"Don't talk baby-talk to the damned horses! That's the most irritating damned thing I've ever heard!"
I jumped a little bit, shocked that Earl had heard me from the other side of camp, talking to Squanto while she ate her feed out of the black, plastic bin. I realized it was dusk, now, and we were in thick trees that cast vertical shadows. My face got red-hot with embarrassment, and I didn't answer. Earl let it drop.
We had ridden out into the piney woods of far East Texas near the Louisiana border, just for a few hours. We had packed light--just enough for an overnight trip, and we planned on sleeping out under the stars. I wasn't sure if I was more hungry or tired at that point--we had stopped a couple of times for water and to readjust weight on the horses--there were about ten of us taking the horses across to the camp on the other side of the Natchez ranch, and we figured we'd make it an easy overnight trip instead of a tough full-day trip.
We got a late start, and started off a man short, because one of the guys sat square on top of a copperhead in his bunk after breakfast, and it bit him in the top of the leg, right under the right buttock. The tents were cool and dry in the woods, and it was already near 90 degrees. The man was whisked away in a dented, white pickup that the ranch kept on hand for moving equipment, and the rest of the camp got jittery and slow as we transferred gear from our tents to pack onto the horses--only a bedroll, mess kit, canteen full of water, and a dry change of clothes were allowed. Earl led a cream-colored pack horse with cooking gear and some cans of chili for dinner, and a sack of feed for the horses strapped inside a small stack of shallow, plastic buckets. Everyone was still edgy and on the lookout when we left because when Bennie came out screaming, the snake somehow had gotten away.
The trail was hot and dusty from the orange, sandy layer of thick, loose dirt that was dry under the horses hooves, kicking up behind us and hanging in the air as we rode along. Immediately, we rode right through the middle of a huge, yellow hayfield near the 10-acre fenced pasture where the horses were kept during most of the summer, and then right into thick woods that was owned by the Owens Paper Company, and leased to the ranch for maintenance and access. I was up near Earl at the front of the line and, when we came around a bend in the trail where it narrowed into a grove dark from the intersecting branches of towering oaks, we saw three large deer bolt suddenly across our path like ghosts, appearing from nowhere and disappearing into the trees almost immediately. I love being at the front of a trek for that very reason--the wildlife is generally out of sight by the time the stragglers come through.
I've ridden horses all my life, but it's never been up to me to take care of them in any way. For this trip, under the direction of Earl Dobbins, we were directed to brush them down, saddle them up, make them take the bit, and generally take care of them on the trip, which was supposed to be a treat for those of us who were spending time at the ranch. You could see that some of the crowd of guys with us had never been close to a big animal before--their eyes grew wide when they walked up to throw the blanket and saddle over the withers, and they were very tentative in handling the equipment. Earl didn't help by scaring the hell out of everyone as they reached under the horse to cinch the saddle up, telling about how it makes the horse jumpy and talking about getting kicked in the head. These were the same guys whose horses told them where they were going. Sure, they may follow along the trail as long as they wanted to, but if they felt the rider's hands light on the reins, they were just as likely to walk off the trail for a fresh patch of clover, leaving the bewildered passenger confused at where he went wrong. I knew that wasn't going to happen to me.
My horse, Squanto, was a paint, almost solid brown with large, white patches along her backside. She had behaved herself well all day and was very reliable, handling the trail effortlessly and never fighting me for control. Now that we had unpacked, I was compelled to go make sure she was fed and taken care of--some of the other guys just threw their things down, unrolled their bedrolls and lay down. I guess I didn't realize that Earl was so fussy about treating a horse in a distant manner, lest it forget it's just a dumb animal.
Earl Dobbins was another mystery. When you're out in the woods, a lot of time is spent in thought, and a recurring question that came to my mind concerned Earl's authenticity as a cowboy. On first glance, he sure looked the part with the jeans and a straw cowboy hat that was worn and dusty. It's funny when you realize you never catch a cowboy on the day he bought his cowboy hat--it always looks about a year or two old.
When we were packing up, though, it caught my eye that Earl's jeans were just a little too blue. A second glance gave him away as a fraud--there were freshly ironed creases along the legs! I smiled to myself.
But, on the trail, Earl knew exactly what he was doing and where he was going. He said practically nothing, except when one of the guys would make a foolish mistake.
