The Out-Foxer
By
Kenneth E Ely
The early 1970s were my ranch years. The operation
of the Double M Channel Bar Ranch was more of a cathartic effort to come to terms with some of my roots
than a financial venture,
although finances were certainly a consideration: I spent mine in their entirety
trying to build
the ranch into a money-making operation.
I learned a lot in the endeavor and have some great memories. And I did come to terms with the portion
of my heritage that involves
ranching: ranching roots, like tree roots, can be more gnarled and dirty
when dug among than when just fantasized about.
I tried to do just about every job on the ranch, except
for milking the cows, on horseback. This was not because horses were the best way to get the jobs done:
quite to the contrary; there was very often a better and faster way. We used horses whenever
we could because
of a picture that became indelibly printed
on the inside of my brain bucket sometime when I was a kid.
The picture was of my Uncle Shed, sitting on his horse, outlined against a sunset sky. His walrus mustache was just discernible in the purple shadows of his face beneath the wide-brimmed, tall-crowned hat he wore, outlined in silhouette by the last red rays of the sun, gone down beyond distant hills studded with saguaro cactus. The silver conchos on his batwing chaps reflected light that came from somewhere on the wrong side of the picture. He and his horse were on a slight promontory from which they could look out over a herd of cattle. The cattle weren't in the picture, but I knew what Uncle Shed and his horse were looking at.
But the whole picture was nonsense, from the moustache right down to the cattle that weren't in the picture. Uncle Shed was a sheep rancher. He was clean shaven, and he he wore work shoes, coveralls, and a bill-cap. And he mostly worked out of a pickup truck. But the picture stuck in my mind and it was what ranching was all about for me. So, I tried to do everything on horseback that was at all possible. Of course, this boiled down to very little actual work. We made hay with a couple of tractors and the rest of the stuff it takes to put up hay. We took feed out to the stock in a pickup. We hauled manure with a tractor loader and a tractor-drawn spreader.
The main part of the ranch was only forty acres big, with fifteen acres of this in woods for four months of the year and in standing water and woods for the rest. We rented additional land to make hay on, but for thirty-five head of beef and seven or eight horses, you don't need a lot of hay or a lot of graze, either. This will give you the idea, correctly, that we were just barely able to qualify for being called a ranch. And you would be correct if you assumed that most of what we did on horseback amounted to play. And the best use of the best horse I ever had was in a game we simply called "Woods Tag”.
The game was straight forward enough. You had to be on your horse – or, at least, somehow connected to your horse. You couldn't go off and leave him tied to a tree while you snuck around the woods on foot. Whoever was IT had the count of one hundred to ride off into the woods and hide. The NOT-ITS stayed up by the barn and counted. IT was captured when a NOT-IT got to within one horse's length of ITS horse. Nobody could hide around the barn and everybody had to stay inside the main pasture fence. Those were the only rules.
The picture was of my Uncle Shed, sitting on his horse, outlined against a sunset sky. His walrus mustache was just discernible in the purple shadows of his face beneath the wide-brimmed, tall-crowned hat he wore, outlined in silhouette by the last red rays of the sun, gone down beyond distant hills studded with saguaro cactus. The silver conchos on his batwing chaps reflected light that came from somewhere on the wrong side of the picture. He and his horse were on a slight promontory from which they could look out over a herd of cattle. The cattle weren't in the picture, but I knew what Uncle Shed and his horse were looking at.
But the whole picture was nonsense, from the moustache right down to the cattle that weren't in the picture. Uncle Shed was a sheep rancher. He was clean shaven, and he he wore work shoes, coveralls, and a bill-cap. And he mostly worked out of a pickup truck. But the picture stuck in my mind and it was what ranching was all about for me. So, I tried to do everything on horseback that was at all possible. Of course, this boiled down to very little actual work. We made hay with a couple of tractors and the rest of the stuff it takes to put up hay. We took feed out to the stock in a pickup. We hauled manure with a tractor loader and a tractor-drawn spreader.
