09/30/05 Night ride finished

Night Ride Finished Yesterday I started to tell you about a night ride I took recently. I'm Jeff Keane; I'll be right back to finish the night ride. I was riding at night because I didn't find the saddle horses I needed the next morning until just at dark. I had found the horses in a little bunchgrass swale and started them home. The horses started out of that swale over a sharp ridge, all single-file and moving easy with me feeling all lucky to have found them and feeling even luckier to be in that place on a horse watching 20 horses top a sky-line ridge. I thought this is going to be a pleasant ride home with the horses moving slow in the dark and me bringing up the rear, just enjoying. Wrong. When I topped the ridge all I had trotting along was three older horses. The rest of the horses did wait for me at the water tank, and I thought that's nice now they'll trot on home. Wrong again. It was just a trick--that bunch decided they were going to have some fun in the dark with the dummy that disturbed their grazing and took off like they were out-running the ghost of Secretariat. By now I'm not feeling so lucky to be out there and the wind is blowing so hard that I can't even follow dust hanging in the air. Well, after those horses had run by two gates, lost themselves once more, and I had lost my sunny disposition I finally got them to the corrals. I felt so glad to get them in I decided not to do all the vile things I had promised to do to Tyrel, Gus, Bonnie, and Bay Boy even though I knew they had to be the ring-leaders. I'm Jeff Keane.