Faraway Horses

by Buck Brannaman

  That first phone call to Bill changed my life, and for the better. But although I was thrilled with the discovery that would help horses in the future, I was depressed by my own stupidity and all the horses that I could have helped. I was mad at myself, and it was many days before I got over it.

  Years later I was doing some ranch-roping clinics, showing people how to handle their horses and catch and work with cattle in a nonabusive way. Many of the people at one clinic in Watsonville, California, were real green, so I had to do all of the roping myself. I’d rope the cattle around the neck and get them gentled, and the people would ride up and throw heel shots. Of course, a lot of their horses had never seen a cow before; they had been raised in backyards, and as far as they knew, a horse was lunch for a cow.

  I had no idea Bill was there. He had gotten a ride down from his ranch with one of my cowboy friends, and he was part of the audience watching the clinic.

  I usually have a pretty good eye for picking a gentle cow to rope. I picked one out, but I made a bad shot or two, and I missed. It was pretty easy roping, and I shouldn’t have missed, but nevertheless I did. I finally got a good shot off, but it landed on the wrong animal. Instead of that gentle steer, I roped a wild steer. Right off he wanted to fight, and run up my rope and hook my horse. I wished there had been a good roper in the bunch of riders in the arena with me: I wanted somebody who could slip in and throw a heel shot, pick up the hind feet, and get that steer down on the ground so I could get my rope back, then pretend it never happened and go pick on something else.

  But there wasn’t anybody like that in this group, and I couldn’t get my rope back. I fought with the steer, and he jumped around and bawled and was mad as hell. I finally got him slowed down, but things were supposed to have gone smooth. That’s what my clinics are supposed to be all about, and this was anything but smooth.

  As if that weren’t bad enough, it was the first time Bill Dorrance had ever seen me do a ranch-roping clinic, the first time he’d seen me roping on cattle, and I had missed a couple of easy shots.

  We had dinner together that night, and I just couldn’t avoid bringing up the subject. “Bill,” I began, “I’m so embarrassed that you saw me roping so bad today. Finally someone I admire so much comes to my clinic to watch me, and then I rope like that.”

  Bill was always a gentleman. “Aw, don’t you worry about it,” he reassured me. “I know you can rope because I’ve seen your videos.” He knew I’d had a bad day, and he sure wasn’t going to lie to me and tell me that I’d roped well, because I hadn’t, but he still found a way to say something nice. He always did.

  Gentleman is the word. I once watched him teaching a lady how to rope. He was on his horse holding a calf by the neck with his rope when she threw a heel shot. It was a horrible shot, the most pitiful wad of garbage you’ve ever seen thrown. And the lady knew it, too.

  But Bill just looked at the lady and he said, “Boy, I would have thought that would have gone under a lot better than that.”

  The lady was so appreciative that Bill had been kind to her, I wouldn’t be surprised if she loved him forever. And, of course, that got to be the running joke among us cowboys. Whenever one of us would throw a bad shot, we’d say, “Boy, I would have thought that would have gone under a lot better than that.”

  Among the horsemen I’ve the pleasure to work around and whom I’ve tried to pattern my life after have been, of course, Ray Hunt, Bill Dorrance, and his brother Tom. Out of the English riding world is George Morris, former Olympic medal–winning show jumper and now a leading trainer of jumpers. He’s quite a horseman in his own right.

  Many other cowboys and individuals I’ve met over the years have influenced me in one way or another, even though they didn’t have well-known names. They’ve taught me to think things through, especially the preparation and the follow-through.

  And they’ve taught me to listen, not just to them and to other people, but to the horses I want to help and that want me to help them.

  5

  The Fall

  AS I CONTINUED MY CAREER at Spanish Creek, I rekindled a relationship that would have a major impact on my life. It all began in 1981 when I was working as a cowboy for the Three Forks Ranch. I got a call from a woman named Cathy Tamke, who was putting on a fashion show for a ski company at a hotel near Helena. She offered me $150 to do some rope tricks for the show.

