Describing and Quoting Ern’s Writings
Like Will James and Ben K. Green, Ern wrote about mustanging, cow work, and drifting across the West’s unfenced expanses on horseback. All three were different from other “western” authors in that they had lived what they wrote and left the shoot ‘em up yarns to Zane Grey and countless others. Their work reads as if it had been dictated from the saddle and exudes gritty authenticity.
For those not familiar with Ern’s work, here’s a series of excerpts, each with a brief introduction:
Buck, The Big Lonely Horse, ran free for the first few years of his life. When he was a four year old, Ern became his owner. This is Ern’s description of him:
In his fifth year, I rode him nearly a hundred miles back to the range of his colthood, and to all the trails, water holes and springs he’d known then. We roamed his mountains and his desert. We laced our way through shaggy cliffs and crags. We hunted the mustang bands. The ones he’d known were still there. Were those years of freedom happier times for him? I cannot say, for the big horse always ran alone. In all the days of his time he never answered the nickers of other horses.
We teamed up with an old friend to run in a bunch of horses, and before the run was two minutes old, I knew I’d never ridden a horse like him. He came off the mountain taking it all at the same speed. There was no slowing for the rough spots nor looking for an open trail. When you run with the mustangs, you run where the mustangs are. A mountain mustang will try to lose you where the land is the roughest. The buckskin stayed behind those ponies all the way, forcing their lead, outguessing them──outrunning them in their own land. Yet there was no stampede. He was a horse doing a job better than others could do it. Only my pride kept me from hauling him in. He blocked out cedars that might well have disemboweled him. At a full run, he jumped from ledges three and four feet high landing without a stumble in brush, shale, and broken rock. My confidence in him became big. I knew that he would not fall. We plowed through chaparral so thick that it hid the ground. The brush whipped my batwing chaps, stinging my legs beneath. As he leaped the tall sagebrush, the convulsions of his back sent their messages right up through the saddle.
When we had the wild ones spread out on the sagebrush slopes far below the screening cedars, I looked back to see where my partner was. He was not there. But shortly, far back on the rolling hills, I saw the dust of his traveling and knew that he was alright.
After we had the horses bunched, I remember how my friend looked at me and said, “Ern, I never saw a horse like him. Don’t reckon I’ll live to see another run like that.” I looked at Buck. If by some standards he was not beautiful, his fire and vitality made him so. The pride in the horse came to me, and it was there to stay.
I rode him for another eight or ten days over the dry, rough mountains and the cracked and blistered desert floor. Feed and water were scarce, and we were doing thirty-five and forty miles a day.
Then one morning, I pointed him to the north and east to the far away mountains of home. Between daylight and dark of that day, he traveled over ninety miles to the great Wasatch Range carrying rider, stock saddle, and the belongings of a wandering man.
The next day he was not halt, or lame, nor swollen in any joint. I put him back to his regular riding.
He had to be ridden nearly every day to keep him gentle. There were other times that he made long, hard rides at the end of a mustang hunt. There are still riders who know it and remember it.
_____________
The short story “Two Days” depicts incidents in the life of a rancher scraping by with a small herd. A storm was approaching, so he wisely went out to check on his cattle. Some were missing. In the afternoon he finally found them on the wrong side of a mountain pass as the blizzard hit. We pick up the story after he has been struggling with the situation for hours:
He got off and bucked snow again to rest the horse and warm himself. A cow went down and would not be whipped up, and he went on with the wind and snow slapping his face and numbing his hands and feet. He thought of an article in the last Sunday newspaper he’d seen,
“Gone from the western range are the cowboy and his inseparable horse. Gone are the chaps and jingling spurs, closing a chapter in the history of the West. The modern rancher rides herd in an airplane, speeding up the work and traveling many more miles than the cowboy of old.”
His thoughts called for a grin, but his cold face could not answer.
