The guests at Medway Plantation had finished dinner and moved into the library, old Mrs. Legendre leaning on the arm of one of the men who served us, perhaps a butler, perhaps some other title. We were going to shoot wood ducks in the morning and had to get up very early,…
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The Foreman and the Oldest Hand leaned against the corral and watched through the rails as the new kid tried to unsaddle his horse. The crew had brought almost 300 head of cattle down from some of the more distant and inhospitable reaches of the ranch and most of them had already turned their horses…
Read More...Tonopah—it’s a Shoshone word meaning either “water brush” (a small desert shrub) or, more likely, “little spring”—in central Nevada, owes its existence to a sometime hay farmer, sometime prospector, and sometime district attorney (for thirty-five dollars a month) named Big Jim Butler who camped there in May of 1900. The story goes that his burros…
Read More...What I remember most is laughter. We would be on the set, waiting in our chairs, or rehearsing, or, most likely of all, actually filming, and one of us, usually Mackie, would ad-lib something or come out with some one-liner and off we would go. God only knows how much film was wasted on…
Read More...Since first writing this several years ago, Rob has retired with, I am happy to report, all his faculties intact. The second ride of the evening did not go well. Rogerio de Souza Pereira came out on Wild Thang and within two seconds, on the third or fourth massive, twisting buck, Rogerio…
Read More...Well, sir, I never seen nothing like it, and I been sheriff here twenty-two years, in law enforcement going on thirty-five. Course, this is a small county. Population-wise, I mean. Square miles, I put better than 30,000 on that truck ever year. But never seen nothing like it. Blood ever where. On the walls, on…
Read More...The camp stood in a clearing in the bush, wall tents surrounding a wall-less thatched-roof structure, with a bar and stone fireplace, where meals were both cooked and served. The wall tents added a specious air of genuine, old-fashioned safari, but they were as permanent as the dining room, set up on platforms with grass…
Read More...There were an unknown number of strays hidden in the canyons and higher pastures along the northern end of the ranch. The Foreman and the Oldest Hand were sitting their horses in the shade of a sycamore waiting for the crew to spread out when the newest member rode back to them. He was a stocky young man from…
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