Faraway Horses

by Buck Brannaman

  Starting about the time I was thirteen, I began to develop an imagination that was a little too busy for the adults around me to manage. Out back of our log horse barn was a small pasture that sat right on the creek bottom. It was a nice shady spot, and it was the home of our milk cow. She was a Jersey, a credit to her breed and gender, except that she was world famous among our cowboys who hated milking because she had terribly small teats.

  Her pasture wasn’t used for anything else because it was completely full of cockleburs. Some refer to these botanical wonders as “burdock.” It’ll grow six feet high, and some plants have hundreds of burrs on them. If you get them in your hair, you just about have to get a haircut. Those burrs are like balls of Velcro or something out of a science-fiction movie.

  Every once in a while, between calving and putting up hay and winter feeding, we’d have a little time on our hands in between projects on the ranch. That’s when occasionally I’d find myself bordering on getting into trouble. Forrest was always quite cognizant of this. He knew what I had in mind way before I’d even thought about it. About the time I was going to start causing trouble with the other boys or was on the verge of destroying something, I’d find myself down in the milk-cow pasture chopping weeds with a shovel. Forrest would send me down there with nothing but an irrigating shovel and instructions to dig up the burdock.

  This task was tough when properly equipped for the battle, but armed with only a dull irrigating shovel, it was a mammoth undertaking for a little whelp like me. I hated that job. Every thirty days or so, I’d find myself back down in the pasture where it seemed there were three times as many cockleburs as there had been before—all that chopping had merely made them spread out.

  For a few years I didn’t really catch on to the relationship between mischievous behavior and weed cutting. As I got a little older, I began to behave a little better. A certain sense of maturity came on, I guess. I was making money on my own then, riding colts and becoming more responsible, and I didn’t have to chop cockleburs quite as often.

  However, about the time I was a senior in high school, I found myself down in the cow pasture again. I don’t remember exactly what I had done wrong, but it probably had something to do with staying out too late. I wasn’t too far from striking out and living on my own, and I figured I knew damn near everything a fellow needed to know.

  Loaded with this infinite wisdom, I finally went up to the house and said, “Forrest, I’ve decided that you don’t have a very good system here. You don’t really know much about weeds, because I’ve been cutting weeds for five years on this ranch, and they’re just as bad now as they ever were, if not worse. And I’ve chopped my last weed. I refuse to cut another cocklebur. If you’ll go get a weed sprayer, I’ll be happy to spray every weed on the ranch, but cutting weeds is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of.”

  He just laughed. He never said a thing—he just laughed.

  A few months later I moved out on my own and started pursuing my life. Oddly enough, within two weeks after I left, Forrest went to town and bought a weed sprayer. It took one trip through to kill every cocklebur in the cow pasture. And they never came back.

  Of course, at the time, I thought Forrest was trying to get me to kill all the weeds. He was actually having me preserve them until he was done raising his boys, and I was the last one. After I was gone he didn’t need the burdock anymore. The weed patch had served its purpose.

  Sometimes you’ll work with colts that may be a little bit the way I was, kind of looking for an adventure when time permits. These colts are not bad, they don’t want to be bad, and they’re not trying to make things bad for you. They just might need a little something to do. They don’t need to be whipped, or knocked on, any more than I did as a kid. They just need to be directed, or better yet, redirected. So the work you do with colts like this may be like putting them in the cocklebur patch for a period of time. But don’t make them spend all their time in there. Give them opportunities to come out. You’ll find that eventually they’ll catch on. Punishing a horse for doing something wrong is no solution. A kick in the gut solves nothing. You’ll be farther ahead of the game if you redirect him toward where you’d like him to go.

  Whenever I think back to the cocklebur patch, I realize we all have our weeds to clear in life. I learned more with that shovel than I can say. At the time, I sure wished Forrest had bought that weed sprayer a lot earlier, but he didn’t, and he probably saved me from the “domino effect” of bad behavior had my idle time gone unchecked.

