Last spring, I signed on for a riding job at one of the five Upper Green River Cattle Association's cow camps scattered across their 130,000 acres of leased open range on the Bridger Teton National Forest. For a hundred years, area ranchers have pooled their cattle and run them up there from mid-June through the end of October. And they trail them nearly 80 miles each way.
There's one rider at each of the five camps responsible for his or her allotted cattle. I took the job at The Pastures, a top-notch camp. A little log cabin with good corrals is set in the middle of a great big sagebrush bench overlooking the Wind River Mountains and sloping down toward the Green River. There are multiple creeks, springs, and ponds, and I was in charge of a handful of horses and 1,300 mother cows and yearlings a cowboy's dream.
One morning I remember started out just great. I rode out of camp in the early morning humming a cowboy tune and feeling like the rest of the world ought to be plumb jealous of me. The rising sun made long shadows as I trotted along over hills and across little creeks. Sandhill cranes sounded their raspy, prehistoric calls, and a burrowing owl flushed out from between a couple of sages. Pronghorns made mad dashes on broomstick legs toward the top of the next hill.
Reaching a group of cows I wanted to put in the north end of the pasture, my dog and I went to work. One willing cow took the lead, and the others and their calves fell in line. The yearlings ran along butting heads and kicking up their heels, tails high in the air. I got them over a natural break in the country and left them there to graze and drift across some untouched pasture while I rode off in another direction.
I was stepping my horse, one I borrowed from my sweetheart, across a little spring-fed creek - not much wider than the little chestnut mare was long, and not much deeper than her fetlocks - to get to another little bunch of stuff when, all of a sudden, we went straight down like someone had opened the trap door of a gallows.
The bottom of that little creek was like bentonite mud, and that first step left us in deep, clear up to the cantle of my saddle. My heart sank right along with that horse, and, the moment she stopped floundering, I piled off into the creek and pulled my saddle to lighten her load.
I'm six feet tall in my bedroom slippers, and I was arm-pit deep in that tomb of mud and still wasn't finding any purchase. It was difficult hauling myself out, especially wearing mud-soaked full-length chaps and a heavy, wet, wool sweater. I shucked both and began pullin' and whippin', tryin' to encourage the mired mare. She made a few attempts, but they were in vain. Only her head and the very top of her back and neck were above the water.
I knew I was going to need help, so I walked and dog trotted the couple miles back to camp. I saddled my sweetheart's other mare, a big, stout, leggy, half-draft that's usually all humped up and full of herself. We trotted back to the stuck one and, as we approached, I could see those chestnut ears pricked over the edge of the creek bank. These two mares are the best of friends, and, as I came jigging up sideways, the little mired mare let out a whinny that almost broke my heart.
Jumping back in the creek, I formed a britchen out of rope and pushed it down around her rump. I also did a bunch of digging around her legs to try to free them up some. She was essentially floating in thick mud.
Our first effort at pulling the mare free was unsuccessful. The big mare and I both stood on the bank, our sides heaving. I crawled back in and dug more and tried to put saddle pads where they would give her something to stand on. We pulled again and dug some more and pulled again, but little progress was being made. I noticed that a bunch of yearlings had circled around us like kids watching their first fight at school.
I was cold by then, from having spent so long in that 40-degree water, and I knew that mare was chilled too as she began to shiver. I wasn't sure how long a horse could be bogged down in cold mud in a spring creek.
I decided to go back to camp and get on the radio phone to call for help. Naturally, no one worth his beans is in by the phone in the middle of a summer afternoon, so I couldn't reach anybody. The closest person would be Bobby Gilbank at the Fish Creek Camp, but it was an hour's drive by truck and, chances were, he wouldn't be around camp anyway.
I got back on the radio phone and called down to town, 50 miles away (20 of which are slow, rough, dirt miles) to the Game and Fish office and told them I needed people and four-wheelers to get out a stuck horse.
The office gal got on her radio and put out a call but couldn't raise the wardens or anybody. Of course, my radio battery was dying at that point, but she said she'd keep radioin' them. I told her where to look for us and headed back to the gonna-be-dead horse.
She finally raised my buddy, Zack, who's the Game and Fish bear trapper. He couldn't leave a bear call he was on, but he started calling every rancher and their brothers and didn't stop until he got somebody and passed along what little information he had: "Leif has a horse stuck and needs help." Zack had sounded the alarm.
The land was beginning to be covered over by evening light, as surely and steadily as the mare and I were being taken over by exhaustion and cold. Evening was coming down on us like a heavy blanket, and I was plumb worried as I didn't know if help was going to come or not.
But, while I worried, two different ranching families were racing around their ranches loading four-wheelers and ropes and hauling like maniacs to get up to where I was.
Theodore Roosevelt once described ranchers and cowboys by writing, "with bronzed, set faces, and keen eyes that look all the world straight in the face without flinching" These were the same people who were making the 50- and in one case, 80-mile trip up to where I was, and this at the end of their own hard day, to find one of their riders and his sunk horse. Salt of the earth.
Meanwhile, I packed some pieces of plywood and a doormat back up to the creek and tried to work it down in the mud under the mare's feet. I continued to work, digging and shoving rocks down by her feet. I was in mud and water up to my chest, and nothing was working.
It was 6 p.m., and, having fallen in at noon, I was getting cold and played out. I was out of options and having a hard time accepting the fact that I had probably killed this poor mare. The look of resignation on her face after all that time was pitiful. Mud was caked to her neck and mane, and the horse flies had left blood spots on her face.
Then I thought I heard a motor; I wanted to hear a motor; by golly, I did hear a motor! There, bouncing over the hummocks where no truck could go, came two six-wheelers and a four-wheeler. I felt like the fate of this horse was lifted off my shoulders. There were Garlie, Jamie, Ty, Josh, and Eddie to my rescue. Eddie's dad, 80-year-old Sprout, had spotted me with field glasses from atop a hill and had guided the others to me by radio.
Eddie knew just what to do though none of them had seen anything quite like it before. In no time, they had that mare winched out and standing on the bank, shaking and spraddle-legged. I stood there and shivered with her, as thankful as anyone could be.
They drove my water-logged tack and gear back to camp, and I led the stove-up but relieved mare back where I poured her some oats.
We stood around camp in the last bit of sunlight, drinking a beer (I was wishing my beer was warm), joking, and recounting the day's events. I fell asleep that night with a roaring fire in the stove, completely "whooped," completely relieved, and completely grateful I was riding for some darn good people.
