When I was young Uncle Sid fired my imagination by regaling me with stories about riding the sagebrush range, herding longhorn cattle, and sleeping under a star-studded Montana sky. He worked as a wrangler at the Big Sky Ranch on the east slope of the Rockies near Sandy Creek, Montana. When I turned sixteen, he wrote me a letter, "Hey Bud, there's a summer job waiting here for you if you want it."
I ran into the kitchen where my mother was making bread. "Mom, Sid wants me to work with him! Can I?"
She wiped a sweaty strand of hair from her forehead. Having one less mouth to feed would be helpful, especially since my dad had lost his job working at the Ford plant. "Yes you can," she told me, then stopped her kneading and looked me straight in the eye."On one condition, though. I need you to send some of your paycheck home."
"Sure," I told her. "No problem." I'd do anything to get out of Minneapolis, especially if it involved heading west on an adventure.
I wrote Sid and told him I was coming. He wrote back with a list of things to bring, including a sleeping bag, canteen, and a rifle. A rifle? It was the first time and certainly not the last time I wondered what was I getting myself into. Turned out it was the best job I ever had.
Sid met me in a beat-up pickup at the train station in Billings and we drove three hours west to the ranch. He was a leathery, lean man with a face bronzed by the sun. He wore a faded blue work shirt with pearl snap buttons, tight blue jeans, a silver belt buckle, and a battered straw cowboy hat. His boots were no frills and functional, two-tone brown and black.
On the way to the ranch, he filled me in on what was expected of me, "Your main job is cleaning out the stables. We've got a dozen horses and Mr. Littlefoot wants them cleaned every day. You'll be hauling hay bales, pumping water, fixing, anything that's broken, going to town for supplies and that's just for starters." He grinned at me with surprising white teeth. "Think you can handle it?"
It was nineteen sixty-two. My hormone-driven friends and I were full of energy. We lifted weights, played sports, and worked on junked cars; we were active all the time. "Sure," I said confidently, "No problem."
Sid pulled the brim of his cowboy hat down to shield his eyes from the glare of the sun. "We'll see," is all he said.
I will say that the first week was hard. Cleaning out the stalls was physically demanding, not to mention hot. But I liked the work. I enjoyed being around the horses and Mr. Littlefoot, the owner of the ranch, was fair-minded.
"Just do your job and keep your nose clean and we'll get along just fine," he told me that first day when Sid introduced us. Then he turned to my uncle and said, "Make sure he stays in line." I found out later that he was referring to staying away from his sixteen going on twenty-year-old daughter, Josie. He didn't have to worry, I was so wrung out at the end of the workday that I could barely eat dinner before falling asleep in the bunkhouse, let alone think about girls. Mr. Littlefoot's daughter was safe from me.
If hard work was the only thing I did that summer it would have been enough to make it memorable, but there was one thing that made it stand out; the one thing I'll never forget. It was the time that I almost died.
In August Sid had to round up a herd of a dozen horses that had been spending the summer on the other side of the mountains, up at a place they called The Ballpark.
"We'll take a couple of pack horses with us," Sid said when he first told me.
My heart began pounding, my excitement through the roof. This would be my first trip away from the ranch on horseback. Not only would I get to ride, but I had a chance to prove I was just more than a glorified stable boy; that I was, in fact, a real, honest-to-goodness cowboy. My face broke into a huge grin. "That's great. When do we leave?"
Sid glanced at me. "Day after tomorrow. You got that rifle of yours?"
"My twenty-two?"
"Yeah, it's not much than a glorified pea shooter, but it'll do."
"Why do I need it?"
He looked up toward the top of the mountain looming nearby called Grizzly Peak, the tallest mountain in Montana, and said, "Rattlers." Then he rolled a cigarette of bull Durham, lit it, and added, "There's a lot of them this year."
I took my cowboy hat off and wiped the sweat from my brow, thinking, Great, just great. I hated snakes and had a fear of them that almost made me catatonic. Even the little garter snakes back home gave me the willies. A rattlesnake? God, help me. I crossed my fingers and prayed we wouldn't run into one.
After we left the ranch, it took us one day of hard riding to get up near the top of Grizzly Peak and the next day to get over it. By then I'd almost forgotten about rattlesnakes because the view was so spectacular; mountains all around us, most with snow on them, and meadows full of wildflowers, a place far from the encroachment of man, wild and free.
"Let's make camp here," Sid directed us to a spot next to a grove of pine trees, "Then go looking for those horses."
Making camp amounted to unloading the two pack horses and tying them with long lead ropes to a couple of stakes in the ground. We ate a quick meal of cold beans and cornbread from the night before and then began our search.
Even though it was the end of summer, at this elevation the air was chilly and we both wore our jean jackets buttoned all the way up. "The horses will be out of the wind, somewhere sunny," Sid told me. He was right. We hunted on the far side of a nearby hill about two miles away. Fresh droppings gave the horses away, making them easy to find, and by the end of the afternoon we had them all rounded up. All except for a feisty filly that had broken from the herd with her colt and run down into a narrow canyon.
Sid pointed, "You go get her. If you're not back in an hour, fire your rifle once, and I'll come looking for you." Then he took off at a trot back to camp with the other horses.
My little bay was called Patsy and she was as surefooted as they came. We worked our way down the side of a steep ravine, sliding on loose shale while trying to avoid the sharp dead branches of pine trees. We made it to the bottom without incident and had started up the canyon when suddenly Patsy jumped to the side. Just as I was wondering what had spooked her, I heard it, the unmistakable buzzing rattle of a rattlesnake. She'd seen the snake before she heard it and had tried to avoid it. When it shook its rattles she spooked and jumped again and bucked in fear, kicking her hind legs out behind her. I lost my grip on my saddle horn and fell hard, cracking my skull on a rock. I lost consciousness momentarily but came to only to find myself face to face with the snake. It was coiled tightly about two feet away and its tongue forked out toward me. I thought for sure it was going to strike when a sudden snorting sound caught its attention. I kept my head still but moved my eyes. It was Patsy and she was still with me.
Then she did an amazing thing, something Sid told me later that horses will do. She reared up and stomped hard on the ground to scare the snake. It worked. I watched in awe and relief as the thing tensed its body as if to strike, but then slithered away. I got to my feet, feeling a little woozy, but I hugged Patsy before managing to grab my rifle and fire a shot.
Sid showed up later and got me back to camp. The next day he went back for the filly and her colt and we headed down the mountain. That was the end of the summer. I was sent home so mom could have a doctor check me. It turned out I had a mild concussion and I've been prone to headaches and the occasional blackout ever since. I don't mind. It was worth it.
That next spring Sid was killed by a kick in the head by a bronco named Bushwhacker. Mom and I went back to Montana and we scattered his ashes off Granite Peak high above the Rattlesnake Canyon. I like to think he's still out there somewhere, out where the wind blows free across those wild mountain meadows, and that summer we shared, never ends.
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