  One hundred and fifty dollars to do fifteen minutes of rope tricks was big money, so I made the hour-and-a-half drive to the hotel. When I met Cathy at the hotel, she introduced me to her friend named Adrian Logan. Adrian was a very beautiful woman.

  They took me backstage to a dressing room so I could change into my red-white-and-blue Tom Mix–wanna-be trick-roping outfit. The room was full of gorgeous models, and if there were any other men there, I didn’t notice. I was nineteen years old at the time, in the middle of beautiful girls running around in their bras and panties. Some of them didn’t have any clothes on at all. I was trying to be a gentleman and not look, but let’s not forget that I was only nineteen. It took me the longest time to get dressed. The place was as close as I’ve come to the Playboy mansion.

  Cathy came in and got me, and I went out and did my rope tricks. I did the usual Texas Skip, the One Hand Stand, and the Pop Over. I also did the Double Merry-Go-Round, which requires two ropes: it involves changing the right loop to the left hand and the left loop to the right hand, and then doing it all behind your back. At the time only two people in the history of trick roping had ever done it. Will Rogers was one, and I was the other. The audience applauded and whistled and screamed, and that was quite a thrill for me.

  Afterward Cathy, Adrian, and I went out for a bite to eat. Adrian was a blonde, three years older than me. She was real witty, too, with a comeback for anything or something else cute to say. Plus, her dad was Pete Logan, a famous rodeo announcer, and she had been around ranches and the rodeo business forever. I did whatever I could to charm Adrian. Although she knew I was interested in her, she also knew Cathy was attracted to me, so she remained pretty standoffish.

  I didn’t see Adrian again until the fall of 1984 when one day she just walked into the arena in Gallatin Gateway where I was riding horses. I couldn’t have been more surprised. She was a student at Montana State, and she was looking for a place to keep her horse. She was also interested in the training methods I was using. At that time she was engaged to marry a world-champion bronc rider named Clint Johnson, who was using these methods, too, on his own saddle horses. Kevin Stallings, a good hand from South Dakota and a friend of Clint’s, had mentioned to Adrian that I’d quit doing rope tricks and was using the new methods as well. That’s when Adrian decided to look me up.

  It was a cold day, but the stall barn was warm, and we sat and talked for a couple of hours. We really hit it off. Her interest in hanging around made me start to think that maybe I had a chance with her after all. I was amazed. I’d never have thought that a girl like that would have given me a second thought.

  I had been studying accounting at Montana State off and on, and I was thinking about going back for the winter quarter. Knowing Adrian was a student cinched it.

  We got to be good friends at school, and we spent quite a bit of time together. We had a lot of fun, and I helped her with her horse. Adrian really liked to ride; she had good balance and a pretty good feel for a horse. She really liked horses, which meant quite a lot to me.

  Adrian broke off her engagement, and we started dating. Shortly after we became serious, she took me home to meet her parents, Pete and Audrey. Pete wasn’t very friendly, but I told him that I was honored to meet him and that I had always wanted to work in one of his rodeos. Pete worked the big shows, and even though my trick roping was top level, I had never been in one that size. I told him that I’d have known I’d made the big time if I’d gotten to work in a rodeo that Pete Logan was announcing.

  As soon as I said that, Pete decided I was all right. He’d been a legend
in the rodeo business, but some of the younger, more outgoing announcers were getting the work now. All legends eventually have to back away and let the younger guys take over; that’s where Pete was in his career, and he was a little bitter about it.

  The Logans had two boys and another daughter, but Adrian was sort of the son that Pete had really hoped for. He was closer to her than he was to his other kids. They were so close she’d rarely make a move without first checking with her dad. Pete never really wanted Adrian to move away, and neither did Audrey. Adrian was their way of hanging on to their youth, I suppose. The pressure of their possessiveness had ruined Adrian’s relationship with a couple of good men before me, but I figured that I could fix about anything, and I hung in there.

