He Doesn't Call Himself 'Cowboy'...

 

I have a friend who is a cowboy. I know he's a cowboy because he never told me; he just is. I've never heard him tell a story about how he's punchy; he just is. He's not a rodeo hand and he doesn't tote his half top trailer to town to have dinner at the café. As a matter of fact, he lives too far from town for anyone to notice him. But I notice him.

I think he gets lonely. It's in the job description. He never said he was but he knew that it has been exactly seven months since he had a visitor. New Mexico is pretty but the yuccas and sage and mesas and antelope aren't a suitable substitute for an old friend and old stories and staying up late.

My friend isn't even 21 yet but I won't say he has never been drunk in a bar. That cowboy charm has encouraged more than one bartender to slide a bottle of keystone across the bar top. I know, I've been there. He has seen more than most but I assume he has traveled less than many. There's more to see off an old two track, on the back of a bronc and beside a cooking fire than common folks care to know.

He patched up his felt hat with a few cross stitches across the crown. I imagine it fits too well to replace and a new one is a weeks worth of wages. It's the hat he wore to brand spring calves, to wean the same ones last fall, to doctor the sick's on wheat over the winter months and to ship them when they were straight. It's the same hat he took off to shake a woman's outstretched hand, the same hat he wore to dance with her after a few drinks to loosen up and the same hat he took off and sat on the kitchen table when she invited him into her house.

My friend sends me pictures of the country he rides across. You can see to the end of the earth, or maybe you can see just as far as what matters. The snow that collects in the low spots between the cactus and the flint rock, the sky turned red from the wind over the flat land, the hills and rock outcroppings more beautiful than any northwestern mountains I've ever seen. All the pictures I receive have the tips of a horses ears in them and maybe that's why they're better than any museum painting or professional photograph in a magazine, because a cowboy took them.

He's multitalented. He can weld, he can train horses, he can shoe horses, he has an endless supply of work ethic. But I don't think he'll ever not be a cowboy. When you're born with it, you're stuck. Like the color of your skin, the sound of your voice and your mannerisms. He didn't choose this and I don't think he'll choose to quit. He'll never stop carrying his bedroll in the back of his pickup, trading colts at a Saturday night beer drinking and enjoying his coffee black.

But when you're a cowboy, a real one, it's pretty obvious that you're a genuine type of character. And you, my friend, will always have a friend in me.