August in the Yellowstone wilderness can be cold and that morning it was about 35 degrees and frozen dew cracked off my bedroll tarp as I peeked out to see the morning sun was already glowing over the pine trees on the rim. Damn, that meant I was late and old Jack did not tolerate late.

Pulling my cold Levies out of my bedroll I was struggling to get my packer boots on. I was dressing on the run, and I could hear the other two wranglers already leaving.

I had held back a three-year-old paint to wrangle stock on. He was mostly broke to ride but he didn’t like surprises, and when he felt like it he could put some real native talent into bucking. As I took him off the grazing hobble, I was aware of two ominous sounds. The paint snorted and blew steam out of both nostrils at being surprised and hurried.

The other noise was old Jack, the man in charge! He was always the first one up, always demanding, and the best mule packer I ever met in my life.

“Might as well go back to bed, you missed most of the morning already!”

“Good of you to show up. You planning to work today at all?”

We frequently had to tie our horses to trees so we put a halter with a cotton lead rope on under the bridle. When I threw my saddle on, I tied the halter rope to my left front saddle strings so I would not have to deal with it. Normally a man should tighten the saddle cinch and then lead their horse around a couple of circles to get the morning humps out and then pull the cinch up a little more. I was in a hurry to catch up and I just jerked up the cinch, grabbed the saddle horn and did that movie thing where they just swing aboard.

It was about 30 yards from the tack tent to where a small hill dropped off into the night pasture where the horse and mules would be going off grazing to get into the timber. I pulled the paint around and headed for the pasture. He blew out two steamy breathes and then relaxed and walked off.

It was going so well I decided to spur him into a trot off the hill and make up for the lost time.

And then — the paint took one little hop and landed straight legged all bowed up like a blow fish. The next move was straight up in the air, and he was shaking all over like a wet dog. He landed just over the edge of that hill and then he was airborne again. There was a lot of daylight under us, he was bawling like a crazed banshee, and dirt was flying past my head from his takeoff leap.

I was staying with him, and I threw my feet forward as he left the ground for the third time. As he landed with his head between his front legs my world changed. I watched him disappear under me as my saddle and I went shooting over his head. When the saddle came to the end of that cotton lead rope it turned over and launched me into the grass on my face.

The paint made one more jump and then he took off dragging my saddle and kicking it every chance he got. After about 50 yards he jumped over an old snag tree and the saddle got caught on a branch darn near breaking his neck in the stop. I think he thought I caught him because you could tie him up with spider web from then on.

As the chaos stopped, I was aware of somebody doing a lot of imaginative swearing and that turned out to be me. The other wrangler almost fell off his horse because he was laughing so hard it was making his horse nervous. And I can’t swear to it, but I think old Jack might have been smiling, just a little.

I walked over and resaddled the paint who was not turning a hair, and his eyes were so wide you could see the white edges. You might have thought he was broke for your old grandmother to ride the rest of that summer.