by H. Alan Day
That night, to celebrate the closing, I took the Pitkin family to the Peppermill Steakhouse just over the border in Valentine, Nebraska, where we stuffed ourselves full of prime rib that practically melted in our mouths. John told stories about the ranch with his kids chiming in details. I told stories about ranching in Arizona that left them shaking their midwestern heads. With laughs and giggles, we embarked on an adventure that seemed to have chosen us randomly and united us in the heartland of the country. I had inserted myself in this family and the Sand Hills. I needed to own up to that and not let them down. With the fortitude of Little Charlie Brown, I could do it. By the time we left, I couldn’t wait to see what lay over the next hill. I never expected it to lay so far east.
In Arizona no one bothers to look twice at a cowboy. I could walk through Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix wearing my favorite black Stetson and leather boots without attracting so much as a glance, but standing in the baggage claim of Dulles International Airport outside Washington DC dressed in the same attire, I attracted some blatant body scans. Usually when I traveled here once a year to visit my sister, Sandra, and her husband, John, I did so sans western regalia. The itinerary of this trip, however, demanded an identity statement. The thing about cowboy hats is they don’t pack well.
The Wild Horse Division of the BLM had sprung a new mission on Dayton and me. The higher-ups had indicated that a wild horse sanctuary was more than a good idea; it could be a practical solution to the problem of what to do with unadoptable wild horses living in holding facilities. We thought we were headed down easy street until they advised us they didn’t have the power to authorize such a venture. “You’ll need to get approval from Congress,” a representative from Washington stated during a meeting in South Dakota. Congress, huh? Did the BLM really need the approval of its boss, or were the good folks in the agency sending us down the yellow brick road on a bogus journey? It was more likely they didn’t want to stand up to Congress so they handed us the script and set us on stage, a tactical cover-your-ass move. But certainly the BLM folk wouldn’t underestimate a cowboy, would they? Because a cowboy does what it takes to get the job done, even if that includes personally soliciting politicians.
As luck would have it, Dayton’s flight from Oregon was landing twenty minutes after mine. We had agreed to meet near the exit to catch a cab, but signs indicated three exits for taxis and the place was busier than a pub on payday. I stood by a large column and watched for a familiar face in the flow of people.
An older woman passing by leaned over to her husband and pointed behind her. “Did you see that guy back there in the white cowboy hat?”
He looked over his shoulder. “No, why?”
“I think he’s famous. I swear I’ve seen him in a movie.”
I looked behind them and, sure enough, bouncing above the crowd was a white cowboy hat with Dayton beneath it.
“Hey partner,” Hawk said, slapping me on the back. “Been waiting long?” I could see how someone might mistake him for a movie star. Put an eye patch on him and he could be John Wayne playing Rooster Cogburn.
“I use to have a pair of them boots,” said the cab driver, throwing our luggage in the trunk. “Did a bit of wranglin’ up in Montana.” He explained that was before an injury shoved him off the ranch and pushed him east little by little, farther and farther, until he hit salt water. His nose had a jaunty bent and a scar smiled across the bottom of his chin. He became our captive audience during the rush-hour drive downtown, listening to all the reasons why the government should sponsor a wild horse sanctuary. We had become pretty good at outlining our argument, but a last-minute practice couldn’t hurt. We were no longer in laid-back South Dakota or Arizona. Did busy congressmen and -women give you an hour, half hour, or ten minutes?
“Best of luck to you,” said the driver. He set my duffel bag on the sidewalk. “Hell of an idea. I’d sign on to wrangle with you if I could.” He shook my hand. Was that a standing ovation for our dress rehearsal? I handed him the fare and a healthy tip.
That night over scotch, we reviewed our agenda. We had three days to corral Congress and so far had a whopping four appointments. The empty blocks of time stood out starkly on the calendar, yet they felt more like a blank canvas than a white surrender flag. What pictures would be painted on them had yet to be determined. With over five hundred politicians on our call list, odds were they would be colored with interesting conversations and characters.
Buzzing through congressional offices the next day proved to be a far bigger high than I anticipated. There’s something about being a citizen and tapping into the inner workings of government that gives you a different sense of identity. As a rancher, I responded to animals and land and, to some extent, government. Stepping into the heart of national government with the intent of influencing felt like stepping into something far larger than any ranch I had ever managed.
Our quest for the golden legislation started with a senator Dayton knew from Oregon. He listened attentively to the high points of the sanctuary plan—saving the government money, easing the burden of wild horses on the BLM, giving eighteen hundred unadoptable horses a place to live—and extended his support. The representative from Oregon with whom we next met did the same.
The next stop was former Arizona senator Barry Goldwater’s office. I had attended the University of Arizona with his son, Mike, who was a good friend of mine. Barry, of course, knew Sandra from their days of crossing political paths in Phoenix. How much pull he would have with Congress, having retired about two years earlier, I had no idea. Barry whistled when he heard the number of horses we might be allotted. He had photographed wild horses on the Navajo reservation and would love to do the same up in the Sand Hills if we ended up with the sanctuary. He would do all he could to help our expectations come to fruition.
