The morning we arrived, Steve already had three horses saddled, and was standing in the shadow of his antique white barn. He wore a feathered brown cattleman’s cowboy hat and dusty, horn scarred chaps. His pointy-eared companion sat panting next to him, ready and waiting to work. I looked around for a round pen, but didn’t find it anywhere on the property. I saw the stockyard, the pasture, the barn, the house, and the greenhouses, but there wasn’t a round pen in sight. Steve saw that I was looking around for a place to ride, and he came up to me with a pretty chestnut gelding, and told me to get on because we were gonna ride on the young croplands of the North Dakota hills. I noticed the chestnut didn’t appear to have a bit, only a rope bridle with some leather reins clipped to some rawhide loops. I stared at Steve for a moment while I processed what he said, but I didn’t question it. I knew those eyes under the brim of that worn leather hat were serious. Cowboys don’t have time for pranks or lies.

Once I was fitted into my saddle, Steve walked over to his identical buckskin mares and untied them both. He handed one to my grandpa, and got on the other. Those mares were wild! They hadn’t been ridden since the fall before, and it was nearing the Fourth of July that morning. My horse was apparently hungry, because the bitless bridle did nothing to stop him from wandering across the road and into the grassy ditch while I did everything I could think of to get his head up. Meanwhile, on the road, the boys struggled with the mares, and it was minutes before Steve had his under enough control to rescue me. He simply grabbed my horse’s bridle, dragged him out of the ditch, and showed me how to hold the reins right. I was so used to english riding, that I almost forgot how I started off. I was born to ride a western cowhorse, not some posh british show steed with pretty pink reins.

From the road, we trotted into a barren crop field, and up the crest of the hill. From there, we paused to scan the North Dakota countryside. To the northeast, we could see the Garrison dam, and not far from it, we could just barely see Riverdale. The farmland between us and the dam was dotted with green, yellow, and barren brown fields, along with tall blue silos, large white barns, and red tin granaries. Trees were scarce, the land was flat below us, and the skies were without clouds, so we could see a very long way, almost completely across lake Sakakawea in fact.

Eventually, Steve turned to the right, and grandpa, I, and Steve’s dog followed him. Steve trotted ahead of us, and even cantered a bit. This excited all of our horses and the dog, and I decided it was now or never. I either got left behind, or I stood in the stirrups and kicked that chestnut cowhorse into a canter. After crossing a small irrigation ditch, where I lost sight of the guys over the crest of another barren hill, I stood in the stirrups, leaned a bit forward, and held the reins just a bit forward. I didn’t even need to give my horse a kick to the sides, because he knew exactly what I wanted him to do.

I caught up to the two guys in no time, who were trotting their frisky mares stirrup-to-stirrup. Steve only glanced back a quick second to make sure those cantering hooves belonged to my chestnut gelding. I took my seat back in the saddle and relaxed a bit. My horse’s trotting gait was soft enough for me to comfortably relax, before my english riding training kicked in and I stood up and down with my horse’s trot.

We were in the saddle for another hour, crossing over irrigation ditches, some flooded, some dry, squeezing between barbed wire fences that were almost too narrow for us to ride by without getting our jeans and stirrups pricked, and ascending and descending hills on barren croplands. At times, a horse would dart off in a random direction, and everyone else would follow. At one point, I noticed Steve had a lariat around his saddle horn. He later said he was willing to use it if we played cowboys and indians a little too hard and one of us got bucked off, and we each came close at one point or another. My grandpa’s horse was especially wild. We eventually made our way back, all three of us stirrup-to-stirrup, where Steve’s wife stood on the front porch waiting for us with water.

We dismounted our horses by the old white barn, and took the saddles off their sweat-drenched backs. We brushed the sweat off their backs, picked the gravel out of their hooves, and Steve rubbed some anti-fly cream in the horses’ ears. After that, each of us took the lead of our horse, and led them to the main pasture where Steve kept two other horses. He had an old swayback chestnut mare who was the mother of my horse, and a young dark bay who wasn’t yet saddle broken. He gave each horse their own pile of oats, and we left the exhausted horses to rest in their pasture. The last thing Steve said to me before I got in the car was, “You better get yourself a cowboy hat and wear it with pride!”