Horse Lover

by H. Alan Day

  “You can write a letter.”

  I wrote down the address and hung up. The peachy glow of the sky muted the room. It was too dark to saddle Aunt Jemima. My heart wanted to ride her out on the range, find the horses, and tell them how deeply sorry I was. I had done the best I could do. My head intercepted. Before you fall to pieces, go find John and give him the news. I forced myself out of the chair.

  The news didn’t surprise John. “Like I’ve been telling you, Boss. Something is playing out that we can’t see.”

  We were sitting in the family room. I set down the glass of scotch I had poured before coming over. “I just want you to know that we’re going to continue as a working ranch. We already have cattle out there and we’ll invest in more.” Tomorrow I needed to say the same thing to Russ and Marty. Part of my job was to be a pillar of reassurance. Unfounded worry never helped run a ranch. “It’s been a hell of an experience, but it’s changing and I aim for us to change with it.”

  Debbie popped her head around the corner. “Guys, it’s dinnertime.”

  While sitting in the bright kitchen with my adopted family in a place I deeply loved, seeds of cynicism sprouted. For the first time in my life, my belief in the government wavered. Up until then, I believed if you went about it right, a good idea could be planted, watered, and harvested. I had gone to Washington DC and witnessed that happening firsthand. I believed the role of government was to support its citizens, even if the two parties didn’t always agree. Heck, I had dealt with bureaucrats throughout my working career, butted heads and argued with them, and still we shared a beer now and then.

  Later that evening, in the dark solitude of the doublewide, the questions streamed in. What was the BLM’s goal? Was there a payoff? Was there a friendship involved? Was this action intended to benefit them or harm me? Is that the way our wonderful government works for everybody or do they just handpick victims? Had I done something to piss someone off? Maybe the most recent incident with the BLM had influenced the playing field.

  About eight months before, the director of the BLM’s Sturgis office contacted me. Someone in the agency’s hierarchy had come up with the resume-boosting idea of microchipping the wild horses. A microchip would be inserted under the skin of each horse. A scanner could read the chip and identify the horse by its number. When a horse died, all we had to do was scan the chip and make the appropriate notation on a master list. What a great accounting system.

  “It’ll be real effective in the field,” said the director.

  “Yeh, about as effective as pounding sand,” I snapped. “Unless we find a horse on the day it dies, the coyotes will clean it to the bone. Are you fixin’ for us to scan the coyotes’ stomachs?

  The director disregarded my question and insisted I could insert the chip at the same time I vaccinated the horses. It wouldn’t take but half a day. Nope, that’s not true, I countered. It would take a week of intense work because we would have to head catch each horse, shave the animal, insert the chip, and make sure the number on the chip corresponded to the correct horse on the master list. Sometimes horses that shipped from different holding facilities had the same number freeze branded on them. In order to make sure we were working with the right horse, we would have to read the description of the horse—its physical traits and approximate age. This took time. The horse could be in the chute for five or ten minutes.

  Finally I said, “Okay, if you’re not going to listen to reason, I’ll do it. But I’m going to charge you $5 per head. My contract doesn’t mention microchipping mustangs.” The director argued, but I refused to give in on this one.

  He relented. “All right, we’ll pay you the fee.”

  The cowboys and I ramped up for the project. I hired extra hands to help, and the BLM mailed the microchips and scanner. It was five days of hard work, but we completed the job Friday afternoon. First thing I did after the last horse exited the chute was call the Sturgis office and confirm that all the microchips had been inserted and the master list updated. The director sounded pleased.

  “How do you want me to invoice you?” I asked.

  “Oh, we talked it over,” he said, “and we decided we don’t need to pay you on this one.”

  This guy just lit a match and was waving it way too close to a flammable tank. “What’s your justification?” I asked.

  “You had to vaccinate the horses so they were in the chute anyway. We don’t think it necessary to pay double for work you’re already doing.”

  I burst into flames. “This is not the way I do business. We’ve always been honorable with each other and stuck to our verbal agreements. You agreed over the phone to pay me. You know it and I know it. And if you’ll take one goddamn minute to think about it, you’ll realize it’s pretty stupid to stiff me because there are ways of getting paid. I can stop reporting dead horses. Before you’ll know it, I’ll have a herd of twenty-five to fifty phantom horses that you’ll be paying me for. Plus, I have the master list that matches each microchip to a horse. I’m the only one who has the list. But if you won’t pay me, I might as well tear that list up, right?”