  This was the first example in my life of a person making the wrong thing difficult, and the right thing easy, as opposed to making the wrong thing impossible through intimidation. Forrest and Betsy gave me an understanding of what real love was about, what devotion meant, and how a lesson can be shared, not dictated. I think, above all, Forrest gave me a clear understanding of the difference between discipline and punishment.

  3

  On My Own

  WHEN I GOT OUT of high school, I went to work for a ranch near Harrison, Montana, a cow/calf outfit that produced about five hundred calves a year. I spent the better part of that first summer building and patching fences and irrigating.

  The rancher wasn’t as interested in riding as he was in farming, but he did have two colts, and he asked me to start them for him. It was just what I wanted to do, so in my mind two seemed like two hundred. Otherwise, it wasn’t much of a job, but I needed it badly.

  I hadn’t had much formal training working with young horses back then. The day I started, I got one of the colts saddled up, led him into the corral, and just tied him to the fence. Now, when a colt wants to buck, you can see it coming, and this little guy really wanted to buck. I thought, Well, I’ll just get on and off him a few times while I’ve got him tied to the fence, so at least I’ve got a fair chance when I turn him loose.

  And that’s when things fell apart. The moment I got on the colt, he pulled back and bucked forward. We had a hell of a time, and then I’d peel myself off. After a little bit of this, I was sitting there thinking things were going pretty well. I was enjoying the elevated view when the colt pulled back again and broke the halter rope six inches from the halter.

  If that happened to me today, I would be in a six-foot-tall round corral, from which it would be hard for a horse to escape. On that day, however, the only thing I had surrounding me was a hog-wire fence about four feet high. The ranch didn’t have a round corral or an arena or anything like it, just a hog pen.

  There are moments in life where certain odd thoughts go through your mind, and this was one of them. The sun wasn’t quite up yet, but that sky was a bright blue. I remember thinking how pretty it was. Then, after a nanosecond of stillness, off went the colt bucking and kicking with me pulling leather for everything I was worth.

  The colt jumped the hog-pen fence and bucked out into the adjoining pasture. He’d run and buck, and there wasn’t a thing I could do but just try to stay on him. I knew if I tried to get off at this point, I was going to get hurt.

  I don’t know how long I was out there. It was my first time ever riding a horse without reins, and it seemed as if it went on for hours. He’d stop and stand frozen, and every time I’d try to get him to move he’d go to bucking again. We were maybe a mile and a half from the house by the time I got him to move without bucking, but I couldn’t direct him because I didn’t have a halter rope to work with, so I just kept him moving.

  In my wisdom of all of eighteen years, I figured that eventually the colt would want to go home. I kept working him with leg pressure and eventually we ended up back at the barn. My dismount was more like a bailout, but we made it back in one piece.

  I’d like to think that skill has prevented me from getting hurt many times in my life, but luck doesn’t hurt either.

  An important ranch chore is putting up hay. That means you cut it, ready it to be baled, and then you stack the bales. Real summer fun in cow country.

  One day I was
driving a swather, a machine for mowing hay. All I’d ever wanted to be was a cowboy, so I didn’t really want to be driving machinery and putting up hay. Still, when the boss pointed out a field and said, “Mow it,” that’s what I did.

  The swather unit was not in the best shape. The drivers, which are similar to a car’s transmission, slipped. You could run it on level ground, but the problem became amplified when you had to work a hill, of which the ranch had many.

  I got up on top of one of the hills, but I hadn’t been informed that it was a piece of hay meadow that was never cut. That’s because it was too steep; the bottom of the hill dropped off about six feet and into a swamp.

  My heart started pounding pretty hard when I saw the lay of the terrain in front of me. I was a little afraid of the machinery, but I figured my boss knew what he’d gotten me into, so I tipped the swather off over the hill.

  What followed was another one of those moments where time stands still. After a brief moment of peace with the cornflower blue sky above, off I went downhill, going faster by the moment.

