S T O R I E S

Every cowboy with any amount of experience has been in that place in time when he knows it is just better to bail out, or off, to save his life.

Johnny had a new job and a new wife. His first assignment on the new ranch was to gather a fence-jumping bull out of a set of heifers where he didn't belong.

When he asked the cow boss which horse would be good enough to take on this mission, he was directed to a big, rawboned, feather-legged dun.

Johnny saddled the big horse, loaded him and his new wife, and off they went to the pasture. So far, so good.

Instructions for the new wife included watching him rope the wandering Romeo, after which she was then to bounce across the cactus, sagebrush and rocks with the pickup and trailer so Johnny could load the bull.

Johnny cut the bull out of the herd of heifers, roped him handily and waved to his wife.

Simultaneously, the bull decided to get on the fight. He made a run at Johnny and the dun and, in the process, he somehow got the rope caught under the rubber wrap on the saddle horn.

The horse remembered what the cow boss had forgotten to tell Johnny - that he would buck at the first opportunity he sensed the cowboy's attention was not fully on riding.

Johnny couldn't get his dally off, couldn't get the horse to quit bucking, couldn't find a soft spot to land, or at least, one without cactus. And worse, he couldn't hurry his wife up. At any rate, he was in big trouble.

Finally, he decided that it might be a good time to let the horse and the bull have it and he bailed off. The horse stopped bucking, the rope came off the horn and the bull came on the fight. "Know when to run."

The only thing that saved Johnny's life was that he was jumping over the sagebrush and the bull was going around them.

Eventually, the wife pulled the truck and trailer in between Johnny and the bull and he bailed in, but not without words of gratitude. Although a few years later, in divorce court, the wife mentioned she wished she had let that bull run over his sorry hide.

Dan had a big outlaw horse in his string named Cobra, named such because no tie-down in the world would keep his head from that "cobra" position. Dan had nightmares about Cobra coming out of a basket, swaying that head at him.

About that time, Robert Redford arrived on the big screen with the Horse Whisperer and Dan decided that laying Cobra down and sitting on his head might be the treatment of choice.

Redford looked pretty good doing that, he thought, and little children could ride the horse afterward, so it must work. Tim came to help, and beer was involved.

They roped Cobra, saddled him, laid him over and Dan was sitting on his side. Cobra objected and was fighting the weight planted on his side. The big horse somehow caught a hole in Dan's britches on the saddle horn and he could find no good way to get loose.

Dan was aware of the theory that you should always wear clean drawers in case you're in a wreck, but he didn't have on any drawers at all that day. He would have been happy to let old Cobra up but he really didn't want to be shucked out of his britches right then.

That's where the "know when to hold 'em" wisdom came in handy.

Julie, also wise with years, can be reached through her website atwww.julie-carter.com.