Who Shot the Cheyenne?

My husband had a couple of life-long friends and when they got together the stories would fly back and forth, laughter would bounce off the walls. If you look up the word ‘buddies’ in the dictionary, you’ll see a picture of the three of them. That’s how close they were. Back in 1978 Don and one of those friends went out west together on a hunting trip in Don’s brand new pick up truck with duel gas tanks and a custom leather interior. And when I say it was brand new I mean he literally picked it up from the dealership a few hours before picking up his friend.

Every where they went since they hit the state line of Wyoming people were staring at them so they decided to scout out a western clothing store. As naive as it sounds now they thought leather cowboy boots, Stetson hats and western cut shirts was going to change that. It didn’t, of course. They were Easterners who walked and talked too fast compared to the locals and new clothing wasn’t going to mask that. They might as well have bought t-shirts imprinted with the words: Two Guys on a Holiday!

After hunting a couple of days without success they decided the reason the antelope weren’t impressed enough by their marksmanship to do more than just look at them with amusement was because they needed to sight their rifles in for longer distances. So out in the middle of no where, with no witnesses around, Don sighted in his Winchester then stepped aside for his friend to do the same. Ron placed his Browning 30.6 across the hood of Don’s truck ever so carefully so he wouldn’t scratch the finish and then he pulled the trigger.

“Did you see where the bullet hit?” Ron asked.

“Right there,” Don replied in a deceptively calm voice as if what had just happened was an every day occurrence. He was pointing to a bullet hole in the hood of truck. Then Don did something that drained the color from Ron’s face and frozen him in place. He slowly drew his .38 pistol out of its holster and for a few seconds Ron saw his life flash before his eyes. Damn, he’d shot Don’s brand new Chevy Cheyenne and he was going to die for it! But Don had other plans. He plucked the new Stetson off his friend’s head, threw it up in the air and deftly put a bullet hole in one side of the crown and out the other.

“I’m just getting even with you,” Don said and if he was mad he sure didn’t show it. Then he put his pistol back in his holster and after some blustering and teasing back and forth Don told his friend not to worry about it, the dealership could fix it.

Ron, of course, was embarrassed and offered to pay for repairing the bullet hole---many times---but when they got back home Don had one excuse after another for not getting the body work done. Weeks turned into months. Months turned into years. And it wasn’t until Ron ran into a guy who was a co-worker of Don’s that he learned the true reason why that bullet hole never got repaired. Everyone who’d see that hole in the hood and would ask about it was an opportunity for Don, the master storyteller, to be at his best. The story of who shot the Cheyenne had become a legend, the ultimate hunting trip tale. With his great comedic timing and ability to turn a five minute event into a half hour hilarious story, the tale of the wounded Cheyenne always had Don’s listeners splitting their sides with laughter.

When the truck finally out-lived its usefulness and was loaded up on the back of a flatbed truck ready to go off to the junkyard it was missing a chunk of the hood. Don had cut a piece out, memorializing the bullet hole that inspired so many how-the-heck-did-that-happen questions.

The thing that was so amazing about my husband wasn’t his ability to tell a good story—although that was pretty amazing---it was his ability to adjust to not having any speech at all. In the 12 years after his stroke his working vocabulary consisted of a couple of dozen hard-earned nouns and the phrases, “Oh, boy!” and “Oh, Shit! and Oops!” But he didn’t let his losses him turn him bitter. He stayed good-natured, and he especially loved it when his life-long friend would come over and tell their two-buddies-on-a-hunting-holiday story. Over the years Don, Ron and I had all put our own spin on the minor details but one thing remained the same: none of us ever got tired of hearing the story about the day the Cheyenne got shot. ©

 

The Colorado Barstool Rancher

Growing up, Don and I both cut our teeth on spaghetti westerns which I suspect sowed the seeds that would later grow into a favorite fashion statement for Don and a frequent travel destination for both of us. There was nothing that made Don look and feel more “macho” than to be all decked out in a western cut Pendleton shirt, boot-cut Levi’s, a gray Stetson hat, and his too-fancy-for-Michigan Frye cowboy boots. Me? When I was a kid I used to tell my folks I was going to marry Gene Autry when I grew up and since I couldn’t do that, Don in his should-have-been-a-cowboy outfit was the next best thing. Every year for over twenty-five years he went out west to roam the Rocky Mountains and hunt and every couple of years I’d tag along. On the years when I went along we’d also explore the back roads, cowpoke towns and tourist traps in a six state triangle with Colorado at the center.

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It was on such a trip that one night, just before hunting season opened, we found ourselves sitting on barstools in a cowboy bar, all fancy-upped in our idea of what the locals would wear for a night on the town. Don didn’t drink but he loved cowboy bars and especially if he could strike up a conversation with a stranger. That night a stranger was eager to talk to Don. He planted himself on the next barstool and introduced himself as being from Minnesota. The guy had assumed Don was a local rancher and Don, flattered by assumption, said nothing to change that perception. He even tweaked it a bit with a few well chosen fibs.

After talking scopes and antelopes and the mythical ranch we had just outside of town the Minnesotan laid $300 down on the bar and shoved it towards Don. “Listen,” he said, “my two buddies over there and me are looking for a place to hunt this week but we can’t find anything. Do you think you could help us out and let us hunt on your ranch?”

I could tell by the look on Don’s face that he knew his trip down Fantasy Lane had hit some major pot holes. He looked like a cat who’d just swallowed a canary and was about to barf it back up. You could almost see the wheels in his head turning, trying to figure out what to do. He could have said something like, “Sorry, I’m already maxed out on how many hunters my ranch can support” and that would have been the end of it but Don never cheated the piper when it was time to pay for his mistakes. Instead of brushing off the request he said, “Look, I’ve got something to tell you but I want you to promise you won’t hit me after I do. Now, you have to promise….”

The Minnesotan looked confused but he made the promise and Don promptly told him he didn’t have a ranch and that we were from Michigan. “But I can draw you a map to get to state land,” he quickly added, “where you can hunt for free. That’s a good area to hunt.”  

Who can predict how a stranger is going to react after learning that the guy he’d just talked with for the past twenty minutes could have walked away with his $300 and left behind a bogus map to a ranch that didn’t exist? All the guy could say at first was, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

Don called the bartender over, ordered the stranger another drink and did what Don did best---talk himself out of the corner he’d painted him self in. Five minutes later we were all laughing and the Minnesotan said, “Now will you promise me something?”

“Sure, anything!” Don replied.

“If we see you around town this week, or on state land, will you promise you won’t tell my buddies how easily I could have been scammed out of our money?” he asked. “We had pegged you and your wife for locals---God damn it, you look like ranchers! ---and I was elected to try and broker a deal to hunt on your land. My buddies will never let me hear the end of it if they find out how easily I could have gotten scammed out of our money."

We never saw the trio of would-be hunters again but the story about the night Don was a barstool rancher was a story he repeated to very few people. He was a great story teller and this was fertile material to work with but it was out of character for him to pretend to be someone he wasn’t so he was a tad bit ashamed of himself. And when ever the ‘Barstool Rancher’ came up over the years he’d get that silly, cat-ate-and-barked-up-a-bird look on his face again. Who would have ever guessed Don’s cowboy fashion statement could have led him down the path he rode that night? He was one of a kind, that’s for sure. ©

Another blog entry that is a perfect example of why I and others loved Don can be found here:  Who Shot the Cheyenne?

Don