My Dad On Horseback

This picture is in front of my great grandfather's house in Malad. I would never have done this without standing directly by the horse, and as funny as it is, my father would not have done it either, but my grandfather knew horses.

His spurs and all of his gear had metal decorative pieces of fine silver. He took his riding very seriously.

My grandfather was the real thing when it came to being a cowboy. My dad always told about them riding across the field we always called the Bottom, which was near the water troughs for our cattle. Grandpa left that as a 80 to 100 acre field of alfalfa, and they would cut and stack the hay in a large loose stack.

It was not a popular spot for my dad, because there were a lot of rattlesnakes, and they found their way into the hay while looking for mice, but one day my grandpa and dad were riding across that field of lucern or alfalfa. A coyote had been hiding, and when they rode upon it, it jumped and began to run. Grandpa chased it on horseback and roped it.

My dad always told about a California driver who saw what was happening. He jumped out and filmed it on an old movie camera, and my dad always wished he had a copy of it.

One Charles M. Russell painting shows a situation like that: a cowboy roping a coyote. When I found the collector belt buckle in West Yellowstone 20 years ago, I bought it immediately because of the story my dad told me about my grandpa's roping ability.

He was an excellent roper, and no horse ever threw him. He broke all my Great Grandpa Ward's horses to ride, and grandpa also roped wild horses from the large ranch west of us owned by Holgrens. The ranch is massive, and until the early 60's, there was a sizable herd of wild horses on that ranch. My grandfather would spend one weekend day a week doing that as a hobby. He'd rope and catch the horses, break and keep the best, and he'd sell the rest of them.

My dad told me about those animals. As a child, he would crawl to a safe spot on the other side of the fence to look, and when they saw him, they would lay their ears back, make a horrible squealing sound and charge toward him with teeth bare. They would strike at my dad with their forelegs and bite at him. The ones my grandfather broke were horses that no one else could ride.

He always said that raising kids was like breaking a good horse. If you broke their spirit, you ruined it, and he liked spirited horses, and he loved me as a child.