***
As we rejoin the story, here’s what is happening:
The cows turned and tried to come by him, and the wind nearly snatched him from the saddle. In the half-dark he saw the pass just above him. He blocked the trail, forcing the weary cattle to face the storm. Foot by foot, he crowded them up. The wind screamed over the divide in mighty force, and he had to put his face behind the collar of his old sheepskin mackinaw to breath. The cattle huddled hard together, trying to turn their rumps to the gale. He worked frantically, feeling the cold and stiffness bore through him. Finally, he won the grim battle, and tipped them down the other side of the pass.
***
The main bunch was headed toward safer ground. However, the rancher couldn’t afford the loss of the downed cow, so he returned to try to save her. Rider-less, his horse Cougar was pulling her with the lariat.
He got behind the cow and lifted and hollered at the horse. The snow and wind nearly shoved the sound down his throat. Man and horse worked and rested, and strained and rested, and rested and strained again, until their breath whistled in and out of them and their lungs burned. The man knew that all this was not good in the awful exposure. Once the cow struggled to her feet, tottered ahead a yard or two and went down again. The man and the horse would not give in, and once more she rose. When they crossed the pass through the icy blast, the horse was shaking with exhaustion but still leaning against the load. Full darkness had come. They wallowed and slid down the other side, striking the trail of the other cattle. Half an hour later, they caught up to them. They were moving slowly on the steep down-grade. The cow the man was trying to save was doing better now, walking with the others in the easier going. He pulled the rope from her and let it drag. He stumbled in the underbrush and went down.
_____________
The article titled “A Man Buys a
Horse” describes Ern’s 1956 horse-buying trip from
Across the big state of
While we gassed up, I installed a sheepherder-thermostat to boost the motor heat. This is an intricate device consisting of two grain bags draped becomingly over the radiator and tied at the bottom to hold them in place.
Over the continental divide, it was powerfully cool and refreshing, and we could have used a red-tipped cane to feel our way along.
***
Here’s another passage:
There was a little incident deep
in the night and deep in the state of
***
Ern and Ken didn’t tarry at their destination,
Springfield,
Taking a new trail home, we
drove across
***
This is what happened next:
We finally got the spare on and continued. When daylight came, we found a service station where we could buy a new tube and have the heavy tire remounted. The attendant invited us onto the grease-rack so we could be in out of the wind and he could raise the truck high enough to work with some comfort.
When he was through hoisting, I remarked, “Now there’s a sight you seldom see,” and I nodded up over the tailgate.
He raised his eyes and saw the blanketed horse for the first time. “#*x*^#y*,” he said, “#*x*^y#*,” and I thought I detected a note of surprise in his voice.
_____________
Next is part of Ern’s short story “The Lights of Home.”
The man swung down from the saddle, pushing his hat back and lounging in the sun. Faint new doubts assailed him, new strangers in his pattern of thought, and from somewhere far back came the beginning of a yearning not known before. Here were the products of his life, his “thirty years’ gatherings,” a tarp and a bedroll, a couple of shirts, a razor, and enough pots and pans to make a camp. Still, he thought, in all the years he had met no other wandering man whose horses could match his own. They had been his roots, the only things he had been tied to.
Some men fit into the place in life that’s there for them, while others, more forceful, forge a place to fit themselves. But there are those whose thoughts──fluent and consecutive when alone──crumple in the presence of people. Such a man recedes into the shadows of loneliness. The emptiness of not belonging is greater than the emptiness of being alone. He withdraws because he cannot compete. He rides the trails thinking his thoughts, searching for the place where he belongs and for others like him. Because his emotions are strong, he sees and feels many things. His horse is not just a thing to ride, but an animal to know and understand and live with.
The man stood and stretched lazily, talking quietly to the horses with warmth in his voice. The ponies looked up and recognized that he had spoken to them. The bond was strong.
He stepped up into the saddle and pointed the stud downhill, looking back and seeing that the pack horse followed at a swinging trot to catch up──still chewing on a wisp of grass.
