Faraway Horses Read online

  Finally, about the time Mel was ready to go, Roany took a big old deep breath. His respiration returned to normal. His batteries were recharged. We tipped off the hill and hadn’t gone two steps before Roany started bucking. And I mean bucking. The hill was steep enough so that he was clearing about fifty feet at a jump. As Mel cheered me on, Roany and I bucked all the way to the bottom.

  I learned my lesson about the dangers of standing still, of not having my horse’s legs under my control. For the rest of the day, we stayed at a high trot, and I survived it, even with Roany bucking all day long.

  Roany was quite a project for me. The first hundred days I rode him, he bucked every single day. After a few months, however, I wised up and started spending some time around Ray Hunt. Thanks to the techniques I learned about hooking on and getting a horse to move his feet, Roany gradually improved. I finally got him to the point that I could swing a rope on him and get some ranch work done.

  One day we were up in that same country where we’d been gathering cattle that first day. Roany had stopped bucking and was serious about his work, but being a kid, I couldn’t leave well enough alone.

  I was bored because there weren’t any cattle to rope at the moment. I wanted to rope something, so I roped a little tiny sagebrush about the size of a small potted plant. I dallied off and pulled it up out of the ground. Little did I realize that this tiny piece of sagebrush had roots about thirty feet long. I pulled and I pulled, and the rope was stretched to twice its length when that little piece of sagebrush finally came loose and flew right up under Roany’s tail.

  Roany clamped his tail down so tight that you couldn’t have pulled that sagebrush out with a pickup truck. And off he went. He didn’t buck me off, but he used me plumb up. Plus that little stunt of mine probably set me back a few weeks in his training. I had been really getting somewhere, and then I pulled a trick like that. I learned another valuable lesson that day, that time about me.

  The day came when Roany was sold. I knew it was coming. We raised horses to sell, but Roany and I had been through a lot together, and it was a sad day for me. All I could think about were the times on the way to the barn that I’d say, “God, give me one more ride with Roany. Just don’t let him kill me today.” The next day I’d say, “God, I know I said I wouldn’t ask for anything else yesterday, but it’s me again.” Then we got to be partners, and pulling my saddle off him in the sales ring made me sad to see him go out the door and off to a new life with a new owner.

  An old man who lived near Deer Lodge, Montana, bought Roany. He roped steers on him and used him on the ranch the rest of his life. They got along great. Roany had a good home, and I’m glad because he was an important milestone in my career: he was the one I was going through hell with about the time I first was exposed to the kind of riding I do today.

  Another memorable lesson during my time at the Madison River Cattle Company came when I was working with a very troubled horse named Ayatollah. Needless to say, like his namesake, he was a bit of a terrorist: we’d been through quite a few bronco rides. Ayatollah would buck you off if you cleared your throat, so you didn’t have to do very much to get yourself into trouble.

  I’d been trying to get him to do a turnaround, a move where the horse brings his front feet across while pivoting on a hind foot. It’s a quick and efficient way to move away from something fearful and a very natural movement for a horse in the wild, but encouraging a horse to turn around while you’re sitting on his back can be a bit tricky.

  One day, I was watching Ray Hunt do a demonstration at the indoor arena at Montana State University. A couple of guys had brought him a colt that was kind of a setup; they wanted to make Ray look bad because he was pretty controversial in those days. People thought that the notion of getting along with a horse, communicating with the horse, and even, God forbid, being friends with a horse was forsaking the western image of being a cowboy.

  Out came the horse, a five-year-old black stud colt. Both ears were frozen off, and his mane and tail were full of burrs. A real pitiful-looking animal, and touchy, too. The two old boys herded their horse into a round corral that had been set up in an indoor arena, then they waited with smirks on their faces. They just knew they were going to get that old man—Ray was in his fifties—in a wreck.