"Hey, get that animal out of that clover right now! What's wrong with you? No! Pull up on the reins! You're gonna have to pull harder! Get back on the trail!"
But, overall, he seemed very calm and in control-it was hard to confirm or contradict my initial assessment of the man, since he barely spoke a word, and certainly didn't say anything about himself. After the day on the trail I had changed my mind, convinced that Earl's expertise qualified him as a real cowboy, despite his manicured jeans. At the end of the day, I rode up beside him and noticed his boots, which were rubbed smooth and faded down where stirrups had worn against them from many hours of work in the saddle. I took it as a definitive clue.
I was still nervous from Bennie getting bit in the ass that morning, and stories kept going around about how snakes like to crawl into your sleeping bag with you at night since it's nice and toasty in the chill of the Texas night--particularly pit vipers who could "see" the hotter temperature of a man's body. That scared me to death, and still does, when I'm out in the woods. I waited up drinking coffee by the fire and, when I finally was tired enough to know that I wasn't going to lay up for an hour thinking about snakes, I headed over to my sleeping bag, which I unrolled, unzipped, and shook out to make sure there wasn't anything inside. I crawled inside, used my boots wrapped in a shirt for a pillow, and fell asleep staring up at the stars with the noisy sounds of crickets working away in the black woods.
When I woke up, I was staring at a scorpion about a foot away from me on a chip of bark on the ground. It was pretty small, light brown and about half an inch long, but I've always been told that those are the most painful ones if you get stung by them. I got up slow, shook out my boots, which had come partially unwrapped, and packed up my gear. I went over to the fire, and saw some biscuits wrapped in foil cooking over some coals. Earl had placed just a few coals on top, I guess so they would cook more evenly. Some coffee was going as well--the night before, it had taken a few minutes to get all of the grounds out of my mouth, so I was hoping to get one of the cups off the top of the pot instead of the sludge at the bottom, but I could see I was a few behind in the line already.
Then one of the boys knocked nearly all of the biscuits into the fire trying to unwrap the foil. Earl just shrugged and took a sip of coffee--guess he doesn't get worked up over all mistakes, just horse mistakes.
Then I realized again that he had fooled me and that he really was a fraud--his jeans didn't have the telltale ring worn in his rear jean pocket from holding a can of snuff. Almost every cowboy I had ever seen "dipped" tobacco, and this just cinched it for me that Earl was posing as a real cowboy but lacked authenticity. It didn't really affect me, but it was good to know.
I dug one of the biscuits out of the fire quickly with a stick, wiped the ash off it, and ate it--it was just fine, although the other guys looked at me funny. I saw a couple of them go and cut the broad leaves off a cactus and toss the flat body onto the fire--this is supposed to burn off the spikes. These guys were going to show off and eat the fruit out of the cactus, which tastes like sticky, bitter, watermelon rind. To me, this was a last resort because the spines never completely burn off, the meat of the cactus is so sticky that the juice takes a lot of water to wash off your hands, and, besides that, it tends to give you the runs. Sure enough, I saw these guys digging needles out of their hands with a pocketknife for the rest of the day.
We got on the trail, and got out into the open very quickly in the day. We only had about 10 more miles to go, so we would be pulling in to the ranch house by around noon, so I made up my mind to enjoy the morning ride near the front with Earl, confident in the fact that I knew his secret. It was overcast, and before long I knew we would get rained on. I didn't have any rain gear, so it worried me a little that we may be soaked with a summer thunderstorm and get extremely cold. I was angry at myself for not planning better.
Just then, Earl turned around and started talking to me.
When I say turned around, he actually turned around in the saddle, and started riding the horse while sitting backwards! Somehow, he actually lay down backward on the horse as we went along the trail and started nonchalongly asking about where I was from and why I was on the trail with him. I was trying to act cool and ignore his crazy riding, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of amazing me. Also, maybe I was still embarrassed from being admonished the night before. Whatever the case, I was sincerely hoping that this fraud cowboy poser would get thrown on his ass right in front of me.
He dug a can of Copenhagen out of his shirt pocket and grabbed a big fingerful and put it in his mouth. I thought to myself: Well, maybe this guy is a real cowboy who is just overly particular about the condition of his trousers...