The main part of the ranch was only forty acres big, with fifteen acres of this in woods for four months of the year and in standing water and woods for the rest. We rented additional land to make hay on, but for thirty-five head of beef and seven or eight horses, you don't need a lot of hay or a lot of graze, either. This will give you the idea, correctly, that we were just barely able to qualify for being called a ranch. And you would be correct if you assumed that most of what we did on horseback amounted to play. And the best use of the best horse I ever had was in a game we simply called "Woods Tag”.
The game was straight forward enough. You had to be on your horse – or, at least, somehow connected to your horse. You couldn't go off and leave him tied to a tree while you snuck around the woods on foot. Whoever was IT had the count of one hundred to ride off into the woods and hide. The NOT-ITS stayed up by the barn and counted. IT was captured when a NOT-IT got to within one horse's length of ITS horse. Nobody could hide around the barn and everybody had to stay inside the main pasture fence. Those were the only rules.
The main pasture was part
woods and mostly open field. The wooded part was
laced with trails,
some of them separated by thick stands
of trees, some separated
only by low hedges of squaw plumb bushes. A trail ran along the perimeter
fence line in the wooded
part and some of the trees even served as fence posts. And
in the center of the wooded part was the Indian
Fort, surrounded by a gloom cast by the dense
canopy of boughs
overhead. Shafts of light penetrated the gloom, illuminating patches of leafy undergrowth, producing an almost neon glow. Indians had not built the fort, kids had. It consisted of three
walls constructed of five tree trunks each, the triangle not closed at one apex. How they ever got the logs stacked up, I can't imagine.
They must have been big kids. A horse
and rider could
not hide inside the fort, so it was useless
from that point of view; but the area around
the fort was sort of an intersection for the forest trails, somewhat
on the order of Trafalgar
Square in London, only rustic.
The Laughin' Place, on the other hand, was a small, bright clearing that took its name from the Uncle Remus story. A big wasps' nest hung right in the center of it from a lone, long bough. Three trails intersected in the Laughin' Place, but it was a hazardous crossing.
There was also the Blackberry Tunnel. The cows had forced their way through a blackberry bramble some eighty feet long and eight or ten feet high. The tunnel they had made was all of fifteen feet through. A horse could negotiate it but not with a rider in the saddle.
The open part of the pasture was dotted with several bramble copses that stood apart like haystacks and an occasional struggling tree.
And that was our playing field.
The best round I ever played at this game was the only one in which I out-foxed all the NOT-ITS and, more or less, turned myself in because I was tired of hiding.
The roster of players and horses that day were: myself and Tops, my black half-Morgan gelding, who stood 16-2, had a blaze down his face and a white front foot on the near side; my partner in the ranch, Martin Moritz, silver haired and in his sixties, riding Roxy, his bay Morgan mare; my brother, Pete, two years my junior, mounted on Misty, a hard-mouthed, short-coupled, rough riding white-gray; Barbara Asquith,a Canadian girl who was always on the place because she was nutty for horses and had convinced one of the boarders to let her treat Comanche, a dappled roan, as her own horse; and my not-by-blood cousin, Dan Gill, age 13, riding the iron-willed, kid wise, half-Welch-half-horse, Danny Boy.
The Laughin' Place, on the other hand, was a small, bright clearing that took its name from the Uncle Remus story. A big wasps' nest hung right in the center of it from a lone, long bough. Three trails intersected in the Laughin' Place, but it was a hazardous crossing.
There was also the Blackberry Tunnel. The cows had forced their way through a blackberry bramble some eighty feet long and eight or ten feet high. The tunnel they had made was all of fifteen feet through. A horse could negotiate it but not with a rider in the saddle.
The open part of the pasture was dotted with several bramble copses that stood apart like haystacks and an occasional struggling tree.
And that was our playing field.
The best round I ever played at this game was the only one in which I out-foxed all the NOT-ITS and, more or less, turned myself in because I was tired of hiding.
