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Tavaputs Ranch » My wants are simple. In a freezing wind and atop the world's dumbest horse, I'd still rather be a lowly ranch hand on Tavaputs Plateau than the mayor of New York City.
On Monday, I was. My friend Mark Connolly and I signed up as day drovers for Tavaputs Ranch, an aspen- and sage-covered spread the size of Rhode Island that overlooks Desolation Canyon of the Green River. There is no more beautiful place in the world.
It was the beginning of the ranch's fall cattle drive, when cows are gathered into a herd and "punched" down the canyon to their winter range near Price.
Note » No one really knows where the term "punching" cows originated. Linguists generally
I can certainly understand why someone would want to punch a cow. A single bovine on a good day is irascible and easily spooked. Fifty of them with year-old calves are only slightly more reasonable than a federal agency.
After a huge breakfast, ranch owner Butch Jensen led us out to the corral. The day's crew consisted of a half-dozen drovers of varying experience, an equal number of horses and a mob of dogs.
Butch's son Tate asked what kind of mount I preferred. When I said, "one with power steering," he picked an enormous black...thing. Tate assured me it was a horse, but it looked more like God had changed his mind in the middle
The horse's name was Stimulus. Butch said it was because they got him from a banker. As horse names go, it was better than Spine Cracker, Thunderbolt or Menopause. Still, I suspected some form of low cowboy humor in the works.
Among the spur-and-bit crowd, there is no finer form of entertainment than watching a bipolar horse pitch a fat tourist into a hospital bed.
Fortunately, the name fit. Throughout the day, Stimulus's contribution to the job at hand was tardy, erratic and of dubious benefit. At one point, he simply stopped moving. Nothing I did -- yelling, booting, pleading -- had any effect.
As the rest of the drovers disappeared down a sunlit draw, Stimulus braced himself, stretched his neck and whinnied at the other horses. It sounded like Bette Midler being electrocuted.
One of the real cowboys came back and took the reins from me. He said Stimulus was normally used for trail rides and this was the turnaround point. Being a union horse, Stimulus figured it was quitting time.
Towed along like a pack horse, we caught up with the rest of the group. It was embarrassing but helped reformat Stimulus's head. He followed the other horses as we began hunting cows.
Range cows are not like regular cows. In addition to being more independent, they've just spent an entire summer raising calves among cougars, coyotes, snakes and lightning. Consequently, they're not of a mind to take any crap off a bunch of *#&@! cowboys.
The idea was to comb the draws and hollows, pushing the cows toward a collection point where a larger herd would be formed.
Watching a real cowhand and horse work together is a marvel. They seemed fused into one creature. Tate and his horse knew exactly what to do in order to get two-dozen cows headed in the right direction.
I didn't and neither did Stimulus. His contribution to the gather largely consisted of staring off in some other direction, going to the bathroom, and occasionally trying to rub me off on a tree.
Hours later, Butch, Tate and the real cowboys had a huge crowd of cows mooing their way in the right direction. It sounded like church.
I am not a natural rider. I suspect Stimulus understood this. He altered his gait in such a way that I might as well have spent the day hopping up and down on the top of a fence post.
Somewhere at the tail end of the herd and the day, Stimulus and I reached an understanding. If I would stop cursing directly into his ear, he would quit trying to bite my leg.
In the cold, bright afternoon, we rode drag, which, trust me, doesn't mean the same thing on a cattle ranch as it does in a New York nightclub.
Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib. com.