After lunch we hit Senator Dennis DeConcini’s office. Along with Barry Goldwater, DeConcini had been a huge supporter of my sister when she went through congressional questioning before being appointed a Supreme Court justice. I hadn’t seen him since Sandra’s inauguration. I had not asked Sandra to contact him on our behalf, nor to contact anybody else, because I knew better than to do that, especially for a personal project like this one. But I did appreciate having a history that opened the door.
“Take a seat and I’ll let the senator know you’re here.” The receptionist pointed to a partially occupied row of chairs across from her desk.
Dayton and I watched people come and go. A young aide whizzed by balancing white paper bags and a tray of drinks. “Hey, real cowboys! Find a parking spot for your horses?” The receptionist rolled her eyes.
“You did tie up the horse to the parking meter?” Dayton said, looking me in the eye.
“Sure did,” I said. “Did you feed the meter?”
“Hell no. I thought you did.”
I shrugged. “Nope.”
“Hope that stallion doesn’t kick the attendant who gives him a ticket. Last guy ended up with a few broken ribs.”
A woman sitting across from us glanced up from her magazine. The receptionist giggled.
“Alan, good to see you again.” Senator DeConcini made us feel like we were walking into his office on a red carpet. We gave him the lowdown on the sanctuary, and he exuded the same excitement as Goldwater. “Listen, I want you to make this office your headquarters,” he said. “My staff can help you make appointments and you can use our phones. I’ll add a rider on a bill we know is going to pass and I’ll make some calls to get the cooperation we need for this to go through.” We had just been offered a pot of gold. DeConcini suggested we lunch in the senators’ private dining room and ushered us on the underground train reserved for senators that runs between the Capitol and the senate building. After a brief tour of the Capitol, he wished us well and said he’d be in touch.
The next forty-eight hours became a blur of meetings and conversations, most in offices, some in hallways. I had worn-out the heels of cowboy boots on dirt and grav
el but never on concrete and marble. Dayton was the appointed poet, painting the plight of wild horses in word pictures and describing the ranches where they would run free. I detailed the sanctuary’s business plan. Not one politician found fault with the sanctuary or refused to support it in the form of a future vote. One of my favorite meetings was with Representative Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, who later became a senator. He owned a ranch and had raised quarter horses; we spent almost two hours swapping horse stories.
Our final meeting ended up being with the head of the Bureau of Land Management’s Bob Burford. We had been dealing with lower-level individuals in the Wild Horse Division and so needed to do a sales job on the higher-ups and hoped they would be at the meeting. But they were not present when we arrived. We exchanged pleasantries and got acquainted with Burford.
“Let me call in some people interested in your project,” he said. “They know you’re here and are eager to meet you.” Bingo.
Dayton and I sailed through our presentation. We have this ranch just begging for horses, and you have horses just begging to be turned out. Doesn’t solve all your problems, but it solves the issue of what to do with the unadoptable mustangs. Heads nodded. What really caught their attention was when we mentioned the sanctuary would be a great opportunity for news stories that would put the BLM in a positive light. No person or agency in DC turns down good publicity. They reminded us that we needed Congress’s approval, and we said we were on our way to getting it.
We finished our tour on schedule and left with more support than we had imagined. Years later, I figured out we could have hired lobbyists. Would it have been more effective? Not at that stage, but maybe later on. I didn’t know it at the time, but once you start lobbying, you have to continue to pet that puppy, otherwise it’ll run off and a new dog will step in. But it takes more than three days to learn the inner workings of Washington. Sometimes you don’t even learn it in four years.
6.
Hard-Won Approval
In the spring of 1989 I moved into the doublewide, which turned out to be a real pit. The previous owner’s presence lingered in the smell of tobacco and brown smoke stains covering ceiling and walls. Sue would have to put her magic touch on the place. I couldn’t wait to introduce her to the ranch, have her feel that rush, that high the land offered. Maybe to christen it, we would throw a mattress in the pickup and head off to the grove by the Little White River. She had declined my most recent invitation to visit, saying she had her hands full on Lazy B. Oh well, I thought, eventually she’ll get here. In the meantime, I was eager to get acquainted with the ranch, learn its rhythm and language, idiosyncrasies and needs.
Mornings soon became my favorite time. I’d lie in bed listening to chirps and caws and rustling leaves, then brew a pot of coffee and drink a cup on the porch. The wild turkeys would fly down from their perch and feast on a breakfast of grasshoppers. This was our private time, when the ranch and I smiled at each other. John might wander over, mug in hand, or I’d end up in his kitchen, a map of the ranch spread across the table, Debbie planning her day and directing the kids. Before I even took a sip of coffee, five-year-old Megan would be up on my lap. “What are we gonna do today, Alan?” she’d ask, happy with any answer that involved her participation.
In those first months, talking to John was like panning for gold and coming up with a handful of nuggets. I learned that the entire ranch sat atop the Ogallala Aquifer. I made it a point to inspect each of the fifteen operating windmills on the ranch. The first thing I did was taste the freshly pumped water spilling from a pipe into the holding tank. Every well had clear, cool, pure water—ambrosia to a rancher. I could have kept drinking until water spouted from my fingers and toes. Surely the horses would lap up this find. I’ve been on plenty of ranches where the water tasted salty or left an aftertaste of sulfur or, worse yet, contained gyp water that makes your stomach clench. On Lazy B we had one well that was so corrosive the cook used to claim if you threw a sack of potatoes in the holding tank and left them for a half day, those spuds would peel themselves.
