My Horse Buck

by J. FRANK DOBIE

ALL the old-time range men of validity whom I have known remember horses with affection and respect as a part of the best of themselves. After their knees have begun to stiffen, most men realize that they have been disappointed in themselves, in other men, in achievement, in love, in most of whatever they expected out of life; but a man who has had a good horse in his life — a horse beyond the play world — will remember him as a certitude, like a calm mother, a lovely lake, or a gracious tree, amid all the flickering vanishments.

I remember Buck. He was raised on our ranch and was about half Spanish. He was a bright bay with a blaze in his face and stockings on his forefeet. He could hardly have weighed when fat over 850 pounds and was about 14 hands high. A Mexican broke him when he was three years old. From then on, nobody but me rode him, even after I left for college, He had a fine barrel and chest and was very fast for short distances but did not have the endurance of some other horses, straight Spaniards, in our remuda. What he lacked in toughness, he made up in intelligence, especially cow sense, loyalty, understanding, and generosity.

As a colt he had been bitten by a rattlesnake on the righl ankle just above the hoof; a hard, hairless scab marked the place as long as he lived. He traveled through the world listening for the warning ratlle. A kind of weed in the Southwest bears seeds that when ripe rattle in their pods a good deal like the sound made by a rattlesnake. Many a time when my spur or stirrup set these seeds a-rattling, Buck’s suddenness in jumping all but left me seated in the air. I don’t recall his smelling rattlesnakes, but he could smell afar off the rotten flesh of a yearling or any other cow brute afflicted with screwworms. He understood that I was hunting these animals in order to drive them to a pen and doctor them. In hot weather they take refuge in high weeds and thick brush. When he smelled one, he would point, to it with his ears and turn towards it. A dog trained for hunting out wormy cases could not have been more helpful.

Once a sullen cow that had been roped raked him in the breast with the tip of a horn. After that experience, he was wariness personified around anything roped, but he never, like some horses that have been hooked, shied away from an animal he was after, He knew and loved his business too well for that., He did not love it when, at the rate of less than a mile an hour, he was driving the thirsty, hot, tired, slobbering drag end of a herd, animals slopping behind every bush or without any bush, turning aside the moment they Were free of a driver. When sufficiently exasperated, Buck would go for a halting cow with mouth open and grab her just forward of the tail bone if she did not move on. Work like ihis may be humiliating to a gallant young cowboy and an eager cow horse; it is never pictured as a part of the romance of the range, but it is very necessary. It helps a cowboy to graduate into a cowman. A too high-strung horse without cow sense, which includes cow patience, will go to pieces at it just as he will go to pieces in running or cutting cattle.

Copyright 1952, by The Atlantic Monthly Company. Boston 16, Mass. All rights reserved.

Buck had the rein to make the proverbial “turn on a two-bit piece and give back fifteen cents in change.” One hot summer while we were gathering steers on leased grass about twelve miles from home, I galled his side with a tight cinch. I hated to keep on riding him with the galled side, but was obliged to on account of a shortage of horses. As I saddled up in camp one day after dinner, I left the cinch so loose that a hand might have been laid between it and Buck’s belly. We had to ride about, a mile before going through a wire gap into the posture where some snaky steers ran. As we rode along, a vaquero called my attention to the loose cinch.

“I will tighten it when we get to the gap,” I said.

“Cuidado (have care) and don’t forget,” he said.

At the gap, which he got down to open, I saw him look at me. I decided to wait until we struck something before lightening the girth. Two minutes later my father yelled and we saw a little hunch of steers high-tailing it through scattered mesquites for a thicket along a creek beyond. 1 forgot all about the cinch. Buck was easily the fastest horse ridden by the four or live men in our “cow crowd.” He left like a cry of joy to get around the steers.

