Freedom To Choose

Loading

Pretty Like A Mountain Flower, Yet She Was Strong And Determined

I quit three quarters of the way through my first year of college, hopped on my ’65 Triumph Bonneville and left the East Coast. I didn’t really fit in out East as you might imagine; I felt like a goose in the hen house. I was needing mechanical reapirs by the time I reached Kentucky. That’s where I should have gone to college, there were horses everywhere and those people really like to have someone around who can help them with horse problems. The women there have a certain charm that makes a young man feel special, that really impressed me. I had close to a thousand dollars in my pocket when the weather became hot and sultry, I kissed several close friends goodbye, headed Northwest and caught I 70 in Indianapolis. The weather wasn’t much cooler but I knew the mountains would start sooner or later, I headed West and planned on getting some relief fairly soon.

Before long I realized just how big this country is and riding one of those old fashioned motorcycles helps to reinforce the lesson. I headed North out of Denver because the Denver traffic seemed erratic and dangerous. The next day, I was riding West of Sheridan following gravel roads and admiring both Montana and Wyoming.

I saw a small ranch arena with a young woman working some 2 year old quarter horses, she looked like a barrel racer. They had an old hand pump well in the ranch yard, I pulled up and asked if I could get a drink and fill my canteen, she was exasperated but said to help myself. I sat under a Cottonwood and decided to watch the horse training in the shade. She rode a two year old and just barely kept from getting bucked off. I didn’t say anything, that’s not my style. The next horse was a sorrel filly, my dad always told me to watch those redheads; if they were anything like sorrel fillies, I could understand why he said that and why all the ranch hands would laugh at the joke.

She got the saddle on with a struggle, but when she tried to bridle the filly with a snaffle, the filly stuck her toes in the dirt and spit the bit, it wasn’t going to happen. I was about to leave when she asked if I could help her put the bridle on. I climbed over the corral fence and said, “I can get the bridle on, but you will have even more problems if I do.”

She looked at me as if I were a moron, “What do you mean?”

“Look at these bumps under the jaw,” I lightly touched he protrusions and look at the swelling along the bridge of the nose. She hasn’t shed her two year old caps and they are infected and sore. This red filly will buck you off and kick you on the way down for being so thoughtless; in her mind, she’ll think you’re hurting her intentionally. I gently took the upper lip and lifted it up. The four middle incisors, all impacted milk teeth, were all impacted and smelled bad enough to drive a bull dog out of a butcher shop.

“The vet just looked at the teeth and said they were OK.”

I looked her in the eye, real close, “Well, you tell me: did he miss a few things?”

“Can you help me out? she wont even let me touch her mouth”, she asked.

“Look, I am at least five times stronger than you. Touch the underside of your forearm and then run your fingers across your cheek.” She did as I asked, I then took her left hand and ran my fingers gently over her forearm and then brushed them lightly across her cheek. She was at least seven years older than me, but now she was intrigued by the lightness of my touch. The speed and strength of a man is only useful if the situation becomes desperate, other wise I will never touch this horse with more force than I used to touch your cheek. “Here let me show you something.” I draped the lead shank over my index finger and began to dance with the horse, that is getting her to follow my lead, in a few minutes, I had her taking each step with me slow or fast, she would would stride forward or back and pivot on the hind quarters or turn on the forehand with only me moving my body. The rope never tightened or slid off my finger; these were classic Barbwire Johnny moves that I had learned well, a long time ago.

“That’s enough, I’ll pull the teeth, put a hackamore on her and ride her without the saddle and have her green broke for you to ride her safely for $60.00 in three hours.”

“You can ride?”

“If we can get a rope on it, I’ll ride anything with hair and four legs!”

“How about you spend a month and get all three of these youngsters started and turning for four hundred? that’s top wages in these parts.”

“I’ll do the teeth, trim and shoe the feet and get them going for $600.00, you can pay by the week, if you don’t like the way they’re going, run me off with no hard feelings.”

“I’ll give you $500 and not a dime more.”