  No answers were forthcoming; I was stonewalled and stymied. Why would an agency alienate the guy taking care of their property?

  I ended up getting paid. My herd of phantom horses grew just large enough for me to recoup my fee. I hated playing the game that way, but I wasn’t going to be taken for a ride. We kept the scanner in the range truck, though all it did was collect dust.

  Did that incident inspire the BLM to move the horses to a different ranch? I couldn’t make the call on that one. Perhaps the Oklahoma crew had more friends in the BLM than I did. My dealings with the agency occurred almost exclusively at the South Dakota level. Perhaps they lobbied their congressional representatives. Golly, should I have been doing that? Once Dayton and I had our contract and Mustang Meadows was receiving high marks, I didn’t think future lobbying was necessary. If John Hughes won the horses by lobbying, I took my hat off to his ability.

  I decided to bounce the situation off of Sandra. From the inception of the sanctuary, I had made it a point not to seek my sister’s opinion or involve her in any of our escapades. She immediately knew my options of recourse. The government has a court of law, she explained, that hears cases involving inane bureaucratic maneuverings. If I sued the BLM and won, I might get the bid overturned and be able to keep the sanctuary. She could help me go about the process of starting a lawsuit if that was the route I wanted to take. I said I would let her know if I needed assistance.

  I rolled around the option for a few days. Did I want to spend the next two or three years in court suing the hand that was feeding me? I had never sued anyone. There would be lawyers and fees, anger and negative energy. If I won and there were people who didn’t want me to be in the sanctuary business, they probably would continue to try to make my life hell. Plus, by that time I certainly wouldn’t have the goodwill of the BLM. I decided that I was far better off not to tangle with the government.

  On June 30, 1993, the sanctuary contract officially transferred to the Hughes group in Oklahoma. On July 15 I mailed an appeal letter to the BLM. Two weeks later a reply arrived in the mailbox. It was dated July 27, 1993.

  The U.S. Department of the Interior respectfully requests that the bid protest of Mustang Meadows Ranch (“Mustang”) be dismissed summarily as untimely.

  The protested Bureau of Land Management solicitation was issued March 8, 1993, with proposals due April 13, 1993 (copy enclosed). It sought a single facility with adequate carrying capacity to support approximately 2,000 wild horses. Those horses were being maintained on three sanctuaries, one of which was the protester’s. Mustang submitted a proposal in response to the RFP (copy enclosed). A contract was awarded to Tadpole Cattle Company on June 30, 1993. Mustang protested to GAO on July 15, 1993.

  Mustang asserts in its protest that the government will not realize a cost savings from the award of the contract and that the solicitation fails to consider th
e stress and trauma the horses would suffer during transport. In effect, the protester is objecting to the basic premise of the procurement—consolidation of the horses at one site—and to the evaluation factors. Since these matters were apparent in the solicitation, Mustang should have protested prior to the date for receipt of initial proposals, as required by GAO’s bid protest regulations. 4 C.F.R. §21.2(a)(1). Instead, Mustang submitted a proposal and only objected to the solicitation when it did not receive the contract. Because Mustang failed to file its protest in a timely manner, we urge GAO to dismiss the protest summarily, in accordance with 4 C.F.R. §21.3(m).

  No one ever mentioned the regulation that required an appeal be submitted prior to the bidding process. If I had known about it, I would have written the appeal the minute I received the bid solicitation. I couldn’t discern whether this was an egregious oversight or a premeditated one. Or neither. Nor did I know that there were three sanctuaries in operation. Dayton Hyde had one, but we had contracted for the same eighteen hundred horses. Were we considered two separate sanctuaries? And where was the third? Had Hughes already been caring for wild horses? Or was some other rancher doing that?

  I had been cut out of the BLM’s line of communication. At one time that line had been wide open and as a result, a wild horse sanctuary was born. Now I couldn’t get answers to simple questions. I was on an island as remote as the one Happy lived on. The only thing I knew for certain was the time had arrived to say goodbye to the wild horses.

  17. Horses at sunset

  20.