  Ray knew he was being set up, so he told the owners, “I can see you take a lot of pride in your horses. I know you have a bright future for this colt, so I guess I’d better get him leading.” Ray, who had been born with a clubfoot, kind of limped into the corral. A few minutes inside, and he could tell he wouldn’t be safe on foot, so got up on a saddle horse.

  Using patience and skill, in under ten minutes Ray had the colt leading and standing right beside the saddle horse so Ray could rub him with his rope’s coils.

  Within another five minutes, Ray had the colt saddled. But when he turned the colt loose, everything came undone. The colt bucked and kicked, the stirrups hitting on his back at every jump.

  Ray, who was then on foot in the corral, kept the colt moving around. He threw a rope around the colt’s neck, then led the horse up to him and petted him down the forehead. Turning to the owners, he said, “I don’t want to hold up you boys’ progress, so I’d just better ride him.”

  By now these guys were thinking that maybe they’d set up the wrong man, but they were still fairly confident because Ray still had to get the colt ridden.

  The colt had the rope around his neck. Ray looped a part of the rope across the colt’s nose to get him bending toward him, pulled down the stampede string of his hat and tucked it under his chin, and stepped onto the colt.

  Ray was wearing a down coat, the kind that makes more noise than you’d want to be making on a young sensitive colt. He unzipped the coat and slipped out of it. With his rope in one hand and the coat in the other, Ray reached back and tapped the colt on both hips.

  Everyone watching waited for the explosion, but the colt just loped off like the gentlest son-of-a-buck you ever threw a leg over.

  Ray allowed the horse to stop, and then said to the men, “Well, considering how far you boys plan to take your colt, I’m sure you’d like him to turn around a bit.” With that, Ray reached forward with his coat, and the horse turned.

  Turned? The colt spun so fast he was a blur. I don’t know how Ray’s hat stayed on his head, even with the stampede string under his chin.

  Ray then shook the rope in his other hand, and the colt spun the other way. With that, Ray loped the horse around the corral, through the gate, and continued to lope around the indoor arena. While he was at it, he asked the colt to make three or four lead changes. The colt obliged, and with beautiful clean changes, too.

  Then Ray galloped the colt down to where its owners were standing—and I mean galloped—ending with the most beautiful sliding stop you ever saw.

  Ray flipped the loop of the rope over the colt’s nose, stepped down, and offered the rope to the men. “Well, boys, I guess I got him ready for you,” he said.

  One of the guys started to reach out, then pulled his hand back as if from a hot branding iron. “No, Ray,” he said, “I think the horse has had enough for the day.”

  Ray looked the guys in the eye and replied, “Well, boys, I don’t know whether you got what you came for, but this horse did.”

  I couldn’t wait to try this new way of turning out on Ayatollah. When I got home, I hung my coat on top of the round pen fence where I could reach it from horseback. Then I caught Ayatollah.

  When I got him saddled, he was walking-on-eggs edgy. As we tiptoed around the corral, I got closer and closer to my coat, and when I was close enough I grabbed it. He didn’t explode, but that hump in his back was so big it looked as if I had left my lunch under the saddle blanket.

  Finally, the time came for me to work on the turnaround. I stuck my coat in Ayatollah’s face, and he turned so fast everything was just a blur. I didn’t realize the centrifugal force of a turning horse could be that strong. I was losing c
ount of the turns he made when suddenly I was flying off the front of him. I’d have hit the ground if my left spur hadn’t hung up on the back of my saddle.

  I found myself looking right into his eyes, and he was as terrified as I was. Dropping the coat never crossed my mind; absolute terror had taken over my entire body, and my hands were paralyzed into clenched fists. The longer I held the coat out there, the harder he spun.

  Ayatollah was spinning and spinning and spinning, and he wouldn’t stop. Although I knew full well that if I could somehow get off him that he would probably kick me before I hit the ground, I decided to do what I could to free my spur from the cantle and take my chances.

  When I finally kicked loose, Ayatollah drove my head into the ground at what felt like a hundred miles an hour. My lower jaw plowed up maybe two pounds of dirt and manure. What I didn’t plow up with my lower jaw, I scooped up with my belt buckle, so the rest of that dirt and manure went down my pants.