“Done”, I started to spit in my hand to shake and seal the deal, but realized I was dealing with a pretty woman and held off before I made a breach of etiquette. I had the lead shank over my shoulder and the chestnut filly had her muzzle in my back. I told the ranch woman to watch and walked away with the filly following me all over the corral. The lady laughed and introduced herself as Rose and showed me to the bunkhouse that would be my new home for a few weeks.

After the first week, I was running out of things to ask of the horses that was appropriate for their age group. I started taking them up into the mountains and jumping from horse to horse as they became tired or winded. The mountains were beautiful and the high meadows had millions of different colored wild flowers. I could see why people would fall in love with the Big Horn Mountains. I only rode with a saddle once in awhile to get the horses used to the feel, in the mountains I just rode bare back. Of course many people saw me and the moccasin telegraph soon spread the word about the guy riding a group of two year olds in the mountains bareback.

After my first week without being run-off, I was invited into the main house to partake of dinner with Rose and her father, Bob, a World War II fighter pilot from the Pacific. We hit it off really well and since most of my family were either Navy or Marines we seemed to have a kinship, from the beginning. Every once in a while he would invite me to his study for a shot of whiskey. On one of these nights, he told me had severe back problems from the war, he could walk well enough, but he couldn’t do ranch work; he then proceeded to inject himself, I assumed it was heroin, I have no way of knowing. I’ve never seen it before or since. I felt sorry for the man, he was a well respected rancher who was disabled and with only a hard working daughter trying to hold together a cattle ranch and I was there drawing top wages for a job that was already finished. I was not proud of myself.

After three weeks, I told Rose I was going into town for a meal and a beer. She probably thought I was older, for I was not yet 18. A result of applying to college a year early, a result of my time sequence problem courtesy of a bull that kicked me in the head at the Hudson’s Hope Rodeo a few years earlier. I didn’t know if I would be served or not, but I needed a change of scenery. Rose told me to have a good time in town and to be careful on the Triumph.

In Sheridan at the local cowboy bar, everyone started buying me drinks and wanting to know if I was Rose’s boyfriend. I assured them I was a hired hand and that was all. A few guys wanted to say rude innuendos, but my stern glare made them become interested in other things. I danced with a young girl from the reservation, we fell in love and locked belt buckles till morning. After breakfast, I was showing her and her brothers how to train paint Indian ponies. They weren’t real classy horses, but sturdy enough to carry the mail; they were easy, and they would have made good pack horses in the North Country.

Since Sunday was my day off, I rode back to the ranch after dark. Rose met me in the ranch yard and was madder than a hornet in an outhouse. She quietly told me to follow her to the bunkhouse and asked me where I’d been. I told her I met a new friend and stayed at the reservation. She asked if it was Josephina and I said,”Yes” thinking nothing of the information; realizing that the moccasin telegraph was still functioning here in the civilized world, I still wondered what all the fuss was about.

“Do you realize my dad’s sister came over to meet you today and we were all humiliated; because, you didn’t show up for dinner.”

“No one told me anything about it; besides, why is a lady coming to the ranch to meet a hired hand anyway?”

“Don’t you realize the opportunity that is here for you? My dad likes you! Do you know how many cowboys there are around here that would like to own half of this ranch! Do you realize how many cowboys would like to be married to me!”

“I never thought about it.”

“You damn fool.” She pushed me backwards onto my bunk and we had a passionate evening. I wont say it wasn’t exciting and sensual, but I didn’t look upon Rose as a girl friend. She was seven or eight years older than me and I had always treated her with the respect that you show to a boss. She was way stronger than I had imagined a woman could be in the throes of passion, probably as a result of always trying to do a man’s work on the ranch, it was a little overwhelming. In the wee hours of the night she kissed me and quietly walked back to her own bed in the main house.

I didn’t sleep the rest of the night and at daybreak, I started my Triumph and headed South East, three days l later I was in Bossier City Louisiana, one of the wildest towns I have had the pleasure of visiting.

It isn’t the fact that I was overwhelmed by an older woman, that part wasn’t all that bad, but I didn’t like the idea of being chosen to take over someone’s ranch by being the sexual object of a woman, made worse by the fact that I had never been let in on the plans. Free choice is important to Freedom Loving Americans and having someone take it for granted that you are going to like this new life they have picked out for you is not my idea of Freedom.

