The last generation of cowboys
Cowgirl Sass And Savvy

Julie Carter

His bright blue eyes sparkled while a hint of a grin teased at the corners of his mouth. An inner spark, reminiscent of the fire that once fueled his very life, forced a flood of memories to come forth in a moment of reflection on those good old days.

Bruce Reeves isn't the last cowboy, but he is one of the last cowboys of a generation we won't ever see the likes of again. He represents an era of the cowboy way that is now found only in the memories of the "old timers" that lived it, documented by faded photographs on the wall.

Spend a little time with someone of that epoch generation and, like me, you will be saddened by having missed living it and saddened, even more, by the loss of it.

Those cowboys will fade into a background of muted memories because they are quiet men who didn't ever once think they were doing anything special, let alone historical. They were cowboys doing what they knew how to do.

They only speak of it when asked and, even then, a story might have to be jarred from them with a photograph or a direct request for specifics.

Bruce talked about ranches he worked for, many of them outfits of notoriety and reputation. There was no differential for him. No brag, just fact. He cowboyed on the Matador (the Mats, as the cowboys call it), the Quien Sabe, the Buckle L, the Scarborough's and northern New Mexico's historical Baca Ranch, now a national preserve.

A tour through photo albums, collected and created by his wife Joyce over decades of hard living, walked me through the mountain beauty of the Baca to the dust, mesquite and branding smoke in West Texas.

In those pictorial memories, cowboys branded calves, cooked over open fires in cast iron pots and slept in bedrolls near the wagon. A photo of the wagon headed out, loaded high with bedrolls and pulled by a team of big, long-gaited mules, drove home the fact I was looking at a fading history.

Given the time, Bruce would have told me any story I wanted to hear. All I had to do was ask. Like most cowboys, he remembered the horses better than he remembered the people. He jammed a whole lot of cowboy living into a few decades that included ranch cowboying, training and riding cutting horses.

He raised a family and made cowboys of them all, even his daughter.

Each of them, in their own way, hold on to a piece of that heritage while making their way in a new world. And each gives honor to the man who is the very foundation of their cowboy blood.

I'm kin to a few cowboys like Bruce and have met a few more along the way. What I know is this:

There are less of them than there used to be and they are more alike than they are different. There are none like them to be found in the current generation of cowboys. Not a fault of today's cowboy, it is just how it is.

Looking beyond the physical ravages of a hard-living life, seeing behind those twinkling eyes and the ornery grin waiting for an invitation, revealed a treasure.

Each time one of those fine cowboys tells me a little bit about their era, I feel richer for it.