As we beaded them, they turned to the left at an acute angle, and Buck turned at an angle considerably more acute. Sometimes he turned so quickly that the tapadera (toe-fender) of my stirrup raked the ground on the inside of the turn. This time When he doubled back, running full speed, the loose saddle naturally lurried on him. As my left hip hit the ground, I saw stars. One foot was still in a stirrup and the saddle was under Buck’s belly. I suppose that I instinetively pulled on the reins, but I believe that Buck would have stopped had he not been bridled. His slop was instantaneous; he did not drag me on the ground at all. He had provocation to go on, too, for in coming over his side and back, the spur on my right foot had raked him. He never needed spurs. I wore them on him just to be in fashion.

Sometimes in running through brush, Buck seemed to read my mind —or maybe I was reading his. He was better in the brush than I was. In brush work, man and horse must dodge, turn, go over bushes and under limbs, absolutely in accord, rider yielding to the instinct and judgment of the horse as much as horse yields to his.

Buck did not have to be staked. If I left a dragrope on him, he would stay close to camp, at noon or through the night. He was no paragon. Many men have ridden and remembered hardier horses. He was not proud, but carried himself in a very trim manner. He did the best he could, willingly and generously, and he had a good heart. His chemistry mixed with mine. He was good company. I loved to hear him drink water, he was so hearty in swallowing, and then, after be was full, to watch him lip the water’s surface and drip big drops hack into it.

Sometimes after we had watered and, passing on, had come to good grass near shade, I’d unsaddle and turn him loose to graze. Then I’d lie down on the saddle and, while the blanket dried, listen to Ins energetic cropping and watch the buzzards sail and the Gulf clouds float. Buck would blow out his breath once in a while, presumably to clear his nost rils but also, it seemed to me, to express contentment.

He never asked me to stop, unless it was to stale, and never, like some gentle saddle horses, interrupted his step to grab a mouthful of grass; but if I stopped with slackened rein to watch cattle, or maybe just to gaze over the flow of hills to the horizon, he’d reach down and begin cutting grass, He knew that was all right with me, though a person’s seat on a grazing horse is not nearly so comfortable as on one with upright head. Occasionally I washed the sweat off his hack and favored him in other ways, but nobody in our part of the country pampered cow horses with sugar or other delicacy.

While riding Buck in boyhood and early youth, I fell in love with four or five girls but told only one. She was right in considering the matter a joke and thereby did me one of the biggest favors of my life. All those rose-lipped maidens and all the light-foot lads with whom I ran in those days have little meaning for me now. They never had much in comparison with numerous people I have known since. Buck, however, always in association with the plot of earth over which I rode him, increases in meaning. To remember him is a joy and a tonic.

2

OWING to endless iteration of the cowboy myth and to exhibition riding, the popular conception of cow horses is a distortion of reality. The cow horse was — and remains — a work horse. In times when most cow horses were Spanish and cowboys lived and worked with them in complete isolation — and in entire ignorance of the ideal subsequently enjoined by film and pulp paper — comparatively few maintained the habit of pitching. They were valued for reliability and intelligence as much as for energy and endurance. The young pitchers, which generally settled down in maturity, bore slight resemblance to the jug-headed, Percheronshaped outlaws of modern rodeos.

Pitching seems to be unknown to horses in Arabia; I have met with no account of pitching among Barbs or among horses in Spain. Occasional European horses have from time immemorial been vicious or have buck-jumped and reared, but the bronco with “belly full of bedspririgs,” pawing for the moon, breaking in two halfway up, sun-fishing on the way down, and then hitting the earth hard enough to crack open his rider’s liver, was a development of the Western Hemisphere. Spain had no word to express something unknown in horse conduct. To denote the act of pitching, Mexico gave the verb reparar a new meaning. In Spain a potro is a colt; in Mexico and the Southwest, potro came to mean an unbroken horse with a disposition to down his head and try to jump out of his skin. The Spaniards came to the Americas riding Moorish style—“English style,” as it is called in the West—with short stirrups. As their horses grew wild and pitched when mounted, riders found that short stirrups prevented their getting a quick seat and clasping legs against a complexly squirming horse. They lengthened their stirrups to make range riding more effective, also more comfortable. Indians frequently used no stirrups at all.

