Of Kids and Colts, growing up on ranches with only adults for playmates Options

[vessq]

OF KIDS AND COLTS


The summer started out great. Both cowboy uncles were working for the same outfit in Kansas just across the Colorado state line. Dell was taking care of a couple thousand steers and starting colts. Wayne took care of the cow and calf part of the great ranch.

Since they lived only a few miles apart, I could spend half a summer with each one. It was a deal made in heaven for an eleven-year-old wannabe cowpuncher. It was all horseback work and no farming.

The most exciting part was when Dell would rope a colt he had penned up a few days before so the young horse would have a chance to buddy up with his big bay snub horse.

Now, for those of you who have never been scared this bad, I will tell you how this snubbing deal worked.

The colt would be haltered and fitted with a bridle over the halter. The colt's bridle had a snaffle bit, like those used on workhorses, a strong soft snubbing rope about 10 feet long was snapped to a ring on the stout halter. The colt was saddled with my saddle.

Dell would make a few laps around the corral with the young horse dallied up tight.

The colt would be trying everything he could think of to get away. He would pull back, then try to run ahead, and then try to buck his way loose.

After a few minutes of being jerked around by the bigger stronger horse, the colt would sort of settle down and more or less give in to being led.

This is where I came in. Dell would yell at me to get over there. He would pull his left foot out of the stirrup, grab my left arm and lift me high enough to get my foot in the empty stirrup.

I was supposed to crawl across behind Dell’s saddle and set down on the colt.

Refusing to set down on the snorting colt, with only a worn looking snub rope between you and a sure and sudden death, was just not an option.

Kids and colts, in the cowboy world, did as they were told or suffered the unpleasant consequences. A sure and sudden death might be preferable to a look of disapproval or a whack on the behind from my uncle Dell.

This was all long before Dr. Spock and the Horse Whisperer came along to teach us all how to raise kids and start colts.

From Dell’s point of view, snubbing a colt with a kid in the saddle was an efficient use of time. He could school us both at once and I was light and easy for a young horse to carry.

After the colt quit jerking back and trying to buck me off, Dell would start to give us a little more rope

That is when the serious schooling started.

The colt’s bridle was fitted with a single rein with a snap on each end and hooked to the snaffle bit so I could not panic and drop a rein.

A second or so before Dell would stop his horse, I was told to pull back gently on the rein and cue the colt to stop. If the colt did not stop and tried to walk on past the snub horse, Dell would slap him in the face with his leather gloves. This would cause some jumping around and dodging on the colt’s part and some heavy breathing on the kid’s part.

Cueing the colt to turn left was accomplished in much the same manner. I would cue the colt by pulling gently on the left side of his mouth with the snaffle bit then Dell would turn the snub horse left and pull the colt’s head around.

Crowding the colt with the bigger horse and hazing him with the trusty leather gloves accomplished right turns.

After a while, the colt learned to respond to my cues and I learned to watch Dell’s hat for his cues. A hat tip to the right meant to cue the colt right, left tip for left, back tip for stop, and forward tip for a leg cue to move forward.

Cowboys don’t talk much when they are working.

The heart stopping part of the day would come when Dell either saw a steer that needed doctoring or maybe just liked the look on my face when he handed me the snub rein and said, “Here hold this, I’ll be right back.”

There I sat in total control of a colt as green as I was. When Dell loped off to see what he could see, the colt’s instinct was to follow the big snub horse.

I would cue him to stop. Sometimes the colt would accept the cue and stop.

These colt s were probably coming three and I was coming twelve. A colt year is about three boy years so the colt and I were about the same age and neither one of us knew anything

Did you ever try to get a boy that age to stand still for long? It works about the same with colts. We usually ended up chasing the other horse at whatever speed the colt chose.

I learned after a few days of snubbing colts not to object to taking the snub rope or ask questions in a nervous squeaky voice like, “What if he starts bucking?”

Because Dell would say, “well, if it was me, I’d ride him till he quits. The ground looks pretty hard around here.”

I also learned not to ask silly questions like, “But what if he runs off?”

Because then Dell would say, “Ah hell, he can’t out run old Tony here. I’ll probably catch you before you get to town.”

Probably!

Dell’s, sort of, promise was not exactly reassuring since town was 35 miles away.

I spent most of the summer being either terrorized by hardheaded snorting colts or thrilled at learning I could actually learn to handle a horse I had been scared to death of a few hours before.

Riding in at dark, a few steps behind Dell and his horse, without a snub rope on a colt that was responding to my cues meant I had made a hand that day.

The huge dose of self esteem could make a kid swell up like a toad.

My uncles, however, were good at spotting and relieving dangerous excess self esteem.

An overdose of self esteem might just get a kid accidentally hurt by some animal that weighed at least ten times as much as he did.

It was indeed a deal made in heaven for an eleven-year-old boy. But things were about to change forever. Dr. Jonas Salk did not get to me in time with his magic vaccine.

It would be the last summer of cowboy school with my favorite uncles. My next stop would be a polio quarantine ward with kids my own age and boxes of cowboy books.

[Guest_ohsteve_*]

Vess, I used to dream of summers like that, when I was about six or seven, by the time I was twelve, I think my boyish zealousness had been too many times knocked on it's collective rear end to even hope for that kind of encouragement. I liked this very much, as a coming of age tale, the poignant twist at the end make the boy seem that much braver for his deeds. I just hope this isn't based on a personal bit. My Wifes sister had polio and she walks with braces and a cane but her spirit is indominable. Great stuff here Vess.
Steve

[vessq]

Hi Steve,

This is part of a series of stories. They are as close as I can remember to true.

Dell died several years ago. Wayne died last Sunday. He is the last of our family World War Two veterans. My Dad and all my uncles enlisted on the same day in 1941. I was just over a year old.

All of them survived and returned.

My mother asked everyone in the family to write down their life story. Wayne wrote his version of his war experience this way.

"Normandy D-Day plus one. Nothing much happened. Towed for repairs"

He served on an LST and never said why they needed repairs or why they had to be towed.

Vess

[mayo]

This is a fabulous piece of Americana. I had a friend in college. She weighed all of 90 pounds. Her job was to break the horses. Her dad thought she was suited best for the job. You brought the memory of her back to me. Most importantly you allowed me to see into a world little of us know about. I was particularly close to my uncles. This was just a pleasure to read.