Stick Horses and Other Stories of Ranch Life: And Other Stories of Ranch Life
Stick horses and other stories of ranch life\ Wallace McRae's reputation in the field of writing and performing cowboy poetry is legendary. His poem "Reincarnation" is the most recited of contemporary cowboy poetry and is considered a classic of the genre.\ McRae is also a storyteller, and here he relates true-life stories about ranch hands, Indians, sheriffs and the milieu of characters that populated a ranching community of the legendary American West. McRae tells about his heroes and also...
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Nearly every morning one of us would wrangle the horses. Occasionally there was other, more compelling, work to be done, but we preferred to ride. We kept a wrangle horse 'up' by picketing him to the gatepost at the back door of our grandparents' house. As was the case with the ones we rode, we rotated the wrangle horse. Not all members of the cavvy were fit to ride to gather the rest, however. Some were afflicted with defects-a fistula, cinch sore or wire cut. Some were packing just a bit too much of that hot Thoroughbred blood crazying them up, so using them for running in the other horses rendered them mentally unfit to ride for weeks. Some were either permanently or temporarily unsound. Some were not sufficiently broken and considered too green for the job. . . . Our shared grandfather was the only adult on the ranch who understood, and believed, our remuda to be comprised of real horses. They most definitely were not mere stick horses. From his rocking chair on the screened porch, Grandpa would watch us wrangle. He understood what we were doing and probably didn't approve, though he never spoke of it. . . ." -excerpted from "Stick Horses"
Cub and Boy Scouts, Campfire Girls, Little League Baseball and other youth activities designed primarily for urban kids have their place, I guess. My mind is not made up on the merits of Demolay, Job's Daughters and Rainbow Girls and their ilk (although I spent a portion of my dissolute youth in an unsuccessful attempt to discover at which end of the latter lay the pot of gold). But, by George, we rural kids had 4-H! Take that, you city elitists!
6 Preface 9 Stick Horses 18 Dangerous Dan Imlah 21 Head, Heart, Hands & Health 25 Toilet Birds 29 "All the World's a Stage" 37 Commerce 42 Teacher 51 Frank Parkins 58 Census 71 Albert Tallbull 77 Icing 80 Digging Joe Beeler 85 Red and the Indian 89 Storyteller 93 Bucking Horse Sale 98 Cowman 105 Wilkie 113 Charlie 116 Lee Kimball 120 Mr. Colbert 124 A Trio of Cultural Events 133 Trespassing 139 Kaharski Homestead 144 Talking Brands 148 Richardson's Revenge 153 New Neighbors 160 Henry
