The Book

It was in the Great Desert of the Southwest, out in the Mojave, where Gizmo and I accidentally intruded upon an unusual conversation. I was walking, Gizmo’s reins looped over my arm as we made our way slowly along the south side of a long, narrow gully. Lately I had...

The young horse stands in the pale light of a gibbous moon, his hindquarters positioned so they block the cold northwest wind. Spring has remained cool and dry here in the high desert of the southwest, and the nightly winds have steadily robbed the place of its water....

I come awake after a restless night's sleep in the foothills of the mountains of northern Arizona. Out of habit, I reach to find my single action Colt that lies next to me inside my sleeping bag. My thumb instinctively checks to see that the hammer hasn't been...

There weren't many places to put a horse up for the night in the city of Nashville, at least, none that we passed as we inched our way across the southern part of town. I would be staying with my friends Bob and Sarah while we were there for a few days, but I hadn’t...

As we left Las Vegas, New Mexico, we turned straight eastward and climbed up onto a high plain. For the first time I began to feel our passage through the southwestern desert. The Rocky Mountains were receding behind us, though we would see them for many days and...

It was such a long time ago. I’m old now, road weary and weather beaten. Rode hard and put away wet, as the cowboys say. The years have left their marks. This body of mine seems like it belongs to someone else. It sags where it once was drawn taut; joints that moved...

We rode for three hours this morning. I pulled Gizmo up and unsaddled for the midday break well before noon. We spent two hours resting, letting his back cool and letting my feet cool when I pulled off my boots. We hit the trail again for a couple more hours, and we...

I'm riding my sorrel companion down a two lane backroad through northeastern Tennessee. In Texas, they would call it a farm-to-market road. Sometimes it has a grass shoulder to ride on, sometimes not. The road has seen better days, but it retains its utility and...

I was giving Gizmo a drink from the radiator filler hose at a run-down Shamrock station outside of Briscoe, Texas. Grain elevators rose like launchpads in the distance, towering above the flat Texas Panhandle and clearly marking the route of the defunct Panhandle and...

We wandered through Knoxville today. I pushed us into town as far as I could last night, and we camped out in the veterans’ cemetery. The grass had been cut pretty short, but Gizmo managed a decent meal. It's hard getting all the way through a big city like this with...