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He braided whips.

Article Excerpt
Leather whips, with deer feet for handles. His name was Eusebio, and he had been my grandmother's ranch manager, or head vaquero, for forever. He lived on the ranch even after he retired, and as kids my brother, Mitch, and I would spend afternoons with him. While he braided the leather, or made a halter or a headstall, Eusebio would tell us stories. One time he recounted how, when he was young (which seemed just after the demise of dinosaurs), some bandits had come up from Mexico to steal cattle. When he came upon them one evening, he said, they chased him through the brush and fired at him. But just as the shot rang through the air, his horse jumped, and by some miracle the bullet went into the back of his saddle.

As a wide-eyed four-year-old, I imagined this to be the cowboy way: a life of horseriding, outlaw-fighting, whip-wielding adventure. Eusebio is still one of my first memories of a real cowboy. Of course, as I grew up, I came to temper this mental image with the realities of the...

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