  At the End of the Day

  I didn’t even have to say “whoa.” Aunt Jemima knew to stop at the top of the hill. The sea of prairie sparkled under the late September sun and a stiff breeze swirled its autumn scent. The summer rains had fed the soil well. The land offered a daily feast to the cattle grazing in the swale below us.

  We now had nine hundred heifers. Although their presence pleased me, it did not fill the space the horses had occupied. Every day phantom mustangs and I rode through that space. Some days I saw Happy hanging on the outskirts of the herd or the palomino sisters and their look-alike foals feeding on the grass. Other days I listened as fifteen hundred horses gathered into a herd and followed me, our combined weight thudding against the soft earth. Always, I felt the horses’ presence. I missed their families, their intelligence, their offer of friendship and trust. Their absence made the fertile land feel barren. More than once, I pulled out my handkerchief to wipe my wet face.

  The horses had started shipping out in early August. They went out as they came in—forty per truckload. Almost daily, we led a group of mustangs into the corrals and waited for the call telling us when to expect the driver. Jerry Norbert came down a couple of times to check in on the proceedings. During his last visit, he said, “In all fairness, Al, I have to tell you there are some folks at the midlevel of government who think you used your sister’s influence to get the sanctuary. They think you’re a silver-spoon boy. Might be they wanted to yank out that spoon they thought was in your mouth.” I didn’t bother to ask him any questions. I was holding true to my decision not to muck around for rumored adversaries. At the deepest of levels, I knew it was healthier to rise above the fray. I had positive, productive places to put my energy. Past experiences had taught me to retain the sweetness and specialness of what was lost, learn from that loss, then move on. The future always would hold out new adventures to grab onto.

  Soon after the last truck skimmed over the ranch road, a local realtor called representing the Rosebud Sioux Indians. The tribe was making a considerable profit on its casino and was interested in buying back land it originally sold to whites. Would I be interested in selling the ranch? I would consider it if it met my business goals. Much to my surprise the tribe’s offer matched my original business plan: to sell the ranch when it doubled in value. It appealed to my sense of justice that the Native Americans would reacquire land so valuable to their culture. After the papers were signed, the elders invited me to be part of their traditional ceremony to celebrate the event. I felt deeply honored and did the best I could dancing and smoking a peace pipe.

  Since no one in the tribe knew about grass management, the tribal council wanted to hire me to teach their people about land stewardship. I was thrilled to be able to share what I had learned during my ranching career. We worked out a deal where I would lease the ranch at a low rate for five years and work with the tribe. I entrusted the running of the ranch to John Pitkin, my star student, so I could attend to business on Lazy B. About twice a year, I flew up to South Dakota for a few weeks and enjoyed working with the Rosebud Sioux and the land, though the ranch never felt the same as it had when the mustangs lived there.

  Wild horses had dominated my life for almost five years. The cosmos had smiled on me and gifted an opportunity so magnificent I couldn’t refuse it. After the mustangs exited, I had to make peace with it in order to move forward without regret and hate. Knowing that I had created something novel and innovative and had done it well gave me a deep-rooted satisfaction. I had loved more horses than I ever thought possible. We recognized each other as friends, lived through easy times and hard times. The mustangs taught me to pay attention to the little things in life, to empathize more with the animal kingdom, to trust my instincts. Without a doubt, I was a better man for knowing them. The BLM could ship the horses to Oklahoma, tear up my contract, and take away my monthly check, but I owned experiences and memories. At the end of the day, no one could take those away from me.

  “Time to go, Jemima,” I said. She took off at an easy gallop down the hill. For a moment I heard the horses’ whispers—snorts and nickers, the pawing of hooves. I gave Jemima her head and she galloped faster. The whispers grew into a crescendo of pounding rhythm, the rhythm of a thousand hooves hitting the ground in utter freedom. Fifteen hundred wild horses rode with me through the thick grass, beneath the arcing blue sky.

  Long may we run, I thought. Long may we run.

  In glory, beauty, and wonder.

  About the Authors

  Alan Day is the former owner of the Mustang Meadows Ranch near St. Francis, South Dakota; Rex Ranch near Whitman, Nebraska; and the Lazy B Ranch in southern Arizona. With his sister, Sandra Day O’Connor, he coauthored Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest. Lynn Wiese Sneyd is a published author and owner of LWS Literary Services. Sandra Day O’Connor served on the U. S. Supreme Court from 1981 to 2005.