Nobody says just when descendants of the original Spanish horses acquired their disposition for “promptitude,” but from the pampas of Patagonia to the plains of Alberta, range men came to believe that they got it from practice in pitching off panthers. Transmission of acquired characteristics is contrary to biological law. The old-time range way of allowing horses to run untouched by human hands, except when they were castrated and branded, for three or four years before gentling was undertaken, no doubt contributed to the pitching habit. The brutal process of breaking — the word gentling being foreign to the vocabulary of the open range — must have been another contributor. Perhaps, also, some substance in grass or water affected equine temperament. Anyhow, a range horse “without a little life in him” came to be distrusted. One Texan is supposed to have said, “Any mustang that outgrows a hankering to elevate is guilty of treason to the grand old State of Texas.”

The head of many a big bucking horse seen in modern rodeos indicates lack of intelligence, but the most intelligent potro can be turned into an outlaw. An old stove-up cowhand named Cole whom I encountered in Austin in 1922 told me this story.

“One day the man I was working for got in two new horses to break. I roped out one; he was a big sorrel. A Negro he roped the other, a barrel-built dun. When we saddled up, my sorrel didn’t do a thing but stand as if he had been saddled every day for a year. The dun he pitched all over the pen with the saddle. The Negro was afraid to ride him and so we swapped. Well, sir, that sorrel horse nearly killed the Negro, and the dun never even humped his back after I got on him. A horse that pitches with the saddle is often that way.

“I rode the dun for two months or so on cow work. He was plumb gentle and had lots of cow sense. He was getting to be the best kind of cow horse. Then one day while I was on herd, resting easy in the saddle under a shade tree, the boss and a couple of hands rode up to talk. Just to be fooling, the boss gave my horse a light lick with his quirt across the back. That dun struck out pitching right through the middle of the herd. He pitched for half a mile right and left, backwards and forwards. There was no getting his motion, He pitched till we were both broke down and I was bleeding at nose, mouth, and ears. I never saw such pitching in all my born days.

“After that it was the same thing every time the dun was saddled. Nobody but me could ride him and before long I wouldn’t ride him. He got to be a regular outlaw. He went plumb crazy from that quirt lick across his back, and it was a crazy thing for the boss to make it. Finally he was traded off, and the last I heard of him he was just running free, nobody ever even roping him.”

3

MEN who night-herded over wide ranges and up the trails picked the most trustworthy horses for night horses. They valued them above the cutting horses, about which so much has been said. Often the night horse had to do the cowboy’s seeing and hearing; on dark and stormy nights he kept his rider from getting lost. No matter if a herd drifted or ran miles from camp, a good night horse, given his head, would travel straight back for the chuck wagon. He knew, as well as a plow mule knows when noon comes, the hour at which the guard should change. On a ranch of the lower Texas plains was a brown Spanish horse branded C I D and called Sid. He was used only as a night horse, and having Sid in his string marked a cowboy as favored. When the time came to change guard, Sid might by main strength and awkwardness be persuaded to make two or three more rounds of the herd. He would concede that much to the possibility of error in his estimation of time. Then he would take the bit in his teeth and head for the chuck wagon.

Soon after the Civil War ended, Uel Livingston of Hamilton County, Texas, went up the trail with a herd of longhorns. One night while he was on guard the cattle were so quiet and he was so sleepy that he decided to take a nap. He rode a little to one side, dismounted, and was immediately dead asleep. A rumble and vibrations of the earth against his ear awakened him to a stampede. As he started to rise he saw that his horse was standing over him, front feet on one side of his body and hind feet on the other. He always believed that his night horse stood there to protect him from running cattle.

If the boss of outfit had a good heart and considered n green hand capable of learning, he might mount him on a wise old horse for teacher. A Texas boss put a tenderfoot hired in Kansas on Old Trusty for night work. The tenderfoot staked him, saddled but unbridled, as other cowboys in camp staked their night horses, near his pallet. One night he heard the cattle break and jumped up to find Old Trusty as close to him as the stake rope would allow, He had never been in a stampede. He did not take lime to bridle the horse, just untied the rope and jumped into the saddle. Old Trusty took him alongside the lead runners and veered them into a mill — a circle—which soon wound up. After the run was over. Old Trusty stopped, heaved a long breath, and began grabbing mouthfuls of grass, well satisfied with the job he had done.