John and I also spent days driving in the pickup or riding horseback to determine where we might need additional wells and water tanks for the horses. I learned that drilling a well was like pushing a straw into a juicy orange. Get Babby Well Drilling Company to haul out a portable well rig and the next day a windmill would be pumping water up from twenty to thirty feet below. I came from country where drilling for water was akin to drilling for oil under the Arctic tundra. First there was talk of drilling. This might last a year or two. Eventually a dowser, commonly known as a water witch, would be summoned to pinpoint the source of underground water. For some folks, water witching is right there with the Ouija board and psychic predictions, but I grew up watching dowsers work their wonders. Most held a forked peach tree branch in each hand and walked along until the tip nose-dived. Beneath that spot, water would be flowing. The good dowsers also could tell you how deep the water ran. Of course, then you had to dig through desert rock. One 750-foot well on Lazy B took two years to drill.
My neighbor Ralph Johnson had the gift of witching. Instead of using a peach branch, he used two welding wires bent at ninety-degree angles. When the two ends crossed, he would declare water. “Gotta drill about five hundred feet,” he’d say. Or maybe eight hundred feet. Never was it twenty or thirty feet. Once some underground pipes sprung a leak, but the fiddlefarts who had buried them were long gone and hadn’t left the treasure map of where to find them. So I called in Ralph. He located the pipeline within minutes, even tracked the bends in the pipe.
Within weeks, John and I had covered every part of the ranch except the North Ranch, a set of hills north of the Little White River that included three hundred acres of prime meadows and five good grazing pastures. So one morning I suggested to John that we saddle up and go check out that area. Megan begged to come with us. “It’s too big a trip, Pumpkin,” her father said. “We’ll be gone too long.” The promise of an afternoon horse ride erased her pout.
I chose a horse from John’s string, curried her, and cinched the saddle. The gray clouds hung low enough to touch, and I pulled the collar of my jacket up. “I’m going to have to buy a horse pretty soon,” I said. We were trotting through the heifer pasture. John nodded. I didn’t need to explain why. A cowboy bonds with his horse in a way nobody else can. It’s like having a best friend among a bunch of acquaintances. I had been contemplating bringing up Aunt Jemima, one of my favorite horses on Lazy B, but in the meantime, I wanted a horse that I could call my own. “Any idea where I might look?”
John got a knowing look on his face. “Let me see what I can do, Boss.”
We rode on down to Big Nose Flat. A mile and a half away, a sliver of the Little White River reflected the sullen sky. Behind it, the hills of the North Ranch rolled onto the horizon. Everywhere grass rippled, more grass than on all of Lazy B. I felt like a king looking at fine-spun silk. By now, I knew that a smorgasbord of twenty-six different varieties of grass grew on the meadows, and six or seven of those stretched up into the hills. I dismounted at least three or four times before we reached the river, got down on my hands and knees to examine the soil and the plants growing. I viewed the community of plants like the head of a chamber of commerce would see his town. What could that town do if everyone cooperated? How could you evoke that cooperation? At each location, I pulled up a few different seed heads and stalks and stuffed them in the plastic bag I carried in my chaps. Come evening, I would match them to a page in The Book of Midwestern Grasses, a gift from a thoughtful neighboring rancher. Instead of a bottle of bourbon or a plate of his wife’s warm cookies, he welcomed me with what would soon become my bible.
Our horses splashed across the Little White River and headed up the hill. We stopped on the crest and took in the panorama. Looking south, behind me, was a classic Sand Hills scene. I half expected to see an Indian camp nestled in one of the bends of the Little White with buffalo roaming beyond. Maybe L
ewis and Clark had sent a scouting party that stood on this very same hill, curious to encounter the encampment. To the northwest, a meadow stretched before us. A long building stood at its far end.
“That’s the old sheep barn,” explained John. “Before my time, the ranch had a herd of three thousand sheep. They wintered on this meadow.” Well, how about that, the ranch came with a sheep barn. We rode up to take a closer look.
It was a dilapidated structure with sagging corners and weathered wood the color of the clouds. But long, probably as long as a football field. We dismounted and walked inside. A swallow swooped in front of me, stirring the mildewed air. Light filtered through cracks in the rafters and spotlighted weeds in the dirt floor. The gates on the little pens extending the length of the building stood at odd angles.
John said, “I’ve always been tempted to burn this place down. Not sure what else to do with it.”
The place had the feel of Arizona ghost towns I’ve visited, those once-bustling mining hubs now limp with decay and trafficked by rattlesnakes and tumbleweeds. I could almost hear the ghosts of sheepherders telling their stories of gathering three thousand ewes in here before the blizzard hit. I examined the wooden beams above and around me. Now here was fine, seasoned wood, protected from the piercing summer sun and winter snow and ice.