  I did what I might have done with a runaway colt: I tried to pull his head around. I pulled back on one of the control levers real hard, which resulted in what looked like one of those Saturday-morning cartoon wrecks. I had stacked this machine up in the middle of a wheel-line irrigation system. Everything was wrecked: the irrigation system and the swather. It was a mess.

  I got out of the swather and stood there reviewing the results of my labor for the morning. A momentary quiet graced the earth, and all was at peace. Then I started walking back toward the ranch headquarters.

  As I walked by the shop, the boss asked where I was going.

  “Going to the house,” I said, still walking.

  He asked what had happened.

  “Well, we had a little accident.”

  He looked at me for a minute and asked, “What did you do?”

  I looked at the ground for another minute, and replied, “Well, just had a little wreck.”

  His expression changed. “Where’s the swather?”

  “It’s in the field,” I said.

  “What did you do?” He was starting to get a little touchy now.

  I paused a minute and looked him square in the eye. “I wrecked it.”

  He kind of slumped as he realized what was next, and said, “Well, you can just go to the house, and you can pack your—”

  “I’m already there,” I said.

  I was fired, and I can’t blame him. I was costing him a lot of money, ruining his equipment. But maybe if I hadn’t been fired, I might have quit, anyway. For some reason I’d known that that was kind of the end of the deal.

  Besides, it was the end of the summer, and the work was about over. I’d been talking to an outfit over by Three Forks, Montana. It was called the Madison River Cattle Company, and it had a lot of cattle and it raised horses. It was my kind of place. I was definitely on my way to becoming a cowboy.

  When I went to meet with the ranch manager and talk about a job, he was in town at a Ray Hunt clinic. A teacher in high school had told me about Hunt and the wonderful things he could do with a horse. I thought that was just a made-up story and said, “Ah, he doesn’t have anything he can teach me.”

  The teacher had replied, “If you ever want to see how the pros do it, you need to look him up.” Mrs. Jackson wasn’t going to argue with me. I was about at the age where I knew everything about everything, and the teacher was smart enough to know there wasn’t any point in saying any more.

  I headed into town to visit with the manager and see just what this Ray Hunt clinic was all about. I arrived at the arena and took a seat at the top of the grandstand, but there wasn’t much going on. It was lunchtime, and I couldn’t find the ranch manager.

  I was getting up to leave when into the arena came Ray Hunt and Tom Dorrance, another legendary horseman. They started working with their horses, and all of a sudden I noticed some things that Ray Hunt’s saddle horse was doing that I didn’t know a horse could do, moving from side to side and bending and backing with no visible effort from the rider.

  I moved down closer to the action, and closer again until I was standing right by the round corral. I peeked through the rails and watched Ray’s every move. I just couldn’t believe it. I never knew a horseman could be that good. And, of course, Tom Dorrance was there helping Ray in the clinic and also doing some things that I thought were just magical.

  Ray started working with a young broncy horse that wanted to strike out. In my experience you saddled such a horse by tying up a hind leg to immobilize him so you could get the saddle on him. But Ray worked the colt at the end of a rope, moving the colt’s hindquarters right and left and the forequarters right and left, basically teaching the horse to dance. Ray already knew the theory behind the dance: when you control a horse’s feet, you also can control that the horse doesn’t move unless and until you ask him to.

  By the time Ray had that colt saddled, I said to myself, “There’s really something going on there.” I knew I’d have had a hard time saddling that colt, and I was a good hand with horses.

  That was the first time I ever saw a person work a horse that way, using his understanding of a horse’s mind and body to train with kindness and to end up getting some of the sharpest turns and hardest stops I’d ever seen. And all with a plain snaffle bit. What’s more, the horse looked happy, as if he enjoyed being with the man. His expression showed contentment in his eyes.

  Seeing Ray Hunt in action was just a brief encounter, but it impressed me no end.

  The ranch manager saw me and came over. “I guess you want to talk about that cowboying job on the ranch?” he said.

