My Dinner With Hombre Peter B. Steiger 05/03/97 One of the most unusual people we encountered after moving from Dallas to the sunny shores of Wyoming was Doug the ranch foreman. There we were with a moving van full of boxes stuck in three feet of snow in the middle of a buffalo ranch, and Doug came to our rescue with all of the Cowboy Code of Honor you'd expect from someone straight out of an old western movie. With his giant handlebar mustache and the leather chaps that he wears in all weather everywhere he goes, Doug looks like he was born 150 years too late. He lives in a small apartment, probably at one time a storage shed, tacked onto the side of the century-old house we rent on the ranch, and every evening I can hear the mournful harmonies of his favorite cowboy band, "The Sons of the San Joaquin". Doug has been an enormous help as we adjust to the slower pace of life outside Dallas: in addition to rounding up a posse to dig out the moving van when it was snowed under, he loaned me his phone so I could telecommute to my Dallas office during our first week while we waited for Green Acres Phone Service to plod on over. To repay his generosity and also to get a closer look at a real cowboy, we invited him to dinner as soon as we found most of the kitchen buried under Cardboard Box Mountain. My lovely and talented wife Sylvia quizzed him on what he likes to eat: Not surprisingly, he favors solid cowboy vittles like steak and potatoes with lots of onions and salt. So she opened up her chemistry set to whip up a new recipe (I am not exaggerating when I say she has at least 40,000 recipes, occupying about 50 megabytes, on her computer). The big day came and Doug came over, apologetic that he probably smelled like horses (who would have guessed?). With tourist season fast approaching, Doug is refitting all the horses, I think he said 30 or 40 of them, with new shoes. He says although he doesn't have to make shoes from scratch for them, he still has to heat them up to custom-fit each foot. Apparently horseshoes only come in a few generic sizes and shapes, and you can't run down to the mall and grab a size 8 EEEEE off the shelf. Doug is'nt quite done, but he's already a mess: he had a severe limp from being kicked in the leg by one of his less grateful customers, and several bandages on his hand where nails had gone right through his fingers when a kick was timed for just the wrong moment. What's worse, Doug feels he has to do every horse himself, because his assistants don't have the experience to do it exactly right, and they can't afford to lose even one horse to leg injury caused by an incorrectly fitted or attached shoe. The smashed leg and holes in his fingers are the least of Doug's worries; he liberally splashes himself with the same antibiotic wash he uses on the horses' cuts and keeps going. I jokingly asked if there was any bone he hasn't broken, and Doug thought about it for several minutes before replying, "yeah." He's pretty sure he has not broken his left thigh or his spine, and one or possibly both large foot bones. Beyond that... well, he went into a litany of injuries from rodeo falls to more horseshoe-related injuries that were horrifying to say the least. It came to a peak when a bull fell on him. He was riding in a rodeo and when the bull threw him, it actually fell over on top of him. In that accident, he broke most of the bones of his face, several ribs, and I think two or three arms. He claims he had to come back to Cheyenne the next day, so he piled his brother into the truck and drove back, broken bones and all, 10 hours straight through the night, stuffing a bean burrito through the small hole left in the bandages wrapping his mouth and drinking coffee through a straw. At that point I have to admit I became somewhat skeptical, but up to then Doug has been so completely open and straightforward it was hard to imagine he'd suddenly spin tall tales to impress us. Besides, looking at him it's easy to believe his body has taken that kind of beating: Doug is several years my junior, but from his appearance and talk he bears the weariness of a man twenty years older. Doug has been in ranching literally all his life; his parents were in the business too. He's worked with horses since age 4, and it's all he's ever done, all he knows how to do, and all he wants to do. When his parents got out of the ranching business, they tried to urge him to quit, too, but by mid-teens he was sure that the cowboy life was for him So he rode off into the sunset to make his own way in the world. Doug is a drifter by choice. He mentioned once before that he thinks he'd like to move on to a "real" ranch - as opposed to a tourist ranch - where the hours are longer and the work harder. I quizzed him about this during dinner, and he confirmed that statement. He went on to describe his history of moving from ranch to ranch as needed, or just riding all over the state with no possessions but the clothes on his back, living off the land and stopping for a day or two of work in exchange for new clothes, a few meals, a hot bath, or whatever he needed. He says he's spent upwards of 6 months to a year just riding among the mountains and once took a job that kept him tending the livestock high in the snowiest mountains without coming down to civilization for six months. Even now, after a hard day's work, he likes to ride for a couple of hours into the hills around Cheyenne to commune with his horse and the sky. I thought I had done a reasonably good job of making the adjustment from a city full of muggers, smog, and drive-by shootings to a ranch full of buffalo, horses, and sheep, but I have to admit it was a little confusing to find a flock of peacocks strutting around my yard all day and sitting in the trees all night (RIGHT outside my window... will you guys shut up already?) I hoped Doug might shed some light on the mystery of why a buffalo ranch had peacocks roaming free all over the place. "Where," I inquired, "did all those peacocks come from?" "Peacocks come from India," Doug replied helpfully. Then he realized I was asking specifically about the ones at the ranch, and he admitted he's not sure who brought them here. He shares our amazement, though, that an animal designed for much warmer climates is able to survive for months at a time in sub-freezing weather and all that snow. He also told me about their adventures when the birds hadn't learned that this is their new home; they would take off flying all over the freeway and have to be "herded" back to the ranch. I'm pretty sure that's not in Doug's job description, but I'd love to see the expression on a driver's face when he sees a huge, colorful peacock flapping towards him in the middle of a Wyoming highway. Doug had to beg off from staying around long after dinner; with all that horseshoe work he was too exhausted even for his evening ride. All he wanted to do was plop into his chair in front of the TV and drift to sleep to the sounds of the cowboy band. As I watched him limp back home and thought about his lonely life, not to mention what my insurance company would think about that kind of career path, I decided that I definitely do *not* want to be a cowboy when I grow up.