Ranching wasn’t for little kids. Luckily, I wasn’t a kid. I was 19, ready to handle any challenge that came my way. At least that’s what I thought two weeks before I arrived to spend the summer working on my Uncle Charlie’s ranch in southwest Idaho.
Now, as the sun set over miles of open country, I wasn’t so sure.
“C’mon, Okie,” I whispered to the horse I was riding through a maze of rim-rocked buttes and lonely valleys. Up ahead, Uncle Charlie sat ramrod straight on his own horse. At times like this he ignored everything I said. When I called his name, he didn’t seem to hear me.
We’re lost, I thought. We’ll never get out of here.
I looked around helplessly at the rocks and grass around us, desperate for something that pointed in the direction of the ranch. Even if I did see something familiar I probably wouldn’t know it. I was a greenhorn, pure and simple.
I’d tried to hide it. Back home in Oregon I could count the number of cows the family owned on one finger. But I was sure I could handle a whole herd of cattle just as well as the heroes in the Louis L’Amour books I loved.
I was old enough and tough enough to do any job all on my own. Without Uncle Charlie, without my parents–even without God. He’d watched over me close when I was growing up, but this summer I was determined to take the reins.
I kicked at Okie’s sides and sent him into a trot passed Uncle Charlie. Just look close, Erika, I told myself. Something will tell you which way is home. I squinted into the setting sun. Okie pulled at the reins, jerking his head to the right.
“Settle down, Knothead,” I told him, pulling him back into line. He needed to know who was boss.
Okie settled down and I scanned the horizon. I might look like I knew what I was doing, but inside I was still just as lost as ever. The other day, Uncle Charlie had handed me a strange device he called a wirestretcher and told me to repair a fence. “It shouldn’t take you too long to patch that break,” he said.
I stared blankly at the strange instrument. What break? I thought. The two of us had just spent the morning riding through the cattle on the range. I hadn’t noticed any breaks in the fence. I hadn’t even known I should be looking for one.
“About a half mile back, in the fence we were checking?” Uncle Charlie prompted. “Should I do it?”
“I’ll go!” I said. I leaned down in my saddle and snatched the tool out of his hands. It looked medieval.
“Do you know how to use that?” he asked, dubiously.
“Duh!” I said, hoping my teenaged bravado would be convincing enough.
“Well good luck,” he said.
It was dark by the time Okie and I got home, but the fence was fixed. Well, after a fashion. Maybe my repair didn’t look quite like the rest of the fence–I’d never figured out how to work that darn stretcher–but I’d done it all on my own without any help. That was the important thing.
Back in the empty valley, my horse veered sharply to the right again. “Cut it out, Okie!” I snapped, pulling him back to the direction I was headed.
The lonesome valley we were traveling through now was more confusing than any farm tool. The shadows were deepening, stretching out over the ground. Soon there would be no sun at all.
I’d been so confident when we set out at daybreak, bunching the heifers into a corner of the meadow.
“We’re twenty head short,” Uncle Charlie had announced when we finished counting.
“That’s what I got too,” I fibbed. I’d tried to count the heifers as they passed by in small groups, but it was harder than I thought.
“We’ll check Bennett’s first,” Charlie said, reining his horse to the east toward his neighbor’s land. “I saw some torn up fence when we were gathering the heifers.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said. I’d seen no such thing. Uncle Charlie seemed to see everything at once. I longed to ask him his secret–but that would be like admitting I couldn’t already do it myself.
Bennett’s allotment was roughly the size of Delaware, covered mostly in jumbled boulders rising to buttes, scattered junipers and miles of undulating sagebrush on scab rock. “No self-respecting cow would ever graze here,” I said.
“The feed here is only in the meadows,” Uncle Charlie explained. “Find the meadows and you’ll find the cows. If our heifers are mixed with Bennett’s cattle, that’s where they’ll be.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said, nodding wisely.
“Uh-huh,” Charlie said.
We’d found the meadow, but not the heifers. Uncle Charlie decided to head for home and ever since we’d been wandering through the sagebrush. Why doesn’t he at least talk to me? I thought, listening to the sound of Uncle Charlie’s horse behind me. Because you never listen when he does, I realized.
I’d been so eager to let Uncle Charlie know that I already knew everything I needed to know, I never thought to listen to things he’d tried to teach me. I hadn’t let him show me how to work the wirestretcher. I hadn’t let him teach me how to check for broken fences or how to count cattle.
I hadn’t learned a thing in the two weeks I’d been here, and it was all my own fault. I was nothing but a cocky, teenage greenhorn: all mouth and no muster.
I couldn’t do this alone. I needed help. God, I’m ready to listen now, I thought. Please show me where to go.
Underneath me, Okie gave another one of his hard jerks to the right. I started to wrestle him straight, when I heard someone say: “Trust your horse.”
I looked around the empty landscape. Uncle Charlie hadn’t spoken and there was no one else around for miles. Trust my horse? What could Okie the Knucklehead know?
Then I remembered all those Louis L’Amour novels I’d read. If the hero was injured he always tied his wrists to the saddle horn and let the horse take him home.
I looked down at Okie, still pulling to the right. If I followed his lead, I’d be giving up all pretense that I knew what I was doing. Giving Okie his head would be like admitting that this horse was smarter than the dumb kid holding the reins. It was humiliating– but I didn’t have any better ideas.
“God?” I whispered. “Please let this knothead be right.”
I relaxed my grip on the reins. Immediately Okie broke into a trot. Uncle Charlie’s horse followed behind us. Fifteen minutes later, with night closing in around us, we came to a fence with a grassy meadow beyond.
“That’s the East Field,” Uncle Charlie said, as if he’d been expecting it. “We’re about a mile from the ranch. We must have been walking just beside the place for miles now.”
I was so relieved to be home I couldn’t even feel embarrassed. I leaned down and hugged Okie around the neck. “You did it!” I said.
Uncle Charlie came up beside me.
“You’ll do, Erika,” he said softly.
“Not yet,” I replied. Someday I’d be ready to work on a ranch, as smart and tough as any cowboy. But not yet. I was still a greenhorn with a lot to learn. There was no shame in that. Okie snorted and pulled at the bit. I looked up at the big sky above, where stars were just beginning to appear.
“Thanks, Boss,” I said, “for giving me another chance.”
It wasn’t easy getting through to a stubborn teenager who knew everything, but I’d finally learned how to listen to Okie–and to God.
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