  Just as I slammed into the ground like a lawn dart, Ayatollah did indeed kick out at me. His right hind foot landed on my right ear. He didn’t kick me in the head, but my ear swelled up about as big as a mitten.

  As I lay on the ground with Ayatollah bucking around the corral, I remembered one small detail (evidently that bump on my head jogged loose a little memory I should have drawn on prior to getting on Ayatollah): when Ray Hunt did the spins, he reached back with the hand that didn’t have a coat in it and held on to the Cheyenne roll on the cantle of his saddle. That kept him from going over the front of his horse when he started to turn.

  That was quite an important point, and I learned it well. The next time I attempted to turn Ayatollah with my coat, I gave him a very measured, very small, portion of coat, and I gave myself a very large portion of Cheyenne roll to cling to with my free hand. The turns worked out a lot better, and since then I’ve never had to remind myself about preparing for the consequences of a fast turn.

  That lesson was better than any clinic I could have gone to.

  After I left the Madison River Cattle Company in 1982, I went to work for a horse outfit near Bozeman. I had been doing things my teachers had shown me, but I’d also seen that this gentle approach to working horses still had quite a bit of opposition. People were real apt to hang on to their old ways and not try anything new. These days, what I do with horses is very popular, but it sure wasn’t back then.

  I was taking morning classes at Montana State University in Bozeman and then going back to the outfit to ride colts in the afternoon. I didn’t ride the owner’s colts, though. He had hired other trainers for them, and those guys had their own ideas.

  In the barn one day after class, I saw the owner and one of his trainers trying to halterbreak a filly. They had led the filly and her mare into a stall, jammed the filly into a corner, and muscled the halter over her head any way they could. Then they led the mare out toward a fence, and when the filly followed, they tied her to a post and led the mare away.

  You can imagine the wreck that resulted. The little filly had absolutely no preparation for standing, so naturally she pulled back and fought. She struck out with her feet, and she flipped over. By the time I arrived, she had been upside down who knows how many times. Now two grown men were stomping on her head, kicking her in the belly, and beating her with the metal bull snaps on their halter ropes. When that didn’t work, one of them poured a bucket of water into her ears to try to get her to stand up. The filly did get up, but then she’d fight again and fall back down.

  The filly was insane with fear. She jumped up, but as soon as she felt that tight halter rope, she flipped over again and got hung upside down by her head. If you’ve ever heard young horses in agony make a certain pitiful, desperate sound just before they die, that’s the sound she was making. I shuddered to imagine what it was like for her mother to hear that from a distance and not be able to do a thing about it.

  The next thing I knew, these two brain surgeons were dragging a hose toward her. They were going to douse her real hard to try to get her up and then keep her on her feet.

  I had stayed out of their way until now. They had mocked my way of working with horses. Even though I had more than once bailed them out by helping them with trailer loading, they had dismissed everything I had done for them. But when I saw they were planning to hose water down the filly’s ears, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I unsnapped the lead rope so the filly could get her head down, then I snapped another lead shank to the halter.

  It didn’t take me more than a few seconds of gentle persuasion to get her up. I rubbed on her forehead for a moment or two, and in less than five minutes I had her leading all over the arena.

  These two supposed horse trainers should have been embarrassed or ashamed, but they were so overcome with anger, they weren’t able or chose not to see what they had done to this little filly. And they were upset that I had succeeded.

  I led the filly back to one of the men, the one who owned the operation, and handed him the lead rope. I looked him right in the eye and didn’t say a word. I didn’t have to. He saw my anger and resentment.

  I rolled up my bed, and when he woke up the next morning, I was long gone. There was no way I was going to change him, and I certainly wasn’t going to be around that kind of behavior. I moved to Gallatin Gateway, to another indoor arena up the Gallatin Canyon at Spanish Creek.