As they were reaching the floor of the valley, the eye of the stallion fastened on something far to the north, and the rider turned to look and saw a plume of smoke bent back over an on-coming train. He put the horses to a slow lope, reaching the track before the train went by. He sat there for a few moments waiting, wanting to feel the nearness of people. The engineer waved a greeting, not bothering to try to call out above the roar of the engine. In that vast land, curiosity was in the eyes of a passenger or two on seeing a lone rider who was smaller than an ant in an acre. Then the silence returned and the melancholy.
Beyond the tracks, the country lay parched and gasping, hot even this late in the fall. The heat waves shook the outline of the rolling hills, hiding the coolness that he knew would be there.
The gelding, moving a little ahead, shied, and the sound came to the man──the dry, harsh, buzzing of a rattler. He swung down, holding the stallion by a rein, thinking of the horses that he had known that would go berserk at the sound of a snake. But the stallion and the pack horse stood by, calmly watchful. The man moved in. Teasing the snake to strike at a stick, he stepped on its shovel head with a boot heel before it could recoil.”
____________
The man whose name appears in the title of Ern’s article called “My Good Friend Henry,” found himself without a saddle horse. Henry asked Ern to find and rope a wild one for him. He wanted to help. The weather was frigid. They left camp at dawn. Without a horse to ride, the only help Henry could supply was to be available if needed and to be nearby with the truck if there was a successful chase. Given the distances involved, the hoped-for rendezvous may seem to have been a longshot, but both men thoroughly knew the territory. In that open and empty country, objects and dust-stirring events are visible for long distances. Ern said that he would “skyline” from time to time so that Henry could putter along in the truck and occasionally spot Ern and his horse. There was also mention of Henry building “signal fires” if events continued after nightfall. The early pages of the story describe the hunt and the discovery of the horses. The run did not occur until late afternoon. When the mustangs attempted to escape through a “muddy alkali bottom,” the weight of rider and saddle contributed to Ern’s horse being slowed and then lamed in the heavy going. Darkness arrived. No signal fires appeared. Carrying his chaps over his shoulders, Ern led his horse through the night while worrying about Henry’s welfare.
I aimed at a group of stationary lights to the northeast──walked and trotted until I thought my legs would drop off. But foremost in my mind at all times was the thought that I must get to a phone and do some calling around to stop Henry and ease his fretful mind. We made it by six-thirty in the morning. Neither horse nor I had had eaten or had water for twenty-four hours. We were both weaving on our feet. I was cold to the core and still shivering when we came out of the desert behind a gas station and café. From a back window, an attendant watched us approach and stepped out to meet us.
“How about a bucket of water for my horse,” I asked.
“Cost you four bits,” he grumbled. “We hafta haul our water.”
I fumbled in my pocket for the money.
“Gimme two straws then,” I said, edging my voice with sarcasm. “One for me and one for the horse.”
He grinned as he handed me the bucket, and I was glad to see him cheer up as he drew a drink for me in an old rusty coffee can.
“S’matter” he queried, “You bin lost?”
Only once before in my life have I been insulted that bad. Three years ago, after riding to a standstill the worst bucking spell I ever stayed on top of, and with my pelvis cracked and blood leaking from the corners of my mouth, and my mind in a state of shock, I can still hear my small son scream as Foothill Mosher carried me into the house. “Mommy, Mommy, come quick. Daddy FELL off his horse.” This vast insult brought me out of my state of shock, and I have vowed in my will that the boy is cut off without a horse to his name. Maybe I’ll leave him a few big debts to boot.
“Horse is shore gimpy on them legs,” observed the attendant. “Fellow in there eatin’ has a small truck out front with a stock rack with no stock in it. Maybe you could get him to haul you somewhere.”
My chest felt low and heavy as I rounded the corner of the building. I saw the truck with a stock-rack. It was mine. I looked into the café. There sat my good friend Henry poking food into his face with a fork at a rate that reminded me of feeding an old-time stationary hay baler. He showed all the panic and worry of an old milk cow chewing her cud in a shady pasture.
