Read Online The Cowboy and his Elephant by Malcolm MacPherson - Free Book Online

were not attending school, they were on horseback with their father and often with their mother, as Bob says, “cowboyin’.”
    “We worked together. We didn’t have to make things up to keep us together as a family. We were fixing fences, working the cattle, doing all sorts of general ranch work, mostly around the animals; the kids helped with branding, gathering, and doctoring of the cattle. You could say I kinda grew up with my kids. Jane was a mother and homemaker. Twenty years went by, and she didn’t put the same meal on the table twice. She made a career out of it. We were lucky.”
    From time to time, early in the mornings, the family took to the saddle and rode to a favorite wateringhole that was stocked with trout. They threw in their lines and caught breakfast, which they cooked in a skillet over a campfire. At those times Bob inspired his children with simple, homespun truths and lessons to live by:
Always keep your word.
    A gentleman never insults anyone by mistake.
    Never tell a lie, then you don’t have to worry about what you said.
    Don’t look for trouble, but if you get into a fight, make sure you win it.
    Fun is the main thing.
    Don’t complain. Complaining is what quitters do.
    If a man doesn’t respect a woman enough to clean up his mouth, he doesn’t respect himself.
    Be kind to children, old folks, and animals.
    The whole family took part in the spring roundup, roping the calves, branding them, injecting them to keep them healthy, then setting them back with their mothers. The work was hard, and the days were long. They ate around campfires and slept under the stars.
    “The kids and me,” Bob says, “we worked out our problems together, ropin’ and brandin’ and ridin’, always around the animals. On a ranch you eat together, you work together, and play together. You’re happy and sad as aunit, and it’s like the modern psychologists say, ‘quality time.’ Hell, I knew that they’d be up and out soon enough. They’d be gone, and then it’s lost. It’s lost forever and for all time.”
     
    T he boyhood fantasy of the mythic cowboy was never meant to be real. But for Bob it became even more real than for most other cowboys of his generation, when one bright spring day, when he was pushing quarter horses from the pasture toward the corral, he saw strangers arrive in cars near the barn. He had been expecting a visit from advertising agency men from Chicago—someone who knew Bob in Denver had recommended the use of Bob’s ranch as a background for a series of still photos that the agency was shooting for Marlboro cigarettes.
    Bob watched from a distance as a cowboy model took his duds out of a trunk and prepared to change. He had a bright, new neckerchief and new jeans, a shirt with ironed creases, and shined boots that were new out of a Lucchese box. Riding nearer, Bob saw that the model’s complexion was strictly indoor. He carried a little suitcase for makeup that he applied with a brush.
    “Howdy!” Bob greeted him from horseback.
    Meanwhile, another man hurried around the corner of the barn and introduced himself as Neil McBain, from Chicago’s Leo Burnett Advertising Agency, which had created the “Marlboro Man.” He put out his hand as Bob dismounted. He praised the beauty of Bob’s T Cross. Thesetting would help create the right mood. Needlessly McBain pointed to Pike’s Peak to the West and the foothills of the Rockies reflecting light and shadow. The skies lit up the color of amber.
    “So you figure on what?” Bob asked him.
    “Shooting some photos of the cowboy here, with the barns and horses and the wildflowers in the fields, if that’s okay with you.”
    “Be my guest,” said Bob.
    Following the direction of Bob’s gaze, McBain said, “He’s the model.” He knew how painfully obvious he was to a real cowboy: The man was too handsome to be real. McBain had sought to create a cowboy out of a trunk, and clearly he had failed.
    It was not the clothes, or