Cattle Drive Installment No. 5

For a Once-in-a-Lifetime Experience – Part V
By Mark Brickman

Where was I? Oh, yes. My cattle drive adventure. This is my final installment, and as you can most likely tell, there were so many episodes and stories from this trip, I don’t know how I’m going to condense them into my last article, but I’m going to give it my best. I made a commitment to keep this to five installments, so here goes.

To answer our first cliffhanger, what is the High Rock Hilton? It was a shack in the middle of absolutely nowhere…ah, but was it nowhere? It was once a very infamous spot. For there, in the middle of nowhere Nevada one can still see wagon wheel ruts in the hardened mud. This is where the several trails coming west converged and where hearty souls were making their bold trek west to seek their fortune or their new life.

The good and trusted route was through what was known as High Rock Canyon, but legend has it that rumors began of a shortcut through…you guessed it! Little High Rock Canyon, but it was a dead end. To this day, the insides of caves that line this spectacular canyon have engravings of travelers who carved their messages to tell others of their stories and experiences.

At the mouth of Little High Rock Canyon, there is a tiny shack. It’s an odd place to come across such a structure, and someone, most likely many years ago, has emblazoned “Little High Rock Hilton” across its front.

Boredom was a constant issue out on the plains. Cows just aren’t interesting to me. I don’t know why. The afternoon that we stopped at Little High Rock Canyon was particularly pleasant, however. It was perhaps our warmest day, about 60, and the flowers, vegetation and streams within the canyon were gorgeous. I was on a small nature walk with several of my fellow buckaroos when we came across the one cow that actually did spark my interest.

Her name was -- are you kidding? Cows don’t have names…not in real life they don’t. But somehow a young little baby calf made it on our cattle drive. I had watched from day one this little calf struggle up and down the mountains, constantly falling behind and getting nudged and pushed along by its mother. It really got to the point where we were all watching out for her.

So as we walked through this natural wonder, we came across our trail boss, who was also walking with some people, and true to form, he brought us back to reality. As we took in the splendor of this little cow walking through the beautiful canyon with its mother and commenting to the trail boss what a heartwarming sight it was and what should we name her, he commented that the most appropriate name would be Big Mac. You get his meaning, I’m sure. Buzz kill!.

The nights were getting colder and more unforgiving, but every day we were getting closer and closer to the final day. I couldn’t wait. My knees were killing me, I was not sleeping at all and my enjoyment of horseback riding was not increasing. In short, I was dying to get home. My new friends from New York were a constant source of entertainment, however.

One afternoon, as we were having our typical day of riding through an open range where the cactus literally was up to our knees, we came upon a very tall hill off to our left side. Against strong warnings to him, one of the New Yorkers decided he and his horse would enjoy a good afternoon climb. I looked up to the top of this mountain, and it was easily 500 feet above the ground below. I’m certain he wanted to impress everyone and scream from the top to declare his manliness.

Unfortunately for him (and his poor horse) the slope was just too severe, and horse and rider fell backwards and tumbled back down the mountain. It was awful. I truly felt bad for the horse, because he hadn’t been given a choice. As I had said, there was a doctor in our group, and the initial prognosis was a broken pelvis. The horse, unbelievably, was fine, although filled with disgust for all New Yorkers (just an assumption on my part!).

Rallying around their kosher compadre, the buckaroos from New York were begging the trail boss to use his emergency walkie-talkie to call for a helicopter to airlift the injured rider to Reno for medical intervention. After confirming with our resident doctor that it wasn’t an emergency, that he wouldn’t die (although he was in absolute agony) it was decided that he would continue on and be driven to Reno upon the completion of our ride, another full day. I did call back to New York upon my arrival home, and yes, he did have a broken pelvis. This doctor knew pelvises and freezing to death equally well.

I could go on and on about my admiration for horses and what they do, but I’ll leave it at this…they are amazing, graceful and agile creatures. Although I had to fight with mine (both of them) to turn to go down outrageously steep grades several times, once beginning their descent, they were flawless and fearless. The one time, however, that I completely lost control of my horse (Tank, the first one) we both had to have a time out.

We were in an area where it was every man (and beast) for himself. This happened more than once where the climb down very steep, rocky and endless terrain meant that horseback riders and cows were basically on their own and would regroup at the bottom. This particular time, however, my horse was dangerously picking up speed and I couldn’t slow him down.

I’m obviously thrilled to be alive, but I still am in amazement that I survived this one. With incredible reckless abandon, Tank was traversing the rough ground with no fear, but at a scary speed, and all of a sudden, he went to jump over a large boulder without realizing that there was an incredible drop below it, at least ten feet if not more. As he jumped over the boulder, I became completely airborne. It was miraculous that I somehow came down somewhere in the vicinity of his neck and held on for dear life.

Moments later, when we reached the bottom of that hill, both Tank and I needed a moment of reflection. It seemed to me that he was as amazed that we were still in one piece as I was. For the only time while I was riding Tank, he walked as if he had all the time in the world, and I allowed him the time to get his thoughts together while I thanked God for not making me a permanent feature to the Northern Nevada landscape.

As I mentioned before, Tank became somebody else’s problem, and the day that it snowed, I watched with awe as that rider from New York rode Tank as if they’d been together their whole lives. As we crossed over the frozen bridge, a cow decided to make an exit stage left. She climbed a snow bank and over she went. I had no idea what was below this bridge, but I surmised that there must be a substantial drop below. I felt bad for the cow and silently bade it goodbye.