President Obama has his Socialist sycophants, ideologues, and Useful Idiots that are so anxious to take on the yoke of Socialism; however there are many of us that are not all that anxious to assume this new Utopian Identity and accept Obama and other Elites who happen to be his close friends to direct every detail of our life. Make no mistake, they intend to direct and dictate every facet of your life, until you all work for the state and do nothing without permission from the state.

Personally, I’d much rather wake up before dawn and ride out on a horse or a motorcycle, before giving anyone the right to tell me what to do and how to live my life for the rest of my life here on earth.

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
62 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

TALLGRASS: hi, I would think that, this condition came sometimes somewhere ago,by a
gene who was faulty,and continue to be allowed to regenerate on and on in the chain of life;
I had a friend who had 2 sons, and they where 3 to 4 years old, and one was or became gay,one day he dared tell his mother of being gay,
at his teen age, but at 4years, he was behaving like a girl, and his father was trying to get him to play boys games like his brother, and when he got angry, he would tell him he was a mistake boy,
as time went by,the young man became so emotionely disturb,and had a very strange
behavior, until he met another gay men, and they became a couple,
he hated his father all his life,and one day he told his mother of being gay,
and I could not understand why she never suspected that, all the years she was with him.

Ya got one part right…Just like the woman in the story, Obama is F%$#!! us before he picks out our new life.

And that’s all I got to say about that.

Ref horses and men south of the Rio Grande:
In Europe, horses were associated with the upper classes. In Britain, for example, cavalry regiments were the most socially prominent because, as officers couldn’t live on their pay and cavalry duty required keeping a number of horses, they had to come from the most well-off sectors of society.
Rebecca West, in one of her books, remarked on the importance of the horse in Brit society from the Napoleonic era through the Edwardian period.
In Spanish, the word for gentleman is caballero, associated with the word for horse, caballo. In French, it’s chevalier, from cheval.
Some of the traditional Mexican singing groups get themselves up in tricked-out versions of the old riding costumes, including a pistol.
In the US, I guess we run to Infantry.
Except for the rich, especially the newly rich, for whom riding and, especially, fox hunting is a sign of having arrived. Keep an eye out for street signs and names of subdivisions and apartments and condos that have to do with horses. Usually not mules or oxen, and usually not draft horses. Classes up the real estate, supposedly.
As to gays and horses…I have no idea.

So Skookum was in Ky a while back, more than likely I was a kid but it would have been ironic to have seen you and never known it. Where in KY did you pass through?

We both have something in common though, oblivious to women who send out signals until they push you back and tell you flat out. lol

Anyone seen the special that is showing on Thursday on Military Channel about horses and soldiers?

Aleric, I worked around Louisville at Churchill and Miles Park, Lexington at Keeneland, Bowlingreen, Henderson at Ellis Park, Latonia across from Cincinnati, and worked on some driving mules near Somerset. I was there on several different forays and I liked the Kentucky culture especially in the country, they understood me and I understood them. Actually, I flew into Kentucky more times than I could ever hope to remember.

Aleric, I haven’t worked in the far North East, Alaska, Hawaii, and Oklahoma, but I’ve worked in every other state and most of Western Europe, Mexico, and Argentina.

Yes, I can tell when a horse is about to turn inside out from 50 yards away, but I can’t tell when a woman is getting mad or thinking I am pretty special.

anticsrocks, TODAY, AUGUST 25 in 2011, and I re read this too,
SKOOKUM this is such a good POST, and you have pickt up the best to comment in it,
and I don’t include me in the best, BUT I was doing pretty good,
OLD TROOPER 2, hope to catch you in posting at FA SOON.
SO YOU WHERE RIDING BARE NO SADDLE HEY, THAT’S A GOOD WAY TO TRAIN A HORSE,
OR WAS THE HORSE TRAINING YOU? HOPE YOU GET BACK TO YOU’RE TRAINING’S SKILL SOON.
AND YOU HAVE A BOOK TO WRITE, DON’T FORGET.
BYE

Jayme Hougen, hi,
thank’s for the advice,
I’m doing the best I can to avoid the errors to come at me.
bye
I had you’re comment on my personal site, and I question
how come you’re not here on the POST.