  “Sir, I would,” I told him. “But if you’d excuse me, I’m trying to watch this gentleman work horses. So if it’s okay with you, we’re going to have to talk a little later.”

  Well, that kind of took him aback some. We didn’t really visit that afternoon, but we had other chances because I returned for the rest of the Ray Hunt clinic. I was hooked for life. To this day I’m still trying to pursue the magic that I saw that man do.

  I got the job at the Madison River Cattle Company. The manager took quite an interest in me and started sending me to Ray Hunt clinics. Ray Hunt gives the initial impression of being the most secure, unaffected person you’d ever meet. The things he taught me about horses and the things he’s taught me about myself have changed my life. The approach that he has to working with horses was like nothing I’d ever seen, nor probably ever will see again. He’s a great horseman, and a fine gentleman. I admired him so much that I wanted nothing more than to be just like him. He and his wife, Carolyn, have been like parents to me. They have treated me like family through the years, and for that I’ll forever be indebted to them.

  When I showed up at the ranch a few days after the clinic, the cow boss, Mel, showed me the bunkhouse and the cookhouse. When we sat down for dinner, he said, “We’re going to be gathering cattle tomorrow. If you like, you might want to catch that roan horse out there. That’s going to be one of your horses; the whole pen of horses is going to be your string. Some of the other boys have had a little trouble with them, but you shouldn’t have any problem, although you might want to ride him around the corral and get some of the kinks out of him before we go gather. It’s pretty rough country.”

  I thought, Sure, no problem.

  So after dinner, I went out and ran the little roan horse into the round corral. I had to rope him as he was a little broncy, but I thought, Well, no big deal. I got him saddled up with no trouble. I didn’t know anything about groundwork or getting a horse loosened up or relaxed. I thought I’d just step up on him.

  Well, that horse bucked so hard, he bucked my hat clear out of the corral. I stayed on him, but by the time he was finished bucking, I felt as if I’d experienced a seizure. “What have I gotten myself into?” I asked myself when I stopped shaking.

  The next morning we saddled the horses in the barn, t
hen hauled them about thirty miles in a truck and trailer up into the hills where the cattle were. After we arrived, Mel said, “Here, let me help you get that roan horse ready.”

  Back in those days Mel knew just enough about Ray Hunt’s techniques to be dangerous. He was working the horse on the end of the halter rope from his saddle horse, and he told me, “Go ahead, Buck, get on. I’ve got you snubbed up”—snubbed up meaning he had a hold of the horse—“so you won’t have any problem with him bucking. I’ll just dally up, and it’ll shut him down.” That meant he would wrap the rope around his saddle horn; the confinement would keep the roan under control.

  Not quite. As soon as I climbed on, Roany started bucking. It seemed as if he bucked in four directions at the same time. Every time I’d just about get in sync with his bucking in a straight line, Mel would ride off and jerk his head around. That sent him off in another direction, which made it ten times harder to ride. I’d have been better off if Roany had broken the halter and gotten away. Then at least he’d have bucked in a straight line.

  I was a dishrag when Roany decided to quit bucking. Mel took off at a trot on a long uphill grade. I had enough experience to know that if I was going to survive the day, I needed to get Roany out of breath. We trotted what seemed like six miles up the grade until we got to the top, but Roany hadn’t even broken a sweat.

  Mel halted and let his horse rest. He was looking for cattle through his binoculars and having a nice break. I was getting a little nervous with Roany standing around catching his own breath, and I thought, Come on, Mel, let’s keep moving.

  On a normal day you might think, Ah, the sweet smell of sage on a frosty clear morning. Wrong-o. All I could smell was nervous sweat. And as Roany’s respiration began to slow, mine sped up in anticipation of the next move in our dance together. Mel kept looking and looking. Because I was new on the job, I didn’t want to say, “Mel, I need to get the hell out of here and get going.” I was sitting very still, trying to convince Roany that nobody was on his back.