I climbed into the truck and threw out a wedge of hay, a horse blanket, and what was left in the grain bag and carried them to the horse. I dragged the saddle from him──the first time he’d been out from under it in twenty-four hours. I blanketed him and asked the attendant for another bucket of water, He could not spare it. Something akin to rage was welling up in me as I went back into the café and approached Henry.
“Good friend Hennery,” I asked putting something extra into his name, “Where have you been?”
He glanced up, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and inquired, “Did you ketch me a horse?”
I shook my head. I dared not speak. Someday, I kept telling myself, you will see the humor in all this. But that time was not yet. I knew that I must not say anything to spoil the rich, warm feeling that my good friend Henry felt for me. He mopped the last of an egg from his plate with a half slice of bread, folded it over and pushed it into his mouth, tamping the last in with his thumb. I could picture Henry at a formal dinner. His manners would make folks so nervous they wouldn’t be able to balance peas on their knives.
I asked again, insistently, “Where have you been, Henry?”
He swallowed the last of the bread, and, as it went down, his Adam’s apple rose high in his neck, then slowly settled.
“Why,” said he, “I follered you real good with the glasses for a couple of miles after you started the run. Then some high ground hid you. But I could still see your dust, and I tried to foller you with the truck. Too rough though. I bumped my head real bad a couple of times against the top of the cab, an’ I slowed down some then. Anyhow, your dust shut off a long ways up ahead of me about then, an’ I never did see you none after that. I looked around fer you a long time. Looked real hard. I did. Saw where you run into the mud, but I couldn’t foller into that stuff. After a long time, when it started to get kinda dusk-like, it made me lonesome. I hate to camp out alone at night, an’ I wasn’t doin’ you no good, so I drove down through the sagebrush east to the road an’ went on over to town. It was further than I figgered. Almost didn’t make it in time for the last picture show.”
The waitress came along the counter to get my order.
“What’s the trouble” she asked sweetly, “Have you been lost?”
“He shore was,” Henry beat me to it. “He got lost an’ couldn’t find his way back to me.”
She clucked her sincere sympathy, and I sat there tongue tied──letting it pass.
Henry went on, “Real good show
over there last night. Cowboy show with real good actin’ and such. There was
this here guy, an’ he was lookin’ for his friend that had turned up missing a
couple of years before. Looked all over the western United States fer him, an’ parts of
The humor started to come to me then. I watched Henry take a tooth pick from a holder. He prodded his teeth with it a moment, withdrew it and waggled it at me. “Mint flavored,” he said. “Shore glad you made it in. I been real worried about you.”
_____________
Ern was empathetic enough to consider the perspective of the wild horses. Next, is a snippet from his novella Trail to Freedom in which a wild stallion is the protagonist. He and his band were relentlessly pursued by teams of men on horses. First, he lost his mares that were heavy in foal. Later, the rest were caught, but he repeatedly escaped capture.
In those days he used every trick he’d learned over the years. He ran where the dust was thick, drawing the mustangers along, only to double back through rocky ground, leaving them to unravel a trail that wasn’t there. He cut back from plain trails to hide deep in the cedars while riders passed unaware. He showed up at water holes but would not enter the fenced trap to get a drink. He would tempt the watchers into a chase, and then lead them over rough country until he could sneak back for a quick pull at the water.
Still, it was the constant need of water that started to wear him down. One black night he quit the desert mountain range and crossed the floor of the valley to the far green mountains and the clear water there. Moving alone, he stirred up no dust for the riders to follow. For several weeks he was safe, keeping hidden from the cowboys, and feeding at night until he had rested some.