“As smart as a cutting horse,” one of the old savings of the range goes, and many a tall tale has come down about cutting horses that could read brands, classify cattle as to age or sex, and cut them accordingly, without bridle or guidance by man. A good cutting horse does learn quickly to recognize what his master, riding in a herd, is looking for, and as soon as his master indicates an animal, he begins working it out. He is eager but restrained, never exciting the cattle. I suppose that on some ranches there are just as good cutting horses now as ever existed, but I am concerned with Spanish horses.

Many Spanish cutting horses were used for other work, and nearly any top cow horse would after a little practice be efficient at cutting. Some of the best ones looked sleepy when off duty. They had to hold energy in reserve in order to endure and in order not to excite the herd. Reserve and restraint are a part of cow sense. When Old Sleepy, resting on three legs, head down and lower lip drooping, as he waited there in a thicket, heard brush pop, horn click, or hoof thud, he became a changed being. His heart would go to thumping against his rider’s legs, and if that rider could stay with him he would tear a hole through the brush getting to the wild runners.

“Catch me Pelicano,” Manuel Hinojosa, the cow boss, would say. I he herd was ready to be worked. Pelicano was a widish brown with many white hairs in his tail. He always looked satisfied with himself, but more in the manner of a burgher drinking beer than of a grandee on parade. As Manuel rode him into the herd he was all energy, and one could see that he was holding himself m as easily as he was holding a cow and call together while he helped cut them out. Most people who do anything well beyond the mechanical enjoy doing it; it is the same with horses. A cowman of the old ways down in the brush told me that one lime right after a rain he saw by tracks that a roping and cutting horse he had turned out to recover from lameness had run a cow and knocked her down. He had merely wanted to do what he enjoyed doing.

There is one word to apply to Spanish cow ponies. That is gamy. One not 14 hands high, weighing maybe 800 pounds, carrying a man and saddle weighing close to 200 pounds, would run up alongside an aged outlaw steer weighing 1200 pounds. After his rider had cast the loop and it had gone true, but not a moment before, he would squat to lake the jerk on the saddle horn. If the animal was thrown, he would keep the rope tight while the rider sped to tie it down. He never saved himself from thorns, and in the brush country most of his kind had bungod-up knees. He hardly knew the taste of corn or oats, but he could mow the grass when he got a chance and assimilate it as soon as it was swallowed. Often he had a set last on his back. He was gamy.

When A. Phimister Proctor was commissioned in 1939 to make a bronze stat ue of a group of authentic mustangs, the only Spanish horses in Texas available for models, so far as I and other men concerned knew, were owned by Pom T. East on his San Antonio Viejo ranch in the brushy border country. He had nearly 250 head of dun and gruilo horses, all line-backed. They were descendants of a dun mustang stallion caught when about ten years old on the Rancho Randado. In 1920 Tom East got a gruilo stallion, son of the dun, and began breeding him to a few mares that were puro Español. In the course of years he found that no matter what the color of a stallion bred to dun mares, 90 per cent of the colls were dun. He tried raising Arabian horses also. “They have the bottom,” he said. “You can run one all day, but they don’t have cow sense.”

The Randado horse ranch, established late in the eighteenth century, used to raise about the best Spanish horses in Texas. During years of range expansion following the Civil War. Randado horses were celebrated thousands of miles away. They were incredibly tough. On the big works in the Randado country, before it was fenced, vaqueros rode a circle of over one hundred miles bringing in the cabafladas without changing mounts. From dawn till dark, day following day. they rode mostly in a gallop, staked their mounts at night, and were never afoot.

It was fitting that A. Phimister Proctor’s mustangs, plunging forever in bronze, should, while representing all Spanish horses, have been modeled upon coyote duns out of the Rancho Randado. Of that ranch nothing is left now but a decayed house, a watering tank made long ago by carrying dirt for the dam on cow hides pulled from the saddle horn — and a name. Tom East of the San Antonio Viejo is dead, and other blood is mixing into the last stud of duns and grullos in all the Spanish country of the Southwest.