by H. Alan Day
The herd migrated into a huddle. Panicked heads jostled over and under each other, blind to anything but trying to find safety. A bay stallion stood at the edge of the herd eyeing the approaching cowboys. He shook his head up and down and let loose a high-pitched squeal. The dun struggled, pulled herself up, ran on three legs over to the group, and wedged her way into the inner circle.
Red started trotting toward the group to flush it out of the corner while the other two cowboys got in position to wing the horses through the open gate. The bay was the first to break. He stretched out his neck and charged toward the opposite corner. Within seconds, the rest of the herd noticed and took off behind him. Roy and the other cowboy stood their ground as the mustangs ran toward them. Ten yards in front of the cowboys, the stallion paused, glanced at the gate, then put his head down and raced along the corral fence past the gate and the men. The herd followed its leader. Dust rose around the cowboys as the horses thundered past. The frightened animals huddled in the far corner, heads down and ears back.
“Aw right,” yelled Red, circling his arm in the air. “Let’s give it another go, boys.”
He approached the herd. The horses broke and ran. Missed the gate. Rehuddled. Roy and the other wrangler shifted their horses into position. Red came at the herd again, and again the horses ran. They bunched in the corner, sides heaving. The hot sun reflected off the shiny sweat forming on their hides. The cowboys went at it again. Clouds of dust swirled in a vortex of increasing frustration. The conflict of wills between horse and man hung in the air, as strong as the smell of alfalfa and wild animal. I knew eventually the men would prevail because they always did in this world, but that didn’t mean the scene unfolding in front of me was easy to watch. Forty-eight hours ago, these creatures had been running and playing and living on open range. Now here they were, a pod of fear and flight, moving deeper into a process they didn’t understand.
“You hardheaded sons of bitches. How many times is it going to take for you to see the gate?” Red wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. If the gate had been in the corner, the cowboys’ job would have been far easier.
“Go slow boys. Hold ’em and let ’em see the gate,” yelled Red, pushing at the back of the bunch. This time, as if telepathically communicating, the three lead horses stopped right in front of the gate. The rest of the mustangs pulled up behind them. Some looked over at the corral on the other side, others watched the cowboys in front of and behind them.
The skinny palomino was closest to the opening. She crouched on her hind legs and in one smooth, powerful movement jumped through the open space and landed in the next corral. The other horses saw she survived. They rushed the gate at once, trying to crowd through like subway riders boarding a train at rush hour. The gate jammed, but with a bit of jostling the first line of horses emerged unscathed. The rest filtered through without a hitch.
The three cowboys rode through and a wrangler slammed the gate shut. I climbed higher on the fence to see over into this new corral. It looked to be to be half the size of the large arena. The horses did four more wind sprints from corner to corner, then ran around its circumference and peeled through the open gate. A handler slammed the gate shut. This time the cowboys stayed behind, a good idea, as the horses were tightly bunched, crushed against the sides of the corral. They dismounted and tied their horses to the corral tubing. By the time I found my way closer to the action, Red, Roy, and three other wranglers stood on the tubing, each holding long poles with tattered white flags tied at the end. They waved the flags at the horses in an effort to get them to go toward the alley. The horses looked around, nervous and confused, edging away from the pesky flags.
It continued to be slow-going and clumsy. No horse wanted to be first in the alley. Shouts and snorts punctured the oppressive air. Horses’ heads bobbed against each other. The cowboys’ body language spoke of tension and frustration.
From the alley, the mustangs would funnel into a chute the width of one horse. Once in the chute, each horse would be pushed into a hydraulic squeeze chute that clamped around the animal and rendered it immobile so the attending vet could brand, vaccinate, worm, and if need be, castrate. A logical, well-planned system. We used a similar system at Lazy B. Once we trained our cattle, minimal chaos and friction attended the process. The cattle understood what we wanted from them and obeyed. It became far easier on all of us.
These horses, however, with wary eyes and flicking tails, were not gentled or trained. No one had talked to them and introduced them to their foreign surroundings. They had been kidnapped and deposited in a culture that was as foreign to them as a suit and tie on Wall Street would be to me. Consequently, the cowboys’ job was five times harder than it might be if the horses knew the system.