_______________
The following is from Ern’s tribute to his Flying Jubilee stallion in George B. Russell’s classic Hoofprints in Time:
The race horse runs on a measured track and knows it. His strength and speed is metered out to the short minutes of a contest──and under a light weight. His track is smooth and even. At the end of his supreme exertion, he is cooled out, blanketed, and put back in his stall. But the mustanging horse may make thirty miles over the rough, high land before he finds the wild ones. If he has less than a half mile lead to cut down from the start, he’s lucky. He will crash through sagebrush breast high. He will block a six foot cedar to save the time of going around──running the risk of leaving his bowels hanging on a snag of that tree. He will see most of the badger holes and miss them, but break through into others. He will take to the air over deep, sharp washes. His caulked shoes will strike fire from the rocks. Blood will ooze from his fetlocks and hocks when he slides down the notches. If he falls, he’ll cap his knees. Heat will build up under the saddle, scalding his back, and his lungs will burn and come to the point of bursting. Alkali dust will fill his eyes and grit his teeth when, at last, he closes on the bunch. He will get bitten and kicked while putting his rider in a place to rope, and maybe he’ll be jerked down when the thousand pounds hits the end of the rope before he can set his tired legs. But he will hold and stay true. When the fight is over, he’ll be many miles from camp──taking his catch back through the dark hours. If he does not have the strength left for this, he is not enough horse. All this Flying Jubilee has done many times.
I am no more ashamed of the knots on his legs than I am of the warp in my own from all the years of riding. I hope the time ahead will be long with him rubbing his nose on my chaps in the windy passes and sending the sound of his chewing to me in the dark.
______________
From the June, 1966 issue of the Morgan Horse magazine, here is part of Ern’s obituary for his horse of a lifetime──Flying Jubilee:
He was honest to the core, never giving less than his best. The hard days and years did not dull the edge of his eagerness to travel, and his muscles tightened and roped-out and toughened like live rubber. Home was apt to be any tree or bush he was tied to for the night. If he was happy in the tall grass and clear water of the mountain, he seemed no less so trying to stay ahead of the alkali dust he stirred up crossing the desert. He was that much horse. My throat aches when I think that he will not be there to feed in the morning.
***
The scoffing of unbelievers makes me proud, for there are men who have seen and will bear witness that Flying Jubilee outran mustangs in their own range and put me up there to rope. I see the countless miles that he went under saddle, the million hoof prints he stamped on the wide and high ranges, and the rocks of endless trails scarred by his caulked shoes. I feel the lift of him and the power on the trail. I hear him grazing near the fire in the evening camp, and I hear his quiet breathing in the deep night. I hear him scream a challenge in the moonlight at far off mustangs, sending out his stallion’s call. I feel the friendly rub of his nose against my scarred chaps high on a lookout. I see the outline of him against the sky overlooking a hundred miles of the range he loved, and my heart squeezes and squeezes and squeezes with a loneliness that will not leave. Flying Jubilee is dead, and some of me went with him.
____________
A List of Ern’s Published Work
Book and Novellas:
The Big Lonely Horse, Eusey Press, Leominster (1960) ─ book
Trail to Freedom, (1959) The Morgan Horse (“TMH”), January-June, 1959 ─ novella
Dust of the Home Corral, TMH, January-May, 1961 ─ novella
Short Stories:
“Two Days,” The Morgan Horse (“TMH”), February and March, 1952, p. 8
“The Silver-Tipped Mustang,” TMH, November, 1952, p. 6
“The Song and the Star,” TMH, December, 1952, p. 24
“The Poacher,” December, TMH, 1953, p. 10
“The Christmas Groom,” TMH, December, 1954. p. 10
“Lights of Home,” TMH, May, 1955, p. 6
“A Narrow Margin,” TMH, January, 1956, p. 6
“No Cheers to Push Him On,” TMH, March, 1957, p. 8
“Beyond the Tall Mountains” TMH, March, 1958“Oh Little Town,” TMH, December, 1959, p. 7
“Deep Dust and Tall Hills,” TMH, April, 1963, p. 8
“Feed My Sheep,” TMH, December, 1963, p. 8
“Unto Us a Child Is Born, TMH, December, 1965, p. 11
“Morgan Man,” TMH, July, 1966. p. 12
“The Dream Never Ends,” TMH, August, 1984, p. 78
Articles:
“Wild Horse Chase,” TMH, December, 1951, p. 10
“The Horse Hunters,” TMH, March, 1954, p. 10
“Colt Run,” TMH, April, 1955, p. 6
“Once Upon a Horse,” TMH, April, 1955, p. 42
“My Good Friend Henry,” TMH, September, 1955, p. 12