But to my absolute amazement, Tank and his rider blindly and quite foolishly, in my humble opinion, jumped the snow bank and disappeared over the side. If I could have moved my lips, I would have screamed, but I could only observe this odd occurrence and wonder how I’d explain that we had a rider and horse missing. Well, typical of this strange trip, as I approached the end of this long and frozen bridge, up popped the wayward cow with Tank and his rider in tow. I could only shake my head in complete disbelief and admiration.

At the end of this harrowing day that would bring two hypothermia cases, temperatures so cold that it literally froze my tube of Carmex and tested the stamina and resolve of rider and horse alike, the fabulous cooks, who had had to drive their chuck wagon and truck over a hundred miles to reach our ending point, greeted each of us with a mug of hot soup, which could only be seen as a miracle. I loved these women.

Speaking of the cooks, one of the great rewards that so few ever enjoyed on this cattle drive was their amazing creations. Their cooking under such rugged conditions astonished me, but for those few souls that stayed up late (and I was one of the few who did every night because I knew sleep was an impossibility) were rewarded with peach cobbler, which was placed in the fire after dinner and cooked to perfection. It was truly a special treat that almost nobody but a handful of us got to enjoy. Somehow I felt entitled to receive this special gift.

On a trip with 26 buckaroos who were on the experience of a lifetime, one of us had already taken the trip before. There was actually a man on our trip who had so enjoyed what I so dreaded that he wanted another shot at it. I admired him, and observed him many times effortlessly riding through the days with confidence and swagger. Ironically, about day eight of our trip, as we were riding through the open prairie 50 plus miles from the nearest road, a truck pulled up to ask if I had seen this man, and I pointed straight ahead.

Several minutes later, I watched as this man handed off his horse to one of the professional cowboys so he could step into the truck for the long drive back to our beginning. As it turned out, this man’s brother had suddenly passed away somewhere Back East and he had to attend to his family. A feeling of sadness had come over me.

As we gathered at breakfast on the last morning of our cattle drive, the trail boss warned us that about halfway through our day, we would come to a point where we would be able to actually see our ending spot at Soldier Meadows Ranch, but that we shouldn’t get too excited because at that point we still had six miles to go.

As I quietly and at this point all alone reached the apex of this final mountain and looked straight ahead, I indeed did view our final resting spot. And I at this point doubted the veracity of our trail boss. It seemed to me that Soldier Meadows Ranch was just about a mile away, and I was determined like nothing else in my life to dismount my horse and never mount one again. My knees were killing me beyond comprehension. Ironically, I had come through this trek relatively unscathed, but I couldn’t stand it anymore.

After struggling with myself for a couple of minutes, I decided to dismount and walk my horse for the remainder of the trip. What a mistake! I walked and walked and walked, and from the ground, I couldn’t see anything but cactus and endless nothingness. Once again, miraculously, after about an hour, a truck and trailer appeared out of nowhere to query whether I was okay (this must have been an odd sight) and offer me a ride the rest of the way. Guess what? I accepted. Thank God!!

Here at Soldier Meadows Ranch, we partook in a terribly cold shower, had a hearty and wonderful meal and shared our stories and experiences with each other and the great people who ran the working ranch. At awards time, Sam won the award for “Most Improved Buckaroo” and I won one of the “Bloody Horseshoe Awards” for having fallen off my horse many days before. I was proud of myself, and Sam was already wishing he could call his chiropractor for the world’s longest house call.

The following morning, we split up into groups of five or so and climbed into trucks that had arrived to drive us back to Spanish Springs Ranch, about a five hour drive. This would take us through the Black Rock Desert, Gerlach, Nevada and back into California. I couldn’t wait to get home. As it turns out, our truck was driven by the buyer of the horses for Spanish Springs Ranch, and he went around the truck asking which horses we had ridden for the past nine days.

Upon hearing that I had been on Tank for the first three days, he said, “Oh, old Tank…his knees are so bad. I think this’ll be old Tank’s last trip. I think it’s time to put him down.” So I’m thinking you gotta be kidding!! I depended on that horse to climb up and down the steepest mountains I’ve ever seen. And he had bad knees? Oh, no. That gave me pause.

And as we drove on a dirt road covered with snow that was lightly falling, I was deep in thought. We had just a few more miles to go, and someone yelled, “Stop the truck!” The driver dutifully stopped, and we followed the person who wanted to stop out of the truck to…you’ll never believe it! A body, laying there in the snow just off the dirt road with his hands folded over his chest and wearing just jockey shorts and shoes and socks. Now I’d seen everything. The man who yelled to stop had been a sheriff in the Tahoe area, and after we all conjectured what could have happened and the retired sheriff took a whole roll of film and ruled it a homicide, we drove on to our final point so we could report our find to authorities.

It did turn out that this man had died from exposure to the elements after getting lost and foolishly walking in the wrong direction. How did he get naked? Well, that’s what hypothermia will do to you. His brain had tricked him into thinking he was burning up when he was actually freezing to death.

So that’s it. I feel like you’ve taken this cattle drive with me, and I thank you for that. It was touted as a “once-in-a-lifetime experience,” and they were right…it will only be once, but these experiences will never be forgotten. I do admire horses tremendously, but I will never ride one again. I like to quit while I’m on top.