The vet had parked his truck near the squeeze chute, the final destination for each horse before being released into a large corral. I watched the pull and tug of the cowboys and horses and reflected on my background of training cattle. Could I train a group of horses like these to follow my orders and not rebel at every step? My intuition—or was it my ego—told me I could. I did know there was a less stressful way to handle these horses.
I walked over to say hello to the vet and secure an unobtrusive place from which to watch the grand finale.
“Hey there,” I said. The vet looked up from organizing an assortment of instruments. “I’m a spectator at this tango. Tell me where you want me to go, so I won’t step on any toes. Or get my toes stepped on.”
“Let’s see. I’ll be working here, around the head of the horses,” said the vet, pointing to the end of the squeeze chute. “When we release them, they’ll go straight into that corral.” He pointed. “If you stand behind the chute, you’ll be good. Just make sure you don’t stand in front of it. These guys will be eager to get out and they’ll run you over.”
From behind the chute, I had a decent view of the escalating chaos.
The horses had entered the alley, five to six abreast, with the leaders straining to get into the crowding pen that funneled down to the chute. Roy closed the gate behind eight horses in the pen, leaving the rest of the horses in the alley. Red and the other wrangler dismounted and left their horses in the third corral. They continued on foot, working safely on the outside of the alley and crowding pen, as well as the narrow chute. It was awkward work.
They leaned over the corral rails, shouted at the confused, frightened horses, jabbed them in the ribs with long sticks, slapped their hands on their backs, and literally shoved them forward. At least they weren’t allowed to use hot shots, painful electric shocks given to animals. These cowboys were doing their best while trying to avoid the worst-case scenario: a horse rearing up in the chute. If a horse rears and tips over backward, he becomes like a beetle on his back. Stuck. To avoid injury or even death by trampling, the rest of the chute has to be emptied so that the cowboys can climb in and pull him upright. That situation is not good for horse or wrangler.
I watched Red shut one of the gates in the chute to prevent a sorrel from backtracking. The horse bumped her back end against the hard tubing and stood still for a moment. Red hollered at her and pushed her from behind. She tried to turn her head but couldn’t move it much. There was nowhere to go but forward. I could almost feel her resignation. The trauma of the morning, added to the events of the past few days, had siphoned much of her will.
I had seen horses lose their will. Sometimes it never returned. Back in my early teens, Jim Brister, one of the Lazy B cowboys, taught me a major lesson about a horse’s will. Jim was the most respected horse breaker on our ranch, not to mention southern Arizona, for the fifty years he worked there. We were out cowboying on Lazy B, and I was riding Sally, a pretty horse, big and strong but gentle in nature. I had placed a hackamore, a bitless bridle, on her nose to train her. Big cotton reins ran from the hackamore into my hands. My fourteen-year-old arms felt sore from pulling the reins on the side I wanted her to turn toward. Every time I pulled one way, s
he put her head around the other way and stiffened her neck so I couldn’t budge her. She was winning the contest of wills and making it difficult to help round up the cattle. My cussing would have embarrassed my mother. I could see Jim watching us. After some time, he rode over and suggested trading horses. It sounded like the idea of the century.
With a large, athlete’s body and chiseled, strong face topped with a well-worn black hat, Jim looked like he was born on a horse. He mounted Sally, who was not yet fully grown. He hadn’t ridden one hundred yards when he reached up, grabbed the rein near the headstall and jerked her nose clear around to touch his knee. He pulled so hard she crumpled to the ground. Jim stepped from the saddle, clamped his foot on the bend of her neck and held her nose up almost waist high. She struggled to get up. Jim took the reins and began whipping her nose. She squealed and swam her legs through the air, but he kept her pinned. The reins slapped and slapped against her nose. He whipped her until she urinated on the ground. I sat on Jim’s horse not more than twenty feet away, my stomach in my throat, barely comprehending what was happening in front of me.
