Through Time and the Valley

18. Horseshoes with Ben Hill

18 Horseshoes with Ben Hill The next morning David Trimble rode down to the river with us and showed us the best place to cross. Our second crossing was as uneventful as the first, and again we found the river dry except for a few slues and pools. Our destination this day was the Ben Hill Ranch on Barton Creek, a short ride of about four miles. Ben Hill's son Arnold lived on the place then, having recently returned from a fifteen-year stay in California, where he worked as a stunt man in motion pictures and television. He and his wife Alice lived in a mobile home about half a mile west of the corrals and bunkhouse. Alice, a California 172 Horseshoes with Ben Hill - 173 Ben Hill, long-time rancher in the Canadian River Valley , takes aim with a horseshoe. Ordinarily a kind and gentle man, he showed his guests no mercy at the horseshoe pits. 174 -- Through TiIne and the Valley woman, seemed to have adapted well to living on the prairie and spoke of how pleasant it was to be able to breathe fresh air. We found Arnold, Ben, and Ben's grandson, J. C. Hill, at the bunkhouse talking over the day's work schedule. After they showed us where to put the horses, the Hills held a short caucus and decided that since company had arrived on the ranch, they would postpone the work until after lunch. J. c. was dispatched to the bunkhouse to put the meal on the stove, while the rest of us went down to a grove of trees to pitch horseshoes. After lunch, Mr. Hill washed the dishes while Arnold and the rest of us drove out into the pasture to locate a herd of steers. During the meal there had been some talk of moving the steers down to a pasture along the river, and Arnold had thought it would be a good idea to find out where they were before we set out on horseback . We returned with a gloomy report: the cattle were badly scattered and had gone into the brush to find some shade. Furthermore , it was bloody hot. Over glasses of tea, Arnold and Mr. Hill weighed the need to move the cattle against the inconvenience of doing it against the fact that what everybody really wanted to do was pitch horseshoes in the shade. Mr. Hill heard all the evidence, pondered for a minute or two, and ruled in favor of horseshoes. We retired to the pits. Ben Hill had been on the river since the 1920s. He was a kind old gentleman with hazy blue eyes and two hedges of white hair on the sides of his head. Wearing his old slouch hat, he reminded me of Walter Brennan. He was a wicked horseshoe pitcher. Holding the shoe on the right side and throwing for a full tum to the right, he wiped out the younger generation for several hours. In the middle of the afternoon, we called a recess and went up to the bunkhouse for some more iced tea. As we sat out on the screened porch, Arnold told us about his career in Hollywood. Raised on the Barton Creek Ranch, he rode bulls on the professional rodeo circuit for several years and happened to be in Cali- Horseshoes with Ben Hill - 175 fornia at a time when stunt men were in demand. During his fifteen years in Hollywood, he stunted in "Gunsmoke," "Rawhide," doubled for Paul Newman in "Hud," and worked in several of the Disney productions. His work included chase scenes, fights, horse falls, and wagon wrecks, mostly western. A member of the Wrangler's Union, Local 399, he said that every time an animal appeared in a motion picture it had to be accompanied by a wrangler. "If they don't use but one chicken in the whole picture, that chicken has to have a wrangler with him," he told us. He also pointed out that every time an animal was used in a film, a representative from the Humane Society had to be present to see that the animal was not abused. Arnold left Hollywood when movie makers found that they could make films cheaper outside the United States and moved practically all their locations to Mexico and Europe. Unless a stunt man was willing and able to spend a lot of time...