  Nevertheless, there were times when Adrian’s parents encouraged her to go out with other men. I guess I should have seen that early on. Adrian was telling me how much she loved me, but at the same time she was going out with—of all guys—my buddy Jeff.

  The three of us were taking classes at Montana State. One night she’d be with me, and the next night she’d be with Jeff. Neither guy knew it until I came by her place unannounced one night. She was living in an apartment on Grand Street in Bozeman, and I was going to take her out for a bite to eat. When I pulled up, I saw Jeff’s pickup parked in front. I didn’t even bother getting out and going to the door. I just drove away.

  When I stayed away for a little while, Adrian finally phoned me to ask why she hadn’t heard from me. I told her about seeing Jeff’s truck, but she didn’t really apologize. She liked both of us and felt kind of torn. She didn’t want to hurt either one of us, which sounded like a pretty weak excuse to me.

  An old friend told me once, “Any woman who allows two men to fight over her is playing both ends against the middle, and she isn’t any good for either of them.” He was right, but Jeff and I were like a couple of young bulls. When we found out we were rivals for the same woman, it was a hell of a wreck and it destroyed our friendship for a while. In the end, it would be the thing that strengthened it.

  If the same kind of thing happened again, I’d walk away as fast as I possibly could. But at the time, I hung in there, and I guess I won the contest because Adrian broke up with Jeff and continued to date me. Jeff and I went from being best friends to being enemies.

  I moved away from Spanish Creek and leased another indoor arena across the valley. I also rented a small apartment in Belgrade, just outside Bozeman, near the new arena. The place was a glorified bunkhouse, with a hot plate, a bed, and a bathroom that I built. Pretty modest digs, you’d have to say.

  Still, Adrian moved in with me. She didn’t want her parents to know we were living together, so she kept her own apartment where she kept a few clothes. She was always worried about what her parents would think, which in some ways was certainly understandable. But as our relationship developed, I saw she wasn’t just close to her parents, she was totally manipulated and dominated by them.

  Although Adrian and I talked about marriage, she kept putting off our engagement. Normally it’s men who do that sort of thing, but not in this case. It hurt, because I really loved her and wanted to be married to her.

  One day I was riding colts when Preacher Dave Edwards came by. Preacher Dave had started a little Baptist church in Bozeman that catered to the cowboy crowd, and Adrian and I had become friends with him. He told me he needed to talk to Adrian and me about our living together. He said that because he loved us both, he thought we ought to think about going ahead and getting married because living together wasn’t right. He knew we weren’t raised that way.

  Preacher Dave must have been right because after he put us on the spot, Adrian and I started talking about marriage. Over the next few days, we talked about it a little bit more. Adrian said she didn’t want to have a regular wedding; she didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. My guess was that she was afraid her folks would be angry and wouldn’t come. She didn’t even want Preacher Dave to marry us; instead, she suggested a justice of the peace.

  I was very disappointed. I wanted our wedding to be a big deal. I was so proud of her, I wanted all my friends to come and share my happiness. On the other hand, if we were going to get married, it only would happen her way.

  We took out a marriage license, and one morning we decided we’d drive over to Broadwater County near where her parents lived and get married by the local justice of the peace.

  Adrian called her parents and said, “We’re going to do it, and we’d like you to be there.” Although the justice of the peace was just a fifteen-minute drive away, they refused to come. That really upset Adrian. We drove into town, and she cried all the way. I told her, “Adrian, if you don’t want to do this, let’s just stop and forget it. I’ll turn the truck around, and we won’t.”

  She shook her head. “No, go ahead. We need to do this. Keep driving.”

  God knows why I didn’t turn around, but I didn’t. I was under the impression that Adrian, who was now twenty-seven years old, had decided she finally needed to take charge of her life and make a decision without her parents.

  Adrian continued to cry. I felt terrible, too, but we went through with the ceremony. The justice of the peace did the honors, and a couple of total strangers were witnesses.