“A Horse for Henry,” TMH, December, 1955, p. 8
“A Man Buys a Horse, TMH, September, 1956, p. 10
“Another Wild Horse Chase,” TMH, 1956
“The Western Morgan,” Western Horseman, May, 1957, p. 53
“Miles Beyond,” TMH, 1958, p. 9
“Decay of Age,” TMH, March, 1960, p. 6
“How Gray was My Flannel Suit, TMH, March, 1962, p. 8
“Flying Jubilee Is Dead,” TMH, June, 1966, p. 6
Comparing Ern’s Writings with the Work of Will James and Ben K. Green
Will James and Ben K. Green did their writing after their riding careers were finished. On the other hand, Ern produced almost all of his articles and stories while he was still chasing wild horses and riding hard. Ern was also unlike James and Green in other ways. For example, he was a law abiding citizen, and his writing contains no racist overtones. His material is full of humor, much of it self deprecating. As the above excerpts suggest, despite his lack of extensive formal education, Ern was a literate and engaging writer. I challenge anybody to extensively read the work of James, Green, and Ern and make a credible case that Ern wasn’t the best craftsman of the three.
To give them their due, James and Green were skilled individuals. In addition to his riding and writing, James was an outstanding artist who illustrated his stories in a realistic and understandable way. Green was apparently a clever horse-trader──some might say too clever. Later, he was a respected healer of livestock──notwithstanding what may have been the status of his veterinary license, if any. Green wrote only what he claimed was non-fiction. James published in both categories but the line between them seems murky.
The books of James and Green are found in bunkhouses and ranch homes all over the West while Ern’s work is not easy to find. Nobody is writing the kind of things that James, Green, and Ern generated. I assume that’s because these days nobody is doing that kind of riding. For example, for several decades pursuing mustangs has been illegal except when done by the government and its contractors.
Ern was never as well known as James and Green. His novellas, stories and articles were published in a national magazine with a readership of only a few thousand, and his one book was made available only to the same audience. It seems unlikely that Will James and Ben K. Green left behind any writing that their readers have not yet found. However, the good news for buckaroos, ranchers, and others who like the genre, is that Ern’s material is out there waiting to be discovered. There are those who believe that Ern’s stories and articles should be republished and marketed on the internet so that anyone who is interested would finally have a chance to learn of their existence and enjoy them.
My Memories of Ern
For the last twenty-eight years of his life, I was one of Ern’s legion of friends. The remainder of this article meanders along like the Humboldt River. It consists mostly of my memories of Ern.
The foregoing excerpts from his
work provide an accurate picture of Ern. After a brief explanation, I’m about
to offer his self-description. (Ern gave me a copy of it shortly after it was
written.) To the best of my knowledge, it has never before been published. For
the fifteen years before his 1981 retirement, Ern was employed in the
The substantive contents of the prisoner summaries were confidential, but Ern showed me unidentifiable excerpts from several of them. It’s sad that it would be improper for anyone to publish the summaries. Studying them would benefit report writers everywhere──and, through them, the recipients of their filings. Ern’s summaries succinctly informed while holding the reader’s attention like a good short story. Each concluded with Ern’s prediction as to whether the departing inmate would again be imprisoned in the future.
Using the usual format, Ern’s departing gift was the following summary on himself:
PEDLER,
Ernest Joseph
U.S.P. #0635
Ernest
Joseph Pedler was received into the Lakehills-Community
Correctional Center
on
He arrived here after five years of service at the Utah State Prison where he was a maintenance officer and a member of the Minimum Security Treatment Team. He was considered capable and steady. His work record at this Center has been excellent from some aspects, for he is energetic, boringly dependable, and inclined to complete duties assigned. Still, he has been a disappointment to the Director, for he does not aspire to positions of supervision or importance. He shuns limelight and resists formal training. He is inflexible in matters of time, and has been tardy only twice in fifteen years──a record that has not been criticized by those he relieved on shift. His performance has been sufficient to maintain his job, and he has never been chided for laziness, nor threatened with termination. He terminates at this time by choice.