  While I was making a living riding colts, I was also pursuing my roping. After Smokie and I had moved in with the Shirleys, our trick-roping careers had ground to a halt. Betsy and Forrest knew nothing about the rodeo business, especially how to promote us as Dad had done. In my junior year in high school, one of my teachers asked me to play Santa Claus and do rope tricks in the Christmas play. I hadn’t spun a rope in a while, at least not in a show, but I said I would and started to practice. Everybody in the little town of Harrison was in the school gym that evening, and when I finished, I got a standing ovation.

  I kept on practicing a minimum of three hours a day, seven days a week, even long after I got out of high school. Three years later, after I was reinstated in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (my membership had lapsed), I got good enough at the Texas Skip to set a world record by hopping in and out of the loop 980 jumps in a row. This record was later shattered by my friend Vince Bruce, an Englishman who did something like two or three thousand jumps.

  Thanks to the Santa Claus skit, the show-business bug had taken ahold, and just about the time I got back into the PRCA, I became involved with the State Department’s Friendship Force. That led to travel as a part-time goodwill ambassador helping promote U.S. tourism. My first trip was to Japan as part of a group that included a number of Native American dancers, some country-and-western musicians, and the 1980 Miss Montana, Wendy Holton. The Japanese loved cowboys, and there I was, eighteen years old, now over six feet tall, with blond hair, surrounded by beautiful Japanese girls, and keeping company with Miss Montana. I was about as close to being John Wayne as I was ever going to get, and when the tour was over, I really didn’t want to leave.

  Buck on an international tour with the Friendship Force, spinning ropes for the local media in Newcastle, England.

  My stint with the Friendship Force convinced me there was no reason I couldn’t make a good living doing rope tricks. I put what money I had together and took off for Denver and the big stock show held there every year.

  The rodeo producers held a convention at the Brown Palace Hotel, where you went to get your jobs for the year. You promoted yourself by renting a booth and putting up a little display. Because my dad had always handled that part of the business, I knew very little about it. I hadn’t realized there was a lot more needed than just being a good trick roper, so I wasn’t prepared at all.

  Buck in Costa Rica with Mike Thomas, manager of the Madison River Cattle Company.

  I spent most of what little money I had on a hotel room, and most of the rest for booth space, but I had nothing to put on the booth. A friend named D
oug Deter helped me take some pictures out in the snow, and we put them on a poster board and tried to make some sort of a display. In addition, I had some pictures in a photo album that showed some of my rope tricks, but on the whole it was a pretty sorry presentation.

  I sat for three days and watched the rodeo producers walk by and stop at the other booths. Every producer had a little contract book, and I saw contracts being signed right and left. It seemed as if everybody was signing contracts, but by the third and last day of the convention, I hadn’t signed a single one. All the money I had saved up was gone, and I had no prospects. Although I was really a good trick roper, probably the best one there, no one knew.

  Every day at 4:00 P.M. was happy hour, when the convention committee members passed out free booze and everybody joked, laughed, and told stories. During happy hour on the last day, a very influential rodeo producer passed my booth.

  Forcing myself to summon up the courage to speak with him, I stopped him and asked, “Sir, would you take a moment and look at my album in case you would ever want someone to do some rope tricks at one of your rodeos?”

  He just looked at me and said, “Son, I’ve looked at so goddamn many pictures today, I don’t care if I look at another one.”

  “Well, I’m committed now,” I told myself, then practically begged him to look at my pictures.

  The producer didn’t sit down. Instead, he just flopped my album open on a table in somebody else’s booth and started flipping through the pages. He never looked at a single one. He was laughing, joking, and greeting people across the room.

  Buck practicing his roping around the time he was looking for rodeo work.

  When he spilled his drink in the middle of my book, I took it away, slammed it shut, and said, “Thanks for your time.”

  He just glanced at me. He didn’t say anything. What happened to me meant nothing to him. As you can imagine, happy hour wasn’t so happy for me. I went upstairs to my room, threw down my photo album, lay on my bed, and cried. Nobody cared.