The roster of players and horses that day were: myself and Tops, my black half-Morgan gelding, who stood 16-2, had a blaze down his face and a white front foot on the near side; my partner in the ranch, Martin Moritz, silver haired and in his sixties, riding Roxy, his bay Morgan mare; my brother, Pete, two years my junior, mounted on Misty, a hard-mouthed, short-coupled, rough riding white-gray; Barbara Asquith,a Canadian girl who was always on the place because she was nutty for horses and had convinced one of the boarders to let her treat Comanche, a dappled roan, as her own horse; and my not-by-blood cousin, Dan Gill, age 13, riding the iron-willed, kid wise, half-Welch-half-horse, Danny Boy.
Remaining at large with so many people and horses after you in such a small a piece of real estate was an accomplishment. But I did it, just
that once.
The round began with trouble for me.
As the count to 100 ticked away, I galloped in the
open up to the back fence and
then east along it among the
blackberry copses to where the trees began.
There I stopped to look back for my pursuers. When they appeared, I started Tops into the woods on the trail that followed the fence to the northeast
corner of the pasture. (The corner was not a strategic position in which to remain. It commanded
views of both fence line trails, but it would easily convert to a trap
if riders came from both directions.) Somebody in the hunt usually
elected to follow the route I had taken
and it was my plan to
turn at the corner and ride on down the fence in the direction of the barn until I could cut back in toward the Indian Fort and give my
pursuer the slip.
Just as I reached
the corner, I heard
Barbara Asquith shout to one of the other riders. She was following me in, and Barbara never rode any more slowly than she had to.
Urging Tops into a lope, I went
on down the fence line
to about half way to the Indian Fort cut-off
and pulled up to listen.
Dang! Sure enough, Dan Gill
and Danny Boy were disputing their way up the trail toward me;
but the half-Welch would only remain argumentative until he saw Tops. Then he'd change his mind about not wanting to go that way and come on like a torpedo.
"We've gotta get off this trail, Tops," I muttered.
Glancing to my left, I saw a less-used
cow trail, just barely
visible in the shadows behind a hedge of squaw plumb and some low-hanging branches of hemlock. I
plunged Tops, half jumping, at the
hedge - and this is where the trouble came in.The hemlock branches,
which I lifted clear of my head with my free hand, concealed a very large hemlock
limb – which I took full on the face.
My hat was knocked off and I fell back over the cantle of my saddle with my head on Tops' rump.
Tops sensibly came to a stop.
I
rolled to the ground to get my hat, but I couldn't
see: my eyes were full of tree stuff and their own water. When they cleared, after much blinking, I found the hat and crammed it, all crumpled,
onto my twig-and-bark-laden head, hauled
myself back into the saddle,
and loped on down the little cow trail
leading to the Indian Fort.
We got away just in time, too! Barbara
and Comanche came tearing down the fence line trail and right into the awareness
of Danny Boy.
The little horse,
always ready to prove himself the boss, converted from one side of an argument with his rider to a missile
and charged Comanche, creating
enough of a brou-ha-ha between himself
and Comanche and Dan Gill and Barbara
that I was able to escape – not unnoticed but unpursued.
At the Indian Fort stood, I was immediately pounced
at by Martin and Roxy.
I dodged down the trail to the Laughin'
Place at a hand gallop.
The
wasps were flying in a lazy fashion
in the afternoon sun around their big nest
until Tops and I went breezing past, our wind and noise stirring them to a pitch that changed Martin's
mind about chasing
us through the clearing.
The
trail we took out of the Laughin' Place ran along the southernmost blackberry bramble of the woods – the long bramble
with the tunnel through it. A rider could go either way along the bramble
to one of its ends or through
the tunnel (dismounted) and I chose the tunnel. With
Tops being as tall as he was, the horn of my saddle fouled on overhanging briars
and we were twice delayed a couple of precious minutes while I cut him free with my pocket knife.
Creeping stealthily ahead of Tops in the far opening
of the tunnel, I heard a horse blow. Peeking out at the pasture, I saw
Misty's rump under my brother's
back, to the left of us, and not a hundred
feet away.Pete
was just sitting
there, on his horse, waiting
for me to emerge from one of
the trails into the pasture.
