customer’s prized possession on the side of the head. It reduces your rapport with the customer.
Ned moved us along the fence line to the end of the working corrals. Ernie followed along until he ran out of fence. He was probably looking for another chance at me. “Over at this end is the new handling facility for the buffalo. It’s built out of pipe stem from the oil drilling rigs. There ain’t a buffalo made that can break through this head catch.” He patted the metal rig for holding a buffalo with the same affection he patted Ernie. You have no idea how hard it is to act interested in what your customer is showing you when what you really want to do is kick their ass and throttle them for being idiots.
Ned had gone into buffalo big time. He had purchased several hundred head of buffalo cows when buffalo were expensive and beef cattle were cheap. So he swapped into buffalo at exactly the wrong time. Ned was huffing and talking as we walked toward his ranch pickup. “All my damn kids have moved off to the big city and left me with all the work.” Translation - Ned’s rough manner ran them all off. “So I swapped my cows for the buffalo. The buffalo take a lot less work since they are so hardy. No vet shots with those critters. And I cut out the expense of putting up hay because they can graze through the snow in the winter. So I don’t have to buy any high priced equipment or a lot of fuel.”
Ned was running with his favorite rant. “Th
e wife said I would have to quit ranching without any kids to help. I showed her. I can run all these buffalo by myself and cut out expenses at the same time.” What Ned failed to include is how the price of buffalo fell like a rock since he bought them and he had yet to unload any. No matter how much you cut expenses, you eventually have to sell something to make a ranch work.
Ned kept talking and wheezing as we bumped along in his bucket of rust. “Look at that new set of heavy duty corrals. They can hold any buffalo there is.”
I was silently adding up expenses – new stud horse, new corrals. What next? “Why don’t we just go on out and see the rest of the livestock Ned?”
“Here’s the buffalo in this pasture,” said Ned. “Notice that tall fence around this one. The buffalo won’t get out of here.” Ned was obviously proud of his buffalo fence. I could tell Ned was waiting for praise for this ‘improvement’ on his ranch. Swallowing my thoughts I said, “Pretty impressive Ned. I bet that would hold in a herd of elephants.” One more expense. I now understood why Ned’s line of credit with the bank was maxed out.
The grass in this pasture was eaten down to the point where livestock should be moved out before the grass was permanently damaged. Over grazing was not a normal Tanner habit. He usually took great care of his ranch. We bumped along through the bulk of the herd and the count was coming out where it was supposed to.
Ned said, “Grab onto something!” I looked around to the front of the pickup and saw a massive bull buffalo pawing the ground. About then he lunged forward with his head down and Ned gunned the pickup to meet him head on. The pickup and buffalo met with a resounding crash. Ned had pushed in the clutch at the time of impact. The buffalo walked off shaking his head and the pickup pitched backwards. “Taught him something didn’t we?” Ned looked over grinning. “If you don’t show them who is boss, they take to chasing you and I can’t have that.” Well I knew now what had put the dents in that heavy-duty grill guard on the front of the pickup.
Ned had driven us back to the ranch building without any further incidents. He had grown quieter as we neared the end of the inspection. As we rolled to a stop in his yard, I completed the inspection form noting the number of head of mature buffalo cows and bulls as well as the calves. I then showed the form to Ned and indicated the area asking for value. Ned growled, “You just put a number in there that you want. You’re always saying they are worth a lot less than they are so it doesn’t matter what I say.”
It was time to tackle the bear in his den. “Ned, you and I both know that those buffalo are only worth about a third of what you paid for them. So what do you want me to value them on this form?” Ned just looked at me. After about thirty seconds of silence, I finally put down values that were current and slipped the form over to Ned to sign at the bottom. He made a face at the value but went ahead and signed the form anyway.
“So Mitch - why don’t you just level with me. You’ve seen the critters and the place. What are you thinking?”
What was I thinking? I knew what I was thinking, but how to cover some ground with Ned without making him angry and at the same time getting him ready to deal with the realities of ranching. “Ned, you have definitely made some improvements on the place over the last couple of years. The ranch is set up well for buffalo with the fencing and corral. But you and I both know you can’t go on without selling something to pay the bills. You are going to have to come up with a firm plan for going forward.”
I took a pause for a breath and started in again before Ned could. I knew if I gave him a chance he would remind me that his friend Charlie, my boss, would stand behind him. “Charlie can’t continue to help you without a plan. He has to answer to the bank board and the examiners. So I want you to come in next week and work on this with me.” He knew I meant business by my tone and the always powerful word ‘examiners’. That meant the government and there is no sense arguing with the government. “We are going to need to see a plan to start selling some of these buffalo and we are going to need more collateral to carry you through to the fall.” As soon as I said the word collateral Ned made an awful face and turned away so he wouldn’t have to listen. “I know you don’t want to hear about it but we are going to need a land mortgage besides the cattle. Land is the only asset you have with enough value to help the loan.”
