Through Time and the Valley

13. Dave Wilson

13 Dave Wilson The hours crawled by. Around noon we passed the old Red Camp place, which is no longer red, crossed Highway 70 under the Dugout Creek bridge, and pushed on into the most uninspiring country we had seen. Maybe the heat had something to do with it-it was miserably hot and still-but I shall always harbor unpleasant memories of that stretch ofcountry between the highway and Point Creek. It was flat, barren country with bonedry creeks and sandy roads that reflected the angry rays of the sun back into our faces. On and on we rode, not daring to lookback lest we be plunged into despair at how far we hadn't come. Sweat rolled down our cheeks, deer flies droned overhead, and in front of us lay an end127 128 -- Through Time and the Valley less prairie blazing white in the afternoon sun. For hours we hardly spoke a word. Even ifwe'd had the energy to talk, which we didn't, our conversation would have returned to the heat, the sand, the cursed flies, the stillness and desolation that lay all around ussubjects which didn't need discussing. And so we bobbed along, trying to occupy ourselves with other thoughts. Slumping in the saddle, I gazed off to the north where the prairie suddenly gave way to the caprock that rose two hundred feet into the air, forming sheer rock walls and deep canyons. That was Dave Wilson's country. With nothing better to do, I tried to remember all the tales I had heard about Dave Wilson. Down on the river, when the conversation turns to roping, it either begins or ends with Dave Wilson, one of the best ropers the country ever produced. In his youth, Dave used to drive cattle from New Mexico to the Wilson ranch north of the river, a distance of several hundred miles. To pass the long hours in the saddle, he would practice heeling, throwing one loop after another, hour after hour, day after day, until he could hit just about anything he threw at. In his hands a rope became more than a piece of line; it was a specialized tool with which he could perform a number of jobs. For some jobs he threw for the head, for others the horns, heels, or forefoot. He always rode a good roping horse, and the first thing he did when he mounted up was to make a big loop in his rope and lay it over the saddlehorn. Back in the Twenties, when times were hard and money was scarce, Dave would enter rodeos to pick up a little extra cash. Leaving home with three horses, he would ride all the way to Campo, Colorado, to rope in a rodeo. He would take his bedding, a skillet, some bacon and flour, and camp out along the way. At night he would build a fire, fry the bacon and add flour, salt, and baking powder to the grease, making a kind of hoe cake. He would return home five or six days later with as much as a hundred dollars, having won first money in calf and goat roping. Dave Wilson - 129 The first year Mr. Studer of Canadian brought in Brahman bulls for his Anvil Park Rodeo, one of the bulls jumped the corral fence and headed west. Four or five cowboys gave chase and tried to get a rope on him, but they couldn't do it. My own guess would be that they didn't want to very badly, a sentiment I understand completely. The bull continued west at a run, and a few days later Mr. Studer received word that he had been spotted in Ochiltree County, about thirty miles northwest of Anvil Park. Studer's next move was to pay a visit to Dave Wilson to see if he would rope the bull. Dave said he wasn't afraid of the bull and that he would see what he could do. So he and Mr. Studer loaded the best roping horse on the place and drove out to find the bull. Perhaps movies and television westerns have dulled our capacity to appreciate feats of cowboy daring, so I would like to emphasize just how dangerous an undertaking this was. If Dave Wilson wasn't afraid of roping the bull, he probably should have been. In the first place, suppose he...