As we rode along the trail, it started to rain small drops in a light summer shower. I acted like I didn't even realize it was raining--I thought Earl was watching me to see if I would react to the rain like a city boy, wincing like it was acid falling from the sky. I was just worried about getting cold, but certainly wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of feeling tougher than me. More prepared, perhaps, but not tougher. He was in the lead and I was the number two man. One of the hands had caught up to us with Bennie's horse the night before, and had taken the pack horse out early that morning ahead on the trail, and was probably already at the ranch house by now. Behind us, I could hear the guys starting to bitch and moan about the rain. A couple of guys stopped to dig their rain gear out of their bundles, but Earl didn't stop to wait.
Riding backwards in the saddle downhill, with rain beading on his tattered hat and dripping off the front, his lower lip bulging with tobacco, and still somehow managing to look graceful, Earl belted out, loudly, in an operatic baritone:
I'm singin' in the rain
Just singin' in the rain.
What a glorious feeling!
I'm happy again
A cowboy who sings showtunes? It didn't take much more thought before I gave up on deciphering Earl's true colors.
When we were about two miles out from the ranch house, we passsed a field of wild blackberries, the stalks reaching up to the horses' bellies. Copying Earl, I scooped my hand down along the stalks and grabbed a handful of berries. They were still wet from the brief rain shower and they tasted like a handful of grass mixed with a thimbleful of sugar, but it was fun to eat them anyway. I scooped again and somehow sliced my hand as it dragged across the leaves, similar to a papercut. It stung, and the sticky juice from the blackberries got into the cut, making it sting even worse.
We rode into camp, unsaddled the horses, and by then Earl had disappeared into his room at the ranch house. I didn't see him again, but I thought about him and laughed that he was quiet and unassuming one minute, opinionated, capable, and self-confident enough to do whatever he wanted to do, when he wanted to do it. It made me smile.
The following spring, Earl Dobbins was working in the hayfield when two massive roundbales of hay fell on top of him and snapped his neck, killing him instantly.
Sometimes, I get a flash of memory from that trail ride--the deep smell of heavy, oiled leather, the taste of berries (although none ever taste as good as they did that morning, picked freshly from the summer field), and pine needles when the air is just right. Even once when someone sang "Singing in the Rain" while we were in the stands at a football game and rain soaked us in the stands unexpectedly.
I remember that ride because it was the last time I rode the trail with a real cowboy.
I jumped a little bit, shocked that Earl had heard me from the other side of camp, talking to Squanto while she ate her feed out of the black, plastic bin. I realized it was dusk, now, and we were in thick trees that cast vertical shadows. My face got red-hot with embarrassment, and I didn't answer. Earl let it drop.
We had ridden out into the piney woods of far East Texas near the Louisiana border, just for a few hours. We had packed light--just enough for an overnight trip, and we planned on sleeping out under the stars. I wasn't sure if I was more hungry or tired at that point--we had stopped a couple of times for water and to readjust weight on the horses--there were about ten of us taking the horses across to the camp on the other side of the Natchez ranch, and we figured we'd make it an easy overnight trip instead of a tough full-day trip.
We got a late start, and started off a man short, because one of the guys sat square on top of a copperhead in his bunk after breakfast, and it bit him in the top of the leg, right under the right buttock. The tents were cool and dry in the woods, and it was already near 90 degrees. The man was whisked away in a dented, white pickup that the ranch kept on hand for moving equipment, and the rest of the camp got jittery and slow as we transferred gear from our tents to pack onto the horses--only a bedroll, mess kit, canteen full of water, and a dry change of clothes were allowed. Earl led a cream-colored pack horse with cooking gear and some cans of chili for dinner, and a sack of feed for the horses strapped inside a small stack of shallow, plastic buckets. Everyone was still edgy and on the lookout when we left because when Bennie came out screaming, the snake somehow had gotten away.
The trail was hot and dusty from the orange, sandy layer of thick, loose dirt that was dry under the horses hooves, kicking up behind us and hanging in the air as we rode along. Immediately, we rode right through the middle of a huge, yellow hayfield near the 10-acre fenced pasture where the horses were kept during most of the summer, and then right into thick woods that was owned by the Owens Paper Company, and leased to the ranch for maintenance and access. I was up near Earl at the front of the line and, when we came around a bend in the trail where it narrowed into a grove dark from the intersecting branches of towering oaks, we saw three large deer bolt suddenly across our path like ghosts, appearing from nowhere and disappearing into the trees almost immediately. I love being at the front of a trek for that very reason--the wildlife is generally out of sight by the time the stragglers come through.
