“What we obtain too cheap, we
esteem too lightly” is how Thomas Paine phrased
value in The American Crisis. I capitalized on this
truth when developing Double Rafter Cattle Drives
because immersing guests in a meaningful western
experience trailing cows takes a precise amount of
miserably long, hard hours in the saddle followed by
a good steak and a cold beer. Too little challenge
risks boredom, while too great risks death or
desertion. Most guests hailed from the fast-food and
air conditioned world of concrete, so few had
experienced the majesty of God’s creation in such a
personal manner. Sweat-soaked saddle blankets are
equally therapeutic for horses and cowboys and each
passing day brought ordinary city-folk closer to
reality. Watching their transformation taught me
things and today’s story is about Cindy; a cowgirl
from New York.
It was our fourth day on the trail and we were
moving the herd up the Little Horn Canyon. By now,
even the greenest guests were comfortable with their
horses while even the crankiest had become
comfortable with everyone else. I was the guide
escorting Cindy and Julie with a lead group of 30
pair, it was almost noon and we had been in the
saddle since daybreak. This section of the
single-file, canyon trail is densely timbered and as
we moseyed along Cindy and Julie were engaged in a
deep and apparently meaningful discussion about
relationships. I was engaged in ignoring them—it was
girl talk. “I’ve lived with my boyfriend for five
years, but he is just not ready for marriage so I
don’t want to rush him. I want him to be ready,”
Cindy offered. I mindlessly whistled a nameless tune
with no melody or rhythm; an innate survival
technique common in the Kerns family. Thinking I
would survive our final half-hour ride to the Little
Horn Parks, Cindy suddenly blurted “Krayton, What do
you think?”
“Crap,” is what I thought, but I couldn’t say that.
My mind raced. “Well, I already have their money and
they would never find their way out of this canyon
without me so I could tell the truth,” I thought to
myself before offering, “We country folk have a
saying, ‘why buy the cow if you get the milk for
free.’” I spurred my pony off the trail towards a
calf ducking through the timber and back down the
canyon. By the time I turned the little heifer and I
circled back to the trail, the conversation had been
drowned by the mooing of cows and calves. We had
reached the point where the trail crosses the Little
Horn River for the final steep, and I mean steep,
climb through the timber to the Parks. It is a push
frequently requiring even the best cowboys to bail
from the saddle to chase a wayward calf on foot.
Immediately at the top, the trail breaks out into
the bright, green, wildflower-filled alpine meadows
called the Little Horn Parks. The herd scatters in
the openness with the smaller calves disappearing in
a sea of tall grass. I feel a sense of relief every
time I ride out of the timber, but this time it was
different. I glanced over at Cindy who had
dismounted and was sitting on a large boulder
nestled in the Quaking Aspen patch where the trail
opens into the parks. She was holding the reins to
her horse and she was crying. I rode over thinking
the worst and asked “Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m fine,” she babbled. “It’s just so beautiful
it made me cry.” I never spoke, but nodded. Some
things in life are so moving they would even make a
grown cowboy cry and this brings me to my point.
At four o’clock Wednesday morning, my bedside radio
broadcast news headlines which nearly brought me to
tears. Dave Brat, an underfunded political unknown,
sympathetic to America’s founding principles of
limited government had just defeated cocktail-caucus
Republican, House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor.
“Hallelujah,” I screamed into the pre-dawn darkness
thereby awakening the trophy wife. “At last, one
little Congressional district in Virginia gets it?”
Granted it is a small victory, but America just
might be starting a comeback.
Marxism has a death grip on America, so much so the
entire Democrat Party advocates wealth
redistribution. Unfortunately, the cocktail-caucus
Republicans, establishment Republicans, or
responsible Republicans as they refer to themselves
here in Montana, are tripping over each other to be
the first to compromise and join the Democrats. The
cocktail-caucus Republican’s solution is a longer,
slower, more circuitous route to financial collapse
with them driving the bus instead of the Democrats.
If there must be crying, let it be tears of joy from
the patriots along with tears of defeat from the
progressives.
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