Keeper at the Gate

Ain’t it funny how when we get used to seeing something, we just come to the assumption that it will always be there? It was always at the gate that led down to the bottom pasture. Once tall and strong, it now stood brittle and bent.

I was cooking for a branding during a particular trip down to the bottom pasture, and I noticed it was leaning and looking a bit more weathered than usual. I asked one of the old cowboys on that outfit, “Why hasn’t someone ever straightened that old post up or taken it out?” “Well,” he said, “after supper when you get the dishes done, I will catch you up on some history.”

When the dishes were done, I poured myself a cup of coffee that old Bertha had been warming all day, and sat down with this feller to hear his story. “Now tell me about that one old bois d’arc post that has stood there by that gate,” I said. “It’s not even in the fence line, it just sits there all alone.” He took a draw off the pipe he was smoking and told me, “We call him Sentry, or the Keeper at the Gate. That old post has been there since I was hired on to this place, and that was fifty-three years ago. It has stood there through blowing and drifting snow, flash floods and heat waves, not to mention the migratory flight of tumbleweeds every fall. I heard that post was put in over a hundred years ago, and we all figured that if it had stood there that long we would just leave it be. It has served as night watchman, messenger, and hitching post. I have left a kerchief tied on it to tell others which pasture I would be in. I knew a feller who once tied a slick yearling to it while he went and got his trailer. You see, that old lone post has earned its place here on the ranch, and we sometimes even tip our hats to that old cuss or tell him adios on our way out.”

After everyone had retired to their teepees, I laid there in my bedroll, looking up at the wagon fly that had covered many a cowboy and me for over twenty years. It too was weathered, and so thin in spots you could almost count the stars. I pondered about that old post and the words that feller had told me. That bois d’arc post may not be in any fancy book, but it has great meaning to those who have known it. And no matter what things look like at first glance, not everything that appears a little bent, alone, or used is used up.