From that moment, Sally never resisted being pulled to the right or the left. In fact, she never resisted much of anything. Although I loved Jim for many reasons, I never liked his horse-health-be-damned school of training. Yet he was my role model for training horses. It would take me until I trained Saber ten years later to finally figure out a gentler method of teaching a horse and earning its respect.
I watched a cowboy jab the bay stallion with a pole to make him jump into the hydraulic clamp. His struggling proved useless. The vet started to do his thing. He shaved patches on the horse’s neck and hip, then pressed the branding iron, cooled to thirty below zero, against the bare skin for thirty seconds or so. The hair on the frozen skin would grow back white. He then moved to the front of the horse and inspected his teeth. He wrote something on a clipboard, presumably an estimate of the horse’s age, his color, and if he knew, where the horse had been captured. Next he inserted a tube with worm medicine down the horse’s throat, then vaccinated for disease. Castration was next. The vet cut off the end of the scrotum and pulled down the testicles until two cords were visible. He clamped the cords to stop the bleeding, picked up a scalpel, and sliced off the testicles. The horse shook slightly. The surgery took about ten minutes and the proceedings before it another ten minutes. The horse now had a social security card of sorts and was part of the government’s system.
One by one the horses moved through the chute. When they exited, they ran to the far end of the corral and shook their heads as if to regain their senses and recover from the trauma they had just endured. As mates were released, the families—some still together from the open ranges, others formed since arriving yesterday—reconvened. They had entered a new world. They never again would be wild on open range.
As I stood and watched the process, I noticed a furrow in the dirt running from in front of the squeeze chute to a gate at the opposite side of the corral. At first I didn’t understand why the furrow would be right there, but then it dawned on me that the depression was from a horse being dragged out of the chute. And the only reason a horse would be dragged out is if it died. The vision of the three dead heifers at Lazy B came flooding back to me.
The vet took a break and I walked over to him.
“I see you had to drag a few out of here,” I said, pointing to the furrow.
“Occasionally we lose one,” he said without looking up.
Right there, I placed my bet on the table that a herd of wild horses could be trained without being traumatized. I had done it with cattle, I would do it with horses. Same movie script, different actors. We could transform their fear, get them to cooperate and follow directions. Once trained, we would show them the gate, and they would go through it. We would show them the alley, and they would file in like well-behaved grade school students and wait their turn. We would vaccinate them and turn them out of the squeeze chute calmly. They would not view us as the enemy and the scene would be devoid of this palpable stress. There was no reason to spoil an animal’s spirit with force and fear. I resolved then and there that I would help these captured horses and give them the next best thing to the life they had once known. That voice inside of me was right. It was time to work with wild horses.
A week later I flew up to South Dakota. Al Jr. and I sat on the porch of the doublewide watching the prairie tuck itself in to sleep. Al had fallen in love with the ranch and everything about it. When I asked him if he could envision a sanctuary on the land, he said, “It’s a crazy idea putting wild horses out here. But if anyone can pull it off, it’s you, Dad.”
The flock of wild turkeys waddled into sight, crossed the ranch road, and headed for the elm tree. One by one, they spread their wings and flapped into the tree. Since my first night on the ranch, I had watched them go through this routine. I wondered if they slept on the same branch every night.
“Hey, I want to show you something,” my son said, getting up from the step. I followed him across the lawn. Only a thin line of light hung on the horizon. “Stand under the elm and look out over the pond,” he said. I moved next to the trunk and pressed a hand against its rough bark. Al stayed back. I was about to tell him to come take in the view when he clapped three times. The tree rustled, like sheets in a bed. I heard the drops hit the ground before I felt the warm liquid slide down the back of my neck.
“What the . . .” I was covered in turkey poop.
Al burst out laughing. “Gotcha.”
I pulled out my handkerchief. Now how on earth did he figure that one out? It was one of those questions that never got answered.
5.
Two Cowboys Corral Congress
The banking gears continued to grind through the loan process. I was trying to be patient, but by golly, it was hard. Since we had not heard from Roger Running Horse I decided to drive to his office, hoping to speed the process along. He met me with his usual big smile and a warm greeting. “My supervisor is on vacation but she should be back soon and we’ll get those plans in front of her before long,” he reassured me. I left his office mildly disappointed but with hopes of future approval.
