There’s lots of us cowboys who’ve spent our lives workin’ for the absentee ranch owner. They put clothes on our backs, feed our families, and let us do what we do best: take care of the livestock and the land. Like bosses anywhere, there’s good ones and there’s bad ones and some are a little eccentric.

STRONG WORDS

Some words are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

—FRANCIS BACON, 1561–1626

“What’s the new owner like?” I asked Roger.

“When he replaced the forty-year-old plumbing in the company house, he went to the top of our list. Plus, he understands cows and is learning the ranch. But he’s a hard charger. He’ll be flyin’ down this afternoon.”

For the visit Roger had borrowed from the local car dealer a brand-new Ford four-wheel-drive, three-seater Excursion with big tires, rhinoceros paint, and a bad attitude. When John, the tycoon, arrived with Larry, his sidekick, we all four loaded into the Excursion for a tour of the ranch. The winter snows had been heavy in northeastern New Mexico. The vast meadows and juniper covered peaks were picturesque. The snow had melted and the ground was soaked. The ranch roads were seriously muddy, and we put the Excursion to the test. Soon the side windows were partially obscured and the windshield speckled. John seemed to enjoy each pitch and yaw.

When the smell of hot antifreeze seeped into the cockpit, I thought maybe John would suggest we turn back, but my experience with entreprenurial giants, CEOs, and middle linebackers is . . . they never turn back! John was sort of a cross between Sir Edmund Hillary and Evil Knievel, maybe even a civilized Ted Turner, or like a Lexus with a front-end loader bucket.

On we went across the ranch, whiplashing back and forth and fighting for the high ground. Roger was clinging to the wheel like Captain Ahab, and John was exhorting him to stay the course. Larry debouched to open a gate, and we locked through like a towboat on the Mississippi. Our post-banging fishtail trowled a layer of mud up Larry’s front. When he turned sideways, he looked like an eclipse.

We clawed to the top of the next hump and saw the county road.

“Whew,” we exhaled.

“We have a flat,” exhaled Roger.

The right front tire, big as a 757 jet intake, was flat on the bottom. Less than six inches of clearance showed between the axle and the saturated earth. We crawled underneath and dug a hole to accommodate the eight-inch jack. In the waning thirty-two-degree sundown, we rotated the handle and watched the jack sink out of sight in the soft ground without lifting the vehicle one micron. “We need something hard and flat to put beneath the jack,” proclaimed John. There were no rocks on the treeless plain. “How strong are your words?” he asked me.

I thought he was referring to my recent display of colorful language. But he pointed to the box of my books nestled in the backseat. It took three of my new 224-page, full-color, brilliantly illustrated hardback books to allow the jack to raise the three-ton Excursion high enough to apply the spare. The books sustained considerable damage. They were transformed into the shape of a Jell-O mold and received third-degree literary lacerations, though not as severe as some of the book reviews.

“Strong words,” said John as I scraped baseball-sized chunks of mud off my misshapen poetic volumes. “I’m sure glad it came out in the hardback edition.”