His total net income has likely been equal to his worth.
He enters retirement solvent, and entirely free from debt.
His adjustment to the Center was not completely smooth, for he brought with him thirty-six years of experience in the competitive labor market, and his expectations of production were high and rigid; his social mores deepgrained and inflexible, and though he was not religious, he hewed to a code of ethics that allowed little latitude, and expected inmate residents to do the same. His tolerance developed slowly. To this date he has not adjusted to the eternal change and confusion of corrections, believing that change should bring improvement──not merely change. But he is not a martinet, or without compassion; can suffer with and for others, and has drawn deeply from his emotions in counseling. He has longed for more tangible rewards than those drawn from the people business, and has drunk the dregs of sorrow and frustration from the failures of those he has counseled. Still, he believes, as he needs must, that his accomplishments have been worthwhile over the years, and that he will be remembered more for good than evil. He leaves corrections happily now, but not without a squeeze of the heart, for his affections for, and devotion to the Director and staff members are strong and deep, and memories will be poignant.
Ernest Joseph Pedler is sixty seven years old. He is five feet eight inches tall and weighs one hundred fifty-one pounds. He is bald, with a fringe of brown hair, graying now, and graying sideburns. His forehead is moderately high, slopes some, and is horizontally creased four times. His brows are sparse and short, and wide spaced over his nose. His ears are a bit long, but close to his head. His eyes are hazel of color. They are thoughtful and somber; perhaps even melancholy, and belie the wit and humor behind them. They deaden with stubbornness and harden in anger. His cheekbones are broader than his temples and high and show some frontal prominence, and his cheeks are flat, but smooth. His nose is straight from front and profile, with flaring nostrils, and now the coarsening pores of age. Below a full, long, grey moustache is a narrow, moderately full lipped mouth, seldom open and smiling, and within it are dentures. His jaw is bony, and drops well from the hinge before running ahead to a determined chin, and he wears a dense, clipped, spade beard. He has a large Adam’s apple.
He is tightly and tidily built but fine boned, with ample shoulders, muscular arms, small square hands, and short blunt fingers. His chest is deep and full and slightly barreled, and he tapers sharply from underarm to waist. His belly is still tight and hard. His hips are narrow and his buttocks are flat. His legs are straight and thin and proportioned well for the length of his body. His right foot points out slightly, but he is quite free of motion. His posture is good──almost military.
Ernest is an enigma and an underachiever; for blessed with a modicum of talent and some social grace, he is reclusive by choice and aspires to neither greatness nor the commercializing of his talents. He has qualities of leadership, but no desire to lead or supervise. But he is no follower, and is highly independent. He works diligently for others and has forever been a valued employee, but does not care to be in business for himself, and seeks little status or recognition. He sings better than he writes, but shuns crowds and public appearance. Though he is a loner, he is not lonesome, and he is more comfortable with his thoughts and his own company than the thoughts and company of others. Considered by some to be benign and gentle, he in fact has a quick and frightening temper, and at times a scathing tongue; he does not intimidate easily, and would rather attack than defend. He is a proud man, perhaps too proud, for he has been accused of ****iness in stance and stride. He is a thinker, and something of a philosopher; he has drawn some satisfying conclusions, and has brought some order to the early chaos of his mind. He has wanted little from life than to be a good horseman, which he is──still breaking and shoeing his own. His post release plans will be fulfilled horseback in the high country, where much of his life has been lived, and where his heart has ever been. His history says he will likely endure to the end with a measure of dignity and self respect.
He will not be back.
(signed) Ernest J. Pedler, Reporting Counselor
Ern received the James M. Larsen Memorial Award from the Utah Department of Corrections.
Since this is all coming from my perspective, perhaps what follows will make more sense if I subject