Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

Time to cowgirl up

by Julie Carter

Every now and then, every cowboy, good or otherwise, will get a dose of reality delivered to him. The courier of this measure of humility is usually a cowgirl.

On the way to an all-girl ranch rodeo, the rig, fully loaded with horses and people, pulled in the yard just before dark. The resident ropers, champions in their own right, or mind, were at the arena spinning a few practice steers.

As all good hospitality demands, the gals were invited to come rope and the cowboys made every effort to be gentlemanly in their efforts to allow the damsels to have a turn at the roping cattle.

The first steer set the scene, scared the cowboys and reminded them “cowboy” comes in two genders.

These gals had been on the road all day, starting the trip and the beer drinking at 9 a.m., with a designated driver, a.ka. boyfriend. They rolled in, backed their horses out of the trailer, backed in the roping box and, more than handily, roped the fastest, dirtiest steer on the place before it got a third of the way down the arena.

They turned him, stretched him out, let him up, dusted off their hands and got another beer. Just a routine moment in another day in time with no extra effort involved.

The cowboys stood in stunned amazement, appropriate reverence and quite possibly, a little fear. It was a priceless moment in the world of cowgirls.

Delicate and dainty aren’t always descriptions given to such top hands, but beneath the chaps, dust and skill lies the heart of a female who often struggles to maintain a thread of femininity.

For me, it was having nice nails -- the kind you buy at the manicurist, which was the only kind I could claim for my own. My cowgirl friend and I were spending the summer trailing yearlings around the mesas of northern New Mexico at the direction of the boss, who also happened to be her husband.

We spent long days in the saddle, and did our best to “make a hand” but would also schedule a nail appointment every two weeks. It became a joke about “having the nicest nails in the cowboy crowd,” not that you could ever see them under our gloves. 

We knew we looked pretty rough on first sight and certainly were punchy enough to qualify our presence on most outfits. That was verified one morning just after daylight when we had gone to help a neighboring ranch ship a few semi-trucks of yearlings.

After unloading our horses, we headed to the backside of the shipping pasture along with a dozen other cowboys. When one puncher rode up next to me and asked what outfit I was hired onto, I knew I had made the crossing from a get-in-the-way female to a qualified puncher/buckaroo cowboy.

The real marker of status came later that summer when a neighboring ranch put in a call for help. The phoning foreman needed a couple cowboys to help gather their cattle for shipping.  Our boss took the call and was heard explaining he was already committed somewhere else that day, but he would send a couple of capable cowgirls to help.

What came next left the ranch foreman on the other end of the line laughing hard, and was likely a historical moment in time for the cowboy- cowgirl movement.

There was a pause in the conversation and the boss said, “Wait a minute, I guess first I’d better check and see if they have a nail appointment that day.”

Julie can be reached for comment at jcarternm@gmail.com