  None of my family was there either. Betsy Shirley, my foster mother, who had raised me through some tough times, was very disappointed. When I called and told her what had happened, she said she understood, but it would have been a special thing for her to be at the wedding.

  Afterward, Adrian wanted to go to her parents’ house and visit them for a minute. Although seeing them was the last thing in the world I wanted to do, I wanted my bride to be happy.

  You would have thought I had committed murder in the first degree. The Logans made me feel like a criminal. Rather than being happy for her, they acted as if somebody had died. It was like a funeral, dead quiet.

  I had my own business and was getting to be successful. I didn’t depend on anybody for anything, and I loved the Logans’ daughter to death, but that wasn’t enough for them. They had plans for her.

  At one time, Adrian had been dating Montana’s secretary of state, a man who was being touted as the next governor until he was killed in a plane crash. Adrian had stopped dating him by then, but her parents remained disappointed that she married a cowboy like me. They still had hopes she’d be the first lady of Montana, I suppose.

  As Adrian walked out to the truck, Pete held me back. With a begrudging handshake, he said, “You better do this right, or I’ll kill you.”

  That visit to her parents had done the trick. Ten minutes after we were married, Adrian began to feel she had made a mistake. For my part, I believed that if she came to understand how much I loved her and she came to realize she had to leave her parents and cleave to someone else, as the Bible says, then things would work out.

  It never happened. Adrian and I got along only all right. We didn’t fight, but things never really did improve. I suspect Adrian always figured on leaving me. I know for a fact her parents wanted her to. Many years later I found out that even after we were married, they encouraged Adrian to go out on a date with another man.

  Adrian didn’t go out with him that I know of, but it wasn’t for lack of her family’s trying. We always spent holidays at their house, and one Easter Adrian’s sister Leslie, who was up visiting from Texas, brought up the man’s name at the dinner table. All the Logans started talking about how he was probably going to be the next governor, which led to talk about some of Adrian’s other past boyfriends. Although I tried to be good-natured about it, I thought the conversation was inappropriate in front of me, but it wasn’t my dinner table.

  When Pete said I couldn’t be compared to the politician, I lost my temper. “Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” I said angrily, “I can compete with him as well as anybody because I’m a good man. I try to hold myself up as a good example to other people, and I think I’m a good person, and yo
u can go to hell.” That marked the first time I ever stood up to Adrian’s father. As I got up to leave the table, I told Adrian that she could stay if she wanted to, but I was going home.

  Even though they didn’t apologize, the Logans asked me to stay, and I calmed down enough to finish dinner. There wasn’t much talk for the rest of the meal, and when it was over, I left. Adrian didn’t. She said she’d be home in a few days, so right then and there I found out where her loyalties were.

  Adrian did return two or three days later. For the next couple of years we stumbled along, even with lots of good times. Adrian liked riding colts and helping me out, and the business was starting to grow. I was settled into doing some clinics, and I was riding a lot of colts. We bought twenty acres and a doublewide trailer house in a pretty spot near Belgrade. It was the first time I ever owned anything substantial in my life. Granted, it was just a trailer house, but it was brand new, and it beat the hell out of the bunkhouses I’d been living in.

  For the next several months I rode colts like crazy. I rode fifteen a day, every day, until I had our little place paid for.

  Just one week after I’d made that final payment, Adrian and I were loping horses around a tilled track that circled our little slice of heaven. The date was October 18, 1987. I had stopped the colt I was riding for a breather, taking the time to enjoy the red-and-orange sunset over the Tobacco Root Mountains. Adrian and I were to have dinner with Allan and Jood, friends who had come in from California, and I was about to put my colt away and start the evening feeding.

  After riding hundreds of horses in my life, I’d gotten used to the sound of hoofbeats. I knew what they should sound like, and the ones coming from behind me didn’t sound right. I looked around just in time to see Adrian and her gelding, Rooster, falling to the ground. They seemed to be falling in slow motion. I was off my colt and running toward her before she landed.