THE HORSE (and the mule—which is half horse) had given more to mankind than all the rocket scientists, presidents (all forms), dictators and financial geniuses with all their billions of dollars combined. The horse's hold on mankind, joining in all human glories and foibles, could actually fill many great libraries.
On Glorietta Mesa south of Santa Fe, I went to work on a cow ranch about three months before my twelfth birthday. Almost everyone—in this time and place—was so poor that it was a common practice for ranchers to loan themselves and/or their hired hands out to help each other—especially with big jobs like branding and roundups, and even fence building. It made survival possible.
When I was still a teenager, I acquired a small, well-watered (with springs) ranch in northeastern New Mexico. It was located fourteen miles east of the village of Des Moines—which I would later call "Hi-Lo" in my many writings and a major film. ...In those poor struggling days, coyote hides would bring from five to fifteen dollars—a ton of money at the time.
I was having more trouble putting a rein, a stop, and instilling "rope and cow sense" in this horse than ever before. ...She literally loved and lived to run after the dogs as they ran down one of the smartest creatures ever born. She must have had the ancient genes of some great general's best war horse for she had a true blood lust. Molly loved to watch the dogs' fangs still a freshly caught coyote.
Jiggs loved playing his old Victrola in the early evening and often asked Ty to sit with him and listen. The music wasn't always what Ty was exactly interested in, but he listened to please his grandfather. ...Accidentally he found out that reading was allowed while listening to great music. His grandparents had read to him regularly and insisted that Ty read some of the classics.
Jiggs, with his sharp, dark eyes smiling from a weather-seared face, used to say, "I tell you what, son, if a man is real lucky he'll find that what he wants to do is what he likes to do. That is, of course, if he's lucky enough to take the time to discover it."
As beginning buddies do, Ty had casually mentioned that he'd overheard his grandfather saying to his grandmother, "That Ty is always running for the far horizon, but it keeps moving ahead of him," and Martha had answered as always in his favor, "Yes he is. And someday he'll catch it, and it'll be downhill from then on."
Emilio said "I'm swearing you to secrecy, amigo, and I feel guilty for telling you... There is a secret room in our basement where both mom and dad go to worship in Jewish. They even light the menorah there during Hanukahh."Ty made a zipping motion over his mouth and said, "It stays here, amigo."
We called them wrecks... And the great mystery in the sky does not allow you to have all that fun unless you have some wrecks.
For me, the code of the West is simple. You never let a friend down... ever. And you don't go after your enemies if they leave you alone.You can live a long time on those two things.
Jim Ed Love is a very funny name for a man who likes nothing better than to see a cowboy get what little he's got get kicked out by a rawboned, walleyed, bucking, ground-stopping bronc.
I could see... that there was healed-over spur marks in that old pony's shoulder. That could mean just one thing. Trouble. I had worked for outfits that gave spoiled horses like that one away just to keep from crippling up good cowboys.
He ain't no cowboy, this Ed Love, but he is a cowman. ...He can dicker for six days and nights for one-fourth cent cent a pound for his beef. He can get more work from and give less pay to a cowboy than anybody I ever saw.
Now, to make horse breaking easy you need two cowboys—one on the bronc and one on a gentle, well-broke horse. This way if the bronc tries to cut your leg off on a barbwire fence or jump off a bluff, your partner can ride in front of him or gather up your hackamore reigns.
He looked just like a groundhog coming up for air when he crawled out of his bedroll in the morning, and he didn't look a hell of a lot better now... His legs was bowed so bad that if you was to straighten them up he would be twice as tall.
One from the Heart for... My wife Pat, my number one critic, who also suffered safely through all those long decades of my taking notes, thinking and figuring on Bluefeather Fellini, and then the five and a half years of actually writing it down. ...Also, much appreciation for the painting you created for the cover.
One from the Heart for... , the great director who taught me to feel the color, see the sound, and hear the unsaid in such great films as LaStrada, LaDolceVita, and 81/2.
It was a time of youthful jubilation, and Bluefeather Fellini—the chosen one—knew that never, never, never before had anyone been so blessed. In just a few days, they would be rich...
For decades the old prospector had walked the sizzling southwestern deserts, climbed the jagged mountains, chewed the dust, dodged the blizzards without complaint or defeat.
This was the most difficult book I have ever put together. No matter how I checked out some of the wild stories—wild by their locale, time of occurrence and nature of her business—they were not only unutterably true, but actually understated in some cases.
I will now hope for the near impossible: that the essence of her bravery, the dedication and suffering she afforded those she loved, and above all that indomitable will to have a good laugh no matter where the stones fell, will be as indelible to the reader as they are to me.
Silver City Millie contains sordid details and frank language that will make many readers blush, but before her bawdy, drunken life is condemned, readers must become aware of the full context of prostitution in the American West. It was like motherhood and apple pie. It was expected, condoned, appreciated, and segregated. ...The ratio of men to women in the frontier West was frequently seven to one.