SOON TO BE GONE by Chuck Nunes
As we travel across this land many old barns and stock pens can be seen along the roadside. They stand there, weathered and empty. These old barns are pleasant reminders of a bygone era, but they will be brought down and forgotten with the passing of time.
Some may stand a little longer with a new roof or a support where they have leaned away from the driving wind. They will never be the same. The world has changed and their time is ending.
So it is with the cowboy or rancher. Some still ride a horse to gather cattle, yet they are not the same kind of man who once rode across the land without ever seeing a barbed wire fence.
There is one thing many of them, young and old, still have in common. They have been courted by nature. They are in love with the land. They may not admit it, but they are incurable romantics, unable to leave their true love.
They may complain when nature goes on the warpath and hits them with a fierce blizzard right in the middle of calving time, or when she cuts off the water supply with a long dry spell. But they can’t leave her for a city job because of their passion. They adapt as best they can to her ever changing moods and carve out a life that is a bittersweet mixture of hard work and pure joy.
In my lifetime, I have known two old timers, Simon and Jake, living reminders of the kind of men who once rode horses for their living. Determination and hard work were the main tools cowboys needed to survive. Both were born in the late 1800’s, before the first automobiles rolled down the dusty dirt trails of that day. It was a time when most men rode horseback and could only survive by doing something useful. Crime as a way of life usually took a man to an early grave.
Simon grew up in Montana, and like many of the cowboys in that part of the country, he tied his catch rope hard and fast to the saddle horn. Jake was raised in the southwest, where he dallied it around the saddle horn after the cow was roped. Both men worked together on a big ranch in Nevada and often argued about the good and bad of each other’s rope handling methods.
Simon and Jake, now in their seventies, just couldn’t fit in after the latest corporation modernized the ranch operation. They were let go. They were offered jobs as ranch hands, but they didn’t want that kind of work. Not ready to leave the range or step down off their horses, they talked about catching wild un-branded cattle for a living. They could still ride and rope, so they decided to give it a try.
Simon and Jake knew about the wild cattle that lived on government land up in the thick brush and rocks of the nearby mountains. Grazing permits had been canceled years before and all domestic cattle removed. Some were missed and became wild. Each generation of newborn calves was taught by their wild mommas about the dreaded men on horses and how to avoid them.
Old Simon and Jake rode up into those hills and pulled a live’n out by the horns. They were a team that could somehow, by sheer determination, get a renegade roped, loaded into Simon’s trailer and hauled down to the sale yard. Sometimes their luck was good, and they’d catch one or two head a week. Sometimes there were long dry spells when they couldn’t find anything. It was dangerous work, yet the old cowboys managed to survive year after year.
They lived in an old shack about a half mile off the highway and got along pretty good for two old men in their seventies. Each week after the cow sale, they would stop by the café and bar for a Saturday night meal and a shot of whiskey. Jake liked to stay on and talk with friends and always wanted to stay until the place closed for the night. Simon wanted to get to bed early and would leave Jake to either catch a ride or walk home.
One Saturday night, old Jake was walking home along the paved highway when a drunk driver killed him.
Simon couldn’t accept the fact that his longtime partner was gone. He thought about all the wrecks they’d had over the years, working wild cattle and riding green horses. It was hard for him to believe that Jake could die just walking home on a summer night.
He’d call up his dogs, Bonnie and Clyde, and ride out every day, as if Jake was still there, with his longwinded stories and colorful way of talking. He couldn’t help but listen for that loud yell Jake would let loose whenever his rope settled around the horns of a wild cow. Simon missed his old friend and partner, but he knew that he could get along by himself if he had to.
As a hard and fast roper, Simon knew if he could get his rope around the horns of a critter, he could then get down off his horse and catch the heels with his other rope. Then one way or another he would either get the animal tied to a tree or thrown down and the horns tipped. Once Jake sawed off the sharp tips with about a foot of horn on each side, he let the animal up while it was still tied to the saddle horn. Then with the help of Bonnie and Clyde, he would get the critter down the mountain, loaded into the trailer, and hauled off to the sale yard.
The summer after Jake passed was unusually hot and dry, and Simon had only caught one cow since his partner had gone up where all good cowboys go. He often thought Jake was up there laughing at him. He would shake his fist at the sky and cuss Jake for leaving him to do the job alone.
One early fall day, Simon located a small herd of cattle hiding out in a large thorn patch. Since he couldn’t ride in, he sent Bonnie and Clyde in to run them around until one would pop out into the open where he could throw his loop. When a big bull could stand the dogs no longer, he broke out of the thorn patch to run across an open stretch of land. Simon rode down after him, as fast as his horse could run. Just as his loop settled around the critter’s horns, they ran out of land. He saw what was about to happen and tried to bail out but didn’t quite make it. Over the cliff they went, the bull on one end of the rope with Simon and his horse tied to the other end of it.
They all landed thirty feet below, one angry bull on the prod trying to gore the horse. Unconscious, Simon lay with a broken arm, the sharp bone sticking out of his sleeve.
By some miracle, Simon woke and staggered down the mountain with his dogs following behind. He ended up in the hospital with tubes in his nose and arms, machines keeping him alive.
When Simon’s eyes finally opened, he looked around the strange room and saw people in white gowns.
“Where’s Jake,” he said, “I sure thought he’d be up here somewhere. Guess that old dally roper was right, after all . . . hard and fast may not be the best way to handle a wild cow. Now damn it let me up. I gotta go find Jake.”
Jake was the last word he ever spoke.
Unfortunately, future generations may never know the beauty of the old barns or the individualist cowboy who lived on the back of a horse and survived by the very strength of his will. They are all soon to be gone.
