COWBOYS OF BABB by Leanne Zainer
Bringing in a Few Pair, South Fork Kennedy Creek
Gary Johnson and Sam Whitford at Poia Lake
I wake in the dark, on a mattress in the trailer of a deceased woman who I’ve never known. I light the 1990s-era Coleman stove and make one cup of the good coffee that lures friends to visit me up in the horse camp: instant Starbucks sent from my urban sister out east, cut with rich evaporated milk. All I will drink or eat until I swing off my horse at the end of the day. I can’t expect these cowboys to wait for me on the trail. They’ll be perfectly polite, but if I’m a nuisance, I’ll lose the chance to chase cows with them the coming fall. This is their livelihood—they can’t risk losing a pair of wily bovines to take care of an amateur who wants to play cowgirl.
Gearing up by candlelight, I bend down to strap on a pair of borrowed spurs and catch a scent that means I’ll need to empty another mouse out of the mini trapline we’ve run through the aging trailer my friends Lee Ann and Snicky let me bunk in. I buckle on well worn chinks and zip up a brown North Face jacket to cut the biting wind that seems to always blow along the northern Rocky Mountain front.
