Come out Even| a Season of Rodeo and Wild Horse Wrangling in Wyoming
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University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School 1998 Come out even| A season of rodeo and wild horse wrangling in Wyoming Ian McCluskey The University of Montana Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation McCluskey, Ian, "Come out even| A season of rodeo and wild horse wrangling in Wyoming" (1998). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 1826. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/1826 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Maureen and Mike MANSFIELD LIBRARY The University of MONTANA Permission is granted by the author to reproduce this material in its entirety, provided that this material is used for scholarly purposes and is properly cited in pubHshed works and reports. ** Please check "Yes" or "No" and provide signature ** Yes, I grant permission No, I do not grant permission Author's Signat Date 5/ / Any copying for commercial purposes or financial gain may be undertaken only with the author's explicit consent. COME OUT EVEN A SEASON OF RODEO AND WILD HORSE WRANGLING IN WYOMING by Ian McCluskey B.A. The Colorado College, 1995 presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science The University of Montana 1998 Approved by: Chairperson Dean, Graduate School Date UMI Number; EP34908 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. 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Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 TABLE OF CONTENTS Author's Preface Prologue 1 Chapter 1 The First Worst Place 2 Chapter 2: Moving 12 Chapter 3 Enough Land to Stay on 32 Chapter 4' A Face to Meet the Faces That You Meet 51 Chapter 5 Zero Times One 74 Chapter 6 Lessons 98 Chapter 7: The Other Side of Saturday Night 116 Chapter 8; Redneck Girls 135 Chapter 9; Rodeo Road Trips 160 Chapter 10 What Doesn't Kill Us 175 Chapter 11 New Corrals 196 Chapter 12: Mustang Bachelors 206 Chapter 13. Into the Sunset 226 Epilogue 240 AUTHOR'S PREFACE Between college and graduate studies, I spent a summer season on the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range. I had volunteered to research the mustang herd, to jot field notes, and to monitor the health and behavior of the animals. What I didn't know at the start was that the last roundup of wild horses had ended in disaster. What I couldn't have known then were all the days I'd ride in the summer heat and dunk my head in cold creeks and dream of skinny dipping with girls I'd known, or all the nights I'd stumble through dancers in bars, reaching my arms for someone to catch me, the nights I'd sleep in the backseat of a Cadillac, in a graveyard, or weeds. All people and events are rendered to the best of my ability and memory. Some of the names have been changed to protect the guilty—never mind the innocent. I'd like to thank Don Snow, my chair, as well as the members of my committee. Special thanks to Rachel Wray for the use of her computer, her technical support, and all her loving efforts like stealing paper, typing, and tolerating many, many late nights. I'd also like to send a special dedication to my late-friend Ben Algren who once said. "If we were all smart, none of us would drink, smoke, fall in love, or think—we'd all be dull and healthy " i PROLOGUE Wyoming was once an ocean floor and I swear it still is. Imagine the blue sky as water and the strips of clouds as the froth of waves, and you will see the sky churning up against the cliffs, spraying with spit and hail, crashing over the rims of mesas, then rising in mist and fog, cloaking the tops of mountains. I stare through the cracked windshield of my grey pickup, craning my neck to ghmpse the mountains' snowfields when the clouds pulled back like low tide. "A low ceiling," pilots label it, but to me it is the underside of whitecaps. Across the basin, wind cuts over the mesas. A single telephone wire sways like a clothes line. Tumbleweeds and shreds of plastic sacks snag on the prongs of barb-wire. The junipers shrug against the wind, rounded like riverstones, clutching in pockets of shelter A bam leans like an old bookcase. No windows, only cracks of light between boards. Sun and sand and snow etch the wood, deepening the grain, the same way runoff gouges the shoulders of mountains. Everything soft vanishes. What remains are the few lines of wire, the shell of a '54 Chevy pickup, bleached horse bones, and the hard whorls of rocks, rubbed and polished and cast by the weather. Break one open and you'll fine the thin lines of a sea shell. But winds are the currents of this ocean now. If you set a teacup on the floor of the Big Horn Basin, between the curled stalks of grama grass and Indian rice grass, and if you left it there for a year, rain would never fill it. 1 CHAPTER 1: THE FIRST WORST PLACE Already I am thinking back. We scrape forks on plates, saw knives through chicken-fried steaks, and gulp coffee, pale as varnish, gritty as sawdust. A neon light hums like flies tapping a window pane. It's dark outside and the single lightbulb over the grill and the glint from the formica counter reflect against the window, as if we could eat and watch and eat and watch ourselves—like a family at dinner staring at a TV set, at a similar, yet different, family I sit with a man and a woman old enough to be my parents. But they aren't. They work for the Bureau of Land Management, and I am the new volunteer for the Wild Horse and Burro program. My new boss, Linda, wears a fleece pull-over, with orange and yellow and pink zigzags and triangle patterns—the type of pattern you'd find at a McDonald's in Santa Fe. If it was wallpaper, it'd probably have a name like; Desert Motif Number Three. The man. Rick Ekwortzel, wears faded Levi's, stained with splotches of motor oil. His plaid, polyester, pearl-snap shirt hangs over a silver rodeo buckle. He mops a puddle of ketchup with a french fry, then reaches into his pocket and unfolds his wallet. "I got it," he says, snapping a crisp bill on the tabletop. I'd pull my wallet, but it's empty Ekwortzel waves his hand, like brushing lint off a coat. "Hell," he says. "Let the Feds pick up the tab—put your tax dollars to work." He glances at Linda. "It's legit, comes out of my per diem." He snaps a second 20 dollar bill 2 3 and slides it to me, calling it a loan, enough to get some food, so I don't starve in my new home. Earlier that day, we'd driven from the BLM office in Billings, Montana, to the base of the Pryor Mountains where I'll live in a small cabin for the summer and commute to this town, Lovell, Wyoming, for supplies. We leave a few crumpled dollars and the loose change and the lint from our pockets on the glitter tabletop. We leave the plates with crumbs and streaks of ketchup. And the last dregs of coffee pooled in the cups. We haven't seen the waitress, a stooped Mexican woman, since she shuffled to our table with our food and tucked the ticket under the pepper shaker. As we drive away, the light from the cafe spills through the windows onto the empty street. We pass the only traffic light. It blinks yellow Along the main street, windows are black, some boarded, most hang "for sale" signs. We stop at the Conoco. Its red sign glows across the cracked pavement to the edge of sagebrush. While Ekwortzel pumps gas into the truck, I wander inside. Four teenagers spin the sunglass-rack, trying on pink and fluorescent three-dollar shades, laughing, puckering lips like images of movie stars they've seen beamed from satellites. A girl tosses her red hair, glances at me, then quickly looks down, pretending to read a price tag. I want to join them, to say, "Hey, I'm new in town. Whaddaya all do for fian out here?" But the two girls hang on the arms of the two boys. No doubt they've been in the same classrooms since first grade, the same brick school house their parents sat in and grandparents. They replace the sunglasses and wander out, still laughing.