Truth Is

TRUTH IS By Clayton A. West

My grandfather was twelve years old when he became a cowboy; pushing two dozen half-wild steers to the stock-pens in Fredricksburg by himself on some stout mustang-cross gelding. It took him three days to move those steers the forty miles through an endless parched landscape of head-high thickets of cat claw and creosote brush interspersed with prickly pear flats and mesquite that covered that part of the fringes of Texas Brush Country. He managed it without a major incident and brought the payoff back home, satisfying my great-grandfathers' question of what kind of cowboy Granddad would become. I began cowboying for my granddad when I was fourteen and could barely manage a single cow more than forty yards, much less forty miles. I improved over time only to the point that Granddad realized that for the sake of all involved, but there ought to be as many pastures as possible situated between any cattle and me.
What I could do well was work horses; my granddad realized that and put me in charge of the remuda strings that we ran for our cowboys and neighboring ranches. For the next fifteen years I broke, finished out and tuned up horses; competed in bareback riding in the TRA circuit rodeos and more jackpots than I should have; and freelanced for the BLM as a mustang wrangler on the Pryor Mountains in Montana and Wyoming.The past fifteen years I have spent soft-breaking working ranch and reining horses. In all that time I have come across a handful of horses that epitomized the bewildered owners phrase " that one there I'm afraid won't amount to much . . . Lil' Sis was one not one of those horses. I met her a couple of years ago when she off loaded from a transport trailer from another ranch located in Wyoming. She had been a wild mustang, captured and then adopted out for ranch work. Little success had been attained and she had made her way here where with many, many, many hours of time in the round pen, then under saddle, she had become perhaps one of the best ranging, tracking horses of any of the horses here at the line-camp. She had her moments; she could sulley up in a heartbeat being led by a new, inexperienced cowboy or ranch hand, or she would disappear for weeks at a time, roaming and unattainable in the huge vastness of the ranches canyons and arroyos, then show back up in the remuda sting as if she had never been gone. I didn't completely understand her, but I grew very fond of her. So this is difficult to recount:

"Hey there Clay, looks like Lil'Sis is back in the remuda and she looks sick with the locoweed."

Those were the words that Junior Baze called out this morning as I was finishing a second cup of coffee. It hit me like cold water down the back of my neck.
Loco weed is bad stuff, ranging far and wide in this part of the state and because of its noxious properties, if a horse grazes it in sufficient quantities it will become addicted to it, refusing any and all other forms of feed.
The plant's chemical components destroy the neurological sensory makeup of the horse. The animal begins a steady and insidious spiral of wasting and dementia that ultimately results in death due to dehydration and malnutrition if it is not caught in time.
I made my way from the picket-line camp to the fenced in horse-trap where the other horses were kept, fed and bedded down. Junior caught up to me, rifle in hand. He had obviously seen enough of her already to have made the decision that a rifle would be necessary.
There she was, standing in the pasture trap. She was blade-thin in the chest, her nose to the horizon, tuning into who knows what. She was hip-shot and trembling like she was cold or scared. Her remuda mates were moving among the flakes of fresh hay that had been thrown to them. She was oblivious to them. It was understood looking at her that she was on the loco weed and had been for quite some time. She was in the final wasting stages and could not be saved. She looked nothing like the robust mare that I saw just last summer; strong, slick-coated and moving with purpose, built like a bulldog and able to run all day at a steady lope.

She had been reduced to a horse-zombie. She'd self-roached her mane by sticking her locoweed addled head through miles of five-strand barbed wire fence attempting to get at the thing she craved. It was long and ragged behind her ears and short-nubbed at her withers. It was sad to look at her and remember the horse she once was. This horse, under the influence of this addictive noxious plant, was struggling to take wobbled steps and tripping over her own feet.
Then she picks her head up out of the hound-dog position she'd been carrying it in since I entered the horse trap. And I remember the horse from last summer and the summer before that, when she came to this ranch as an adopted BLM mustang.
This is the horse, who, while still wild and fearful of any two-legged being, let loose those trepidations, heaved a weary sigh and laid her jaw onto the top of my shoulder in an affirming mustang bonding moment. This is the horse, who would let me pick up all four of her feet, sans halter, out in the middle of the pasture at sunset one day. This is the horse, who, on the third day of round pen work, followed a drag-tired cowboy around and took slices of apple out of his hand, without fear, without question.
This is the horse who never bolted or snorted the first time at the sight, smell or sounds of wild cattle milling all around her.
This is the horse who stood over me, after I hit the ground through no fault of her own, with the most curious look on her face. This is the horse who has overcome more fear than any domestic horse I have ever known, and had just gotten better and better. This horse.
This is the horse who tuned into my soul. This is the horse who has convinced an entire line-camp of cowboys over the course of many miles, many West Texas lightning and thunder storms, many days and nights of lonely trails and travels. And this is the horse who, after the echo of the rifle shot is carried away on the wind, I will be remembering for many years to come.