I couldn’t start making improvements on the old Arnold Ranch until it officially became the new Day Ranch, so in the meantime, in an effort to learn the trade secrets of Sand Hills ranching, I spent quite a little time chatting with neighbors. I wanted to determine what normal hay production should be. The Arnold Ranch produced one ton per acre, which for the area was substandard. I submitted soil and hay samples to a lab and discovered that the three thousand acres of hay-producing meadow were deficient in phosphorous and the hay was low in protein. Horses would require healthy hay. They also needed stronger corrals and more drinking water on the range. I was eager to get going on these projects. Finally, the phone rang. On a windy day, with silver-lined clouds scudding across the South Dakota sky and the sunflowers of mid-September in bloom, I signed on the dotted line.
On the drive back to the ranch, I inhaled the sweet scent of freshly cut fields and thought about the horses. I now had a home to offer them, a safe harbor where they could roam and graze. Tomorrow John and I would start remodeling that home. Even if the horses never came, the place needed major upgrades. I turned onto the dirt road, hit a pothole, and bumped my head against the pickup’s roof. Yeah, the road. Better get on that one soon, too, or the horses would have to unload at the edge of the state highway and hoof it to the ranch.
I bounced past the gnarled old fence post and the start of the ranch, my ranch. I was the caretaker now, the one responsible for every pothole, fence post, and blade of grass. I had set these 35,000 acres atop the 45,000 acres of the Rex Ranch, which sat atop the 198,000 acres of Lazy B. For the next five miles, this agrarian monolith loomed in front of me, weighed down with cattle, investors, debt, and uncertainty. I could no longer see the grass waving or the hills beckoning. Trepidation wormed through my confidence like some nasty alien in a video
game gobbling up all the good guys. I pulled into the yard feeling slightly sick. A cloud cast its blobby shadow over the truck, floated toward the faded barn, and disappeared behind it.
Oh my God. What had I done?
I had been raised on lectures portraying debt as evil, yet here I was dancing with the devil himself. I slumped in my seat like a guy who just became engaged to the love of his life and contracts an acute case of marriage remorse.
A patch of sunlight spilled through the windshield, warming my fingers still curled around the steering wheel. Somewhere deep inside, resolve poked its head out. Fearless, it grew. I grabbed onto it. I had endured droughts, lost money on cattle, even crashed an airplane and almost died, but those receding tides never left me high and dry. They always returned and deposited good fortune at my feet. I’d dig in my heels and see this journey through to the end. My horse Little Charlie Brown use to do that—dig in his heels. Remembering him inspired and calmed me.
He was a little guy, a bay horse with white stockings, not very tall but solidly built. A white streak ran the length of his nose and dribbled down one nostril. He had a gentle demeanor but could be as lazy as a teenager. Except when he got around cattle. Then he became all business. If he and I rode behind a herd of cattle and a cow slowed down, he’d follow that cow, reach down, and bite her right above the hock. If I didn’t pull him off, he would raise her leg and hold it up like a bulldog. The cow would bawl in pain and try to run forward. With Little Charlie, you could make good time driving cattle because they knew if they didn’t hotfoot it, they’d get chomped on. But he’d never bite a baby calf, only nudge it.
His real talent, though, was his unbelievable strength. I’d saddle him up, throw my rope around a bull, a tractor, or whatever needed moving, then dally up and tell Little Charlie to pull. He could drag a full-grown bull from one corral to another. I learned that the best way to load a recalcitrant cow or horse into a trailer was to run a rope from the stubborn animal through the trailer, back to front, then dally it to Little Charlie. He’d crouch his back end and push with all fours like he was going for the gold in tug-of-war. The animal in tow practically popped into the trailer. He should have been named Samson. Where he got that strength, and for his size, I don’t know. Some athletes are wired a certain way; some horses are too. You always knew what Little Charlie could do for you, and he did it day in and day out. I had this ranch dallied to my inner saddle horn. Could I drag it with me?