Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

Wisdom born of pain

by Julie Carter

Kenny Rogers was wise with years when he sang, "You gotta know when to hold 'em." The lyrics to that song also included "know when to run." Every cowboy with any amount of experience has been in that place in time when he knows it is just better to bail out, or off, to save his life.

No one, not even a cowboy, is born with common sense and wisdom. Hard-learned life lessons, often painful and repeated, are the instructors. These are followed by subsequent tests that never end, beginning in youth and lasting through marriage(s), divorce(s), raising children and adjusting to dentures and incontinence.

Painful lessons for cowboys usually involve cattle and horses. One such lesson for Leo involved a fence-jumping bull, a horse and a new wife.

It was his first day on the job at the ranch and when he asked the cow boss which horse he should take to retrieve the bull out of the neighbor’s heifers, he was directed to a big, rawboned, feather-legged dun.

He saddled the dun and loaded him and his new wife up and took off to the pasture. So far, so good.

Instructions for the new wife included watching him rope the wandering Romeo, after which she was to take the pickup and trailer across the cactus, sagebrush and rocks to that location for Leo to load the bull.

Leo cut the bull out of the herd, roped him handily and waved to his wife. Simultaneously, the bull made a run at Leo and the dun, and somehow in the process, the dallied rope got caught under the rubber horn wrap.

The cow boss had neglected to tell Leo that the dun would buck the minute he sensed the cowboy's attention was not fully on riding. Leo couldn't get his dally off, couldn't get the horse to quit bucking, couldn't find a soft spot to land, or at least, one without cactus. And worse, he couldn't hurry his wife up.

At some point, he made that wise decision that it was quite possibly a good opportunity to let the horse and the bull have at it. He bailed off and the horse stopped bucking. Then the rope came off the horn and the bull came on the fight. Common sense and wisdom kicked in with the "know when to run.”

Leo was buying some time by jumping over the sagebrush while the bull was going around them. Eventually, his wife pulled the truck and trailer in between Leo and the bull, saving his life but no words of gratitude were expressed.

It can be noted, a few years later, in divorce court, the wife mentioned she wished she had let that bull run over his sorry hide.

Another cowboy relates the story of a big outlaw horse in his string named Cobra. Cobra earned his name because no tie-down in the world would keep his head from that "cobra" position. The cowboy had nightmares about Cobra coming out of a basket, swaying that head at him.

This was about the time  Robert Redford arrived on the big screen as the “Horse Whisperer” and the cowboy decided that laying Cobra down and sitting on his head might be the treatment of choice.

Redford looked good doing that, he thought, and little children could ride the horse afterward, so it must work. The cowboy’s buddy came to help, and yes, beer was involved.

They roped Cobra, saddled him, laid him over with the cowboy sitting on his side.  Naturally, Cobra objected. In the melee, a hole in the crotch of the cowboy’s Wranglers caught on the saddle horn.

The cowboy’s momma had always told him to wear clean underwear in case he was ever in a wreck, but as luck would have it, he didn't have any on at all that day. He would have been happy to let Cobra up but common sense suggested that would lead to him being shucked right out of his britches.

That's where the "know when to hold 'em" wisdom came in handy.

Julie, wise through many similar situations, can be reached for comment at jcarternm@gmail.com.