The word mortgage was enough to set him off. “You don’t have any tie on this land and you aren’t getting a hold of this land. This is a Century Ranch, it’s been in my family for over a hundred years. There ain’t going to be no mortgage.” His hard cold stare and belligerent tone told me this was going to be a tough sell.
“We can talk about it next week when you are in the bank.” Putting it off to next week meant I would have Charlie sit in and add his weight to the discussion. As I headed for my own pickup, Ned’s wife, Louise, hollered from the house steps, “Mitch, you want to come in for some coffee and cookies? Just got the cookies fresh out of the oven.”
A visit and some coffee and snacks at the kitchen table would be the usual social end of an inspection. People in this part of the country are courteous and welcoming. There had been many inspections at Ned’s over the years that were down right enjoyable. When things had been going better Ned had been relaxed and fun to visit with and Louise enjoyed company. After all, I had grown up seeing these people at local brandings and rodeos.
I had a sinking feeling. I was being wished off the place like I was the tax assessor. This was just the wrong time to accept Louise’s invitation. Going in meant Ned would have to come into the house also, something he did not want to do. “No thanks. I’m expected back at the bank for an appointment.” Too bad, Louise is a great cook and I was hungry like usual. Ned had listened to the exchange, gave me another angry look and headed for his shop
Chapter 6
Planning at the Café
Coming back from the Tanner inspection I called John and asked him to meet me at the Main Street Café. Planning the liquid refreshments for the Trail Ride required many meetings – usually sampling liquids. This was our last meeting to get ready before the ride. The Main Street Café is just a block from the bank. John Many Hawks was already at our favorite booth halfway down the long runway across from a thirty foot counter covered with well-worn mist green Formica. This was the oldest active café in Spearfish run by the most independent restaurant crew in South Dakota. The youngest waitress was on the far side of sixty and the whole crew was gruff and mouthy. The cook, Bad Bob, looked like he wrestled bears for a living. In truth Bad Bob was a reformed biker and was a deacon at his church, but he never let the tourists know that. He maintained that he could get by grunting his way through his shift and never have to actually talk with any customer.
As I slid into the booth opposite John, Sweet Mary, the grouchiest waitress, pointed the wart on her chin in my direction and growled, “Why didn’t you stay away? John and I were having a good visit. Weren’t we Johnny?”
For some reason all of the help liked John but had little time for me. Maybe it was because I was a local and even though John had been in town for twelve years, he was still a new ‘fella‘. Or maybe it was because John was always nice and over tipped. “Well you going to order the same thing you get every time – coffee and a caramel roll heated with butter?” She didn’t even wait to see me nod my head but was already writing it down as she shuffled away.
John said in his usual full clear voice, “Morning Mitch. Having a good day?” That was John, always polite (unless he was playing a practical joke). We caught up on the weather as we waited for our orders.
Sweet Mary was back with my roll and coffee. She set the cup and the roll down then proceeded to pour coffee. Instinctively I drew my hands back to the side of the table. Sweet Mary didn’t like you holding the cup while she poured. So to train you she ‘accidentally’ poured hot coffee on your hand if you held the cup. After a couple of times you were trained.
“So are you ready for the ride”, John asked? “The liquor st
ore called and verified they had everything ready to go. We upped the order on the vodka and gin. We about ran out last year. I think Reggie finished off a case of booze by himself.” Every year we hauled the booze to the site in a horse trailer. This year we moved to a larger trailer. Last year we had filled the old trailer from front to back and had come very close to running out of certain types of booze. If there is one thing you do not want to do is to be on the Liquid Refreshment Committee and not bring enough booze.
John poured over his list one more time. He liked to be prepared. It was a good feeling having him on the committee with me because he was always prepared and on top of it. Maybe that was the reason he was such a good lawyer. Finally he folded the list and put it back in his legal folder satisfied that we were ready. He dropped his voice and leaned closer, “I have my head gear, legging and lance packed already and I found some war paint that washes out easy. It’s going to be great shaking things up with all you cowboys.” His eyes lit up as they only do when he is up to one of his practical jokes.
John looked at his list once more and said, “Looks like we’ve got things pretty well in hand. You have anything else to add?” It was my turn to shake my head. “Well, I’ve got some stuff that I need to wrap up at work so I’m going to head back. Pick you and Dan up early so we can be here at seven like usual? By the way I forgot to tell you. I bought a new wall tent, so don’t worry about packing your tent along. “
John could tell by my smile that this was all right with me. “That’s great. I was wondering if I could get all the holes in my old tent patched by tomorrow.” With that we both headed in our different directions.
That is until Sweet Mary stopped me with, “Banker fella. Here’s my tips for the last couple of weeks.” She handed me a kids sand bucket filled with coins and a few paper currency. “Take that to Mary Beth and tell her to put it in the usual spot.” With that she wheeled around and headed to the next customer.