Turning back to Tops, I shoved him backward in the tunnel and put my hand on his nose to keep him from calling to Misty. (I know they do this in the movies and I’ve heard it said that it does not work for keeping a horse quiet but Tops was a horse made for this game: he seemed to understand
when we were the hunted and he never betrayed
me by talking when my hand
was on his nose.)
After a wait of what could have been no more than thirty seconds,
though it seemed like an age, Pete and Misty trotted off.
And
that's when I got one the best ideas I’d ever conceived, as far as strategies for this game went.
Looking out across the pasture, I noticed the small trees that the cattle liked to lay beneath. Most of them were outside the east fence line
but the largest one’s trunk was actually just inside, its branches low and
reaching and casting of shadows, off-black, like Tops.
I pulled
him out of the tunnel,
jumped into the saddle,
and let him out on a run toward that tree. If only we could make it without
being seen . . .
We did.
The cattle
were lying a little distance
from the tree
and close enough to confuse
a searching eye but far enough
away to remain undisturbed by our hasty arrival:
it might have telegraphed our position to our hunters if the cattle
had begun to stand up and mill around.
I dismounted and led Tops
into the shade behind the trunk, next to the fence wire, then reclined against one of the branches near his head so I could put my hand
on his nose if he seemed disposed to holler
at any of the other horses.This vantage
point on the game was great.
Pretty soon,
Barbara and Comanche came tearing out of the woods on one of the trails,
then looped back into another
one.
Martin and Roxy came strolling down the woods line
to where Pete and Misty popped out of the squaw plumbs.
He and Martin talked a bit; then they rode off together toward some blackberry copses.
Dan
and Danny Boy zig-zagged
out of the tunnel,
proceeded up the brush line, and disappeared into the Laughin' Place.
"I hope those wasps have settled
down," I mumbled
to Tops. "Otherwise I'm gonna spend the rest of the afternoon doctorin'
that kid."
This
recalled to me my own injuries.
Touching my face, I could tell that it was scratched up pretty badly, with patches of blood
drying here and there, especially around my left eye; but I had no way of really assessing
the damage without a mirror.
I watched the riders come and go until
at one point they all congregated outside
the trail to the the Laughin'
Place. There they had a pow-wow.
"It's dawned on 'em that we're not in the woods, Tops."
I patted him absently.
"We'd better go back over there and get ourselves caught before they discover how we've out-foxed 'em."
"We'd better go back over there and get ourselves caught before they discover how we've out-foxed 'em."
The pow-wow
suddenly broke up with everybody disappearing down trails
at a lope – though nobody
went down the trail to the Laughin'
Place.
I led Tops out
from behind the tree, mounted up, and urged him into an easy canter.
We were almost at the tree line near one of the trails when Pete charged
out upon us, yelling, "Captured!"
One horse's
length!" I answered, wheeling Tops to the right
and throwing him into run.
The north
fence line was coming up fast.
Pete and Misty were right on our heels.
I threw my weight back
and down into
my right hip,
laying the near
rein across Tops'
neck.
He collected his hindquarters under
him and lifted
his head to wheel to the right. But his hind feet gave! We were in a wet
spot! He began
to slide!
I lurched forward and to the left.
Tops recovered, but the fence
was upon us.
I reined him in.
"Captured!" Pete yelled, pulling Misty up beside us. "One horse's length!"
"One horse's length," I assured him.
I reined him in.
"Captured!" Pete yelled, pulling Misty up beside us. "One horse's length!"
"One horse's length," I assured him.
He peered
at me intently.
"Nice face! How'd you get it?"
"Out-foxing you. Looks pretty bad, huh?"
We turned our horses back toward the barn.
"You're kinda bloody. And you've got the beginnings of a mighty fine black eye. But on the whole, I’d say it’s an improvement. My compliments."
I did have a black eye, by the next morning.
I did have a black eye, by the next morning.
And I got incredulous laughs from
people who asked
how I got it.
First Published in Northwest Horse Source, Vol 1 No 5, May 1986 © Kenneth
E. Ely
No comments:
Post a Comment