I've ridden horses all my life, but it's never been up to me to take care of them in any way. For this trip, under the direction of Earl Dobbins, we were directed to brush them down, saddle them up, make them take the bit, and generally take care of them on the trip, which was supposed to be a treat for those of us who were spending time at the ranch. You could see that some of the crowd of guys with us had never been close to a big animal before--their eyes grew wide when they walked up to throw the blanket and saddle over the withers, and they were very tentative in handling the equipment. Earl didn't help by scaring the hell out of everyone as they reached under the horse to cinch the saddle up, telling about how it makes the horse jumpy and talking about getting kicked in the head. These were the same guys whose horses told them where they were going. Sure, they may follow along the trail as long as they wanted to, but if they felt the rider's hands light on the reins, they were just as likely to walk off the trail for a fresh patch of clover, leaving the bewildered passenger confused at where he went wrong. I knew that wasn't going to happen to me.
My horse, Squanto, was a paint, almost solid brown with large, white patches along her backside. She had behaved herself well all day and was very reliable, handling the trail effortlessly and never fighting me for control. Now that we had unpacked, I was compelled to go make sure she was fed and taken care of--some of the other guys just threw their things down, unrolled their bedrolls and lay down. I guess I didn't realize that Earl was so fussy about treating a horse in a distant manner, lest it forget it's just a dumb animal.
Earl Dobbins was another mystery. When you're out in the woods, a lot of time is spent in thought, and a recurring question that came to my mind concerned Earl's authenticity as a cowboy. On first glance, he sure looked the part with the jeans and a straw cowboy hat that was worn and dusty. It's funny when you realize you never catch a cowboy on the day he bought his cowboy hat--it always looks about a year or two old.
When we were packing up, though, it caught my eye that Earl's jeans were just a little too blue. A second glance gave him away as a fraud--there were freshly ironed creases along the legs! I smiled to myself.
But, on the trail, Earl knew exactly what he was doing and where he was going. He said practically nothing, except when one of the guys would make a foolish mistake.
"Hey, get that animal out of that clover right now! What's wrong with you? No! Pull up on the reins! You're gonna have to pull harder! Get back on the trail!"
But, overall, he seemed very calm and in control-it was hard to confirm or contradict my initial assessment of the man, since he barely spoke a word, and certainly didn't say anything about himself. After the day on the trail I had changed my mind, convinced that Earl's expertise qualified him as a real cowboy, despite his manicured jeans. At the end of the day, I rode up beside him and noticed his boots, which were rubbed smooth and faded down where stirrups had worn against them from many hours of work in the saddle. I took it as a definitive clue.
I was still nervous from Bennie getting bit in the ass that morning, and stories kept going around about how snakes like to crawl into your sleeping bag with you at night since it's nice and toasty in the chill of the Texas night--particularly pit vipers who could "see" the hotter temperature of a man's body. That scared me to death, and still does, when I'm out in the woods. I waited up drinking coffee by the fire and, when I finally was tired enough to know that I wasn't going to lay up for an hour thinking about snakes, I headed over to my sleeping bag, which I unrolled, unzipped, and shook out to make sure there wasn't anything inside. I crawled inside, used my boots wrapped in a shirt for a pillow, and fell asleep staring up at the stars with the noisy sounds of crickets working away in the black woods.
When I woke up, I was staring at a scorpion about a foot away from me on a chip of bark on the ground. It was pretty small, light brown and about half an inch long, but I've always been told that those are the most painful ones if you get stung by them. I got up slow, shook out my boots, which had come partially unwrapped, and packed up my gear. I went over to the fire, and saw some biscuits wrapped in foil cooking over some coals. Earl had placed just a few coals on top, I guess so they would cook more evenly. Some coffee was going as well--the night before, it had taken a few minutes to get all of the grounds out of my mouth, so I was hoping to get one of the cups off the top of the pot instead of the sludge at the bottom, but I could see I was a few behind in the line already.
Then one of the boys knocked nearly all of the biscuits into the fire trying to unwrap the foil. Earl just shrugged and took a sip of coffee--guess he doesn't get worked up over all mistakes, just horse mistakes.
Then I realized again that he had fooled me and that he really was a fraud--his jeans didn't have the telltale ring worn in his rear jean pocket from holding a can of snuff. Almost every cowboy I had ever seen "dipped" tobacco, and this just cinched it for me that Earl was posing as a real cowboy but lacked authenticity. It didn't really affect me, but it was good to know.
I dug one of the biscuits out of the fire quickly with a stick, wiped the ash off it, and ate it--it was just fine, although the other guys looked at me funny. I saw a couple of them go and cut the broad leaves off a cactus and toss the flat body onto the fire--this is supposed to burn off the spikes. These guys were going to show off and eat the fruit out of the cactus, which tastes like sticky, bitter, watermelon rind. To me, this was a last resort because the spines never completely burn off, the meat of the cactus is so sticky that the juice takes a lot of water to wash off your hands, and, besides that, it tends to give you the runs. Sure enough, I saw these guys digging needles out of their hands with a pocketknife for the rest of the day.
We got on the trail, and got out into the open very quickly in the day. We only had about 10 more miles to go, so we would be pulling in to the ranch house by around noon, so I made up my mind to enjoy the morning ride near the front with Earl, confident in the fact that I knew his secret. It was overcast, and before long I knew we would get rained on. I didn't have any rain gear, so it worried me a little that we may be soaked with a summer thunderstorm and get extremely cold. I was angry at myself for not planning better.
Just then, Earl turned around and started talking to me.
When I say turned around, he actually turned around in the saddle, and started riding the horse while sitting backwards! Somehow, he actually lay down backward on the horse as we went along the trail and started nonchalongly asking about where I was from and why I was on the trail with him. I was trying to act cool and ignore his crazy riding, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of amazing me. Also, maybe I was still embarrassed from being admonished the night before. Whatever the case, I was sincerely hoping that this fraud cowboy poser would get thrown on his ass right in front of me.
He dug a can of Copenhagen out of his shirt pocket and grabbed a big fingerful and put it in his mouth. I thought to myself: Well, maybe this guy is a real cowboy who is just overly particular about the condition of his trousers...
As we rode along the trail, it started to rain small drops in a light summer shower. I acted like I didn't even realize it was raining--I thought Earl was watching me to see if I would react to the rain like a city boy, wincing like it was acid falling from the sky. I was just worried about getting cold, but certainly wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of feeling tougher than me. More prepared, perhaps, but not tougher. He was in the lead and I was the number two man. One of the hands had caught up to us with Bennie's horse the night before, and had taken the pack horse out early that morning ahead on the trail, and was probably already at the ranch house by now. Behind us, I could hear the guys starting to bitch and moan about the rain. A couple of guys stopped to dig their rain gear out of their bundles, but Earl didn't stop to wait.
Riding backwards in the saddle downhill, with rain beading on his tattered hat and dripping off the front, his lower lip bulging with tobacco, and still somehow managing to look graceful, Earl belted out, loudly, in an operatic baritone:
I'm singin' in the rain
Just singin' in the rain.
What a glorious feeling!
I'm happy again
A cowboy who sings showtunes? It didn't take much more thought before I gave up on deciphering Earl's true colors.
When we were about two miles out from the ranch house, we passsed a field of wild blackberries, the stalks reaching up to the horses' bellies. Copying Earl, I scooped my hand down along the stalks and grabbed a handful of berries. They were still wet from the brief rain shower and they tasted like a handful of grass mixed with a thimbleful of sugar, but it was fun to eat them anyway. I scooped again and somehow sliced my hand as it dragged across the leaves, similar to a papercut. It stung, and the sticky juice from the blackberries got into the cut, making it sting even worse.
We rode into camp, unsaddled the horses, and by then Earl had disappeared into his room at the ranch house. I didn't see him again, but I thought about him and laughed that he was quiet and unassuming one minute, opinionated, capable, and self-confident enough to do whatever he wanted to do, when he wanted to do it. It made me smile.
The following spring, Earl Dobbins was working in the hayfield when two massive roundbales of hay fell on top of him and snapped his neck, killing him instantly.
Sometimes, I get a flash of memory from that trail ride--the deep smell of heavy, oiled leather, the taste of berries (although none ever taste as good as they did that morning, picked freshly from the summer field), and pine needles when the air is just right. Even once when someone sang "Singing in the Rain" while we were in the stands at a football game and rain soaked us in the stands unexpectedly.
I remember that ride because it was the last time I rode the trail with a real cowboy.
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