A very rich gentleman from LA bought a vanity ranch in Alpine. It had been unoccupied for quite a while and needed some fence work, pool cleaning, and general maintenance in order to be liveable. The main house was in pretty good shape, but the stables, bunk house, and tack rooms were in dire need of some work. He stopped in to visit with Elwin, Charlie's cousin, and bought a couple of horses and some related items to add to his existing stock. During the conversation, he asked Elwin if he knew of a couple of high school kids who would be interested in staying on the place during the week and working on some of the projects that needed it. They would leave when he showed up on Friday and come back sometime after he and his family had left Monday. He would pay well but he expected quality work. Edwin tagged Charlie...The millionaire liked Charlie and set down the rules and parameters and told him he could bring on two helpers, if he knew anyone. That is how I became a ranch hand during the summer between by junior and senior year in high school. For a few weeks of it, anyway.
Mike and I showed up Monday afternoon. Charlie had met with the owner and had gotten the keys and tools and other stuff. The first order of business was to get the fence work done and start working on the outbuildings. Most of the work was clean up. It went pretty fast, too. In those days you could still burn a lot of the trash in barrels in your back yard so every evening we had a nice bonfire. We started out early in the morning, riding out to work on barbed wire fence. I don't know how much fence it takes to surround about 75 acres, not too much. We would work on fence until it got hot, then head in and do clean up and repairs around the main part of the ranch. That worked out pretty well...we got a lot done for a set of high schoolers with not too much ambition and practically no experience.
There was a protocol to the horsing arrangement. Charlie, being the "Foreman" got first pick. No brainer. A tall good looking chestnut mare with excellent manners. Mike had never been on a horse in his life so he got the gentle, practically comatose, buckskin. I really liked the paint but he had a bad gash on his foreleg that wasn't healed. That left two to chose from: the stallion. 17 1/2 hands, beautiful white, flowing mane and tail, and no respect whatsoever for the human race...or Big Red...a hugely muscled quarter horse with a massive chest, double wide butt, short, muscley legs, and an eye for trouble. So guess which one I ended up on every day.
At our first meeting, Big Red established the tone for our relationship by stepping on my foot as I tried to saddle him. Not just stepping on it, standing on it and not letting go. I finally had to drive a knee into his belly to make him move...but he'd made his point. If we hadn't been in soft sand I would have spent the rest of summer in a cast. Then, on numerous occasions he tried to brush me off by going by trees so close I almost lost a leg. About fifty yards behind the stable there was a gully about six feet deep. He didn't like it. It was a monster battle every time to get him to go through it...coming or going. He had a talent for getting free while we were working on the fence requiring a separate rope to keep him in place.
I make it sound like work. Mostly it wasn't. Mike had a pool in his back yard so he knew what to do to skim, clean and test the pool. Charlie's family were all carpenters so he was handy with a hammer and saw and I had a semester of electric shop and could help with wiring and assisting with the rest of it. We spent a lot of each day just riding or goofing...or writing ridiculous songs based on what we saw in the bunkhouse at night..."Rocklathe Ceilin'...I'm starin' at you..." It was a good few weeks.
One Friday near the end of our ranchin' days, we were out past the gully doing I-don't-know-what (the fencing was done, there wasn't any thing beyond the gully for us to be doing) when we heard a child screaming. There shouldn't have been any child anywhere around us. Charlie wheeled the mare around and broke for the ranch house. Mike turned the buckskin (Mike was about 6'2", the buckskin wasn't. They were a funny combo, especially now, trying to run to the house). I joined in, turning Red and kicking him up. I had never opened him up before. Really kind of scared to, he was barely under control when I was on him and after a few weeks, we were no closer to a compromise than when we started. I was startled. Once given the message to fly, he did. We passed Mike and the buckskin in about three steps, then caught and passed Charlie and the mare in short order. I was kind of proud of Red, he had some go in him. As we approached the gully, I started checking him down but he kept flying, I thought I would pull his head clear back in my lap but along with a muscley butt and chest, he had a tree trunk neck, too. Before I could come up with any other plan, we really were flying...over the gully. I remember looking down and thinking we must be fifty feet in the air...probably more like 15. Before that moment I would have bet the ranch that NO horse could jump that gully. At that moment I prayed and prayed that this one could. He did. And I managed to stay on him, too. I was really proud and beginning to change my thinking on this big Red horse...then he cut under a low branch and tried to scrape me off, then veered into a tree trunk when that didn't work. I got him to stop in front of the stable (Yeah, I know, but I played it off then, too...like that was MY idea), then ran over to the main house. The owner had shown up early. One of his daughters saw a spider and let us all know about it. Come to think of it, that may have been the last day we all worked there. I think Charlie and Mike had a day or two the next week to finish up the pool and that was about it.
Later, when Mike's dad had us cruising around El Cajon in a fire-engine red Comet with the poster on the side that declared, "TRY BIG RED"...I couldn't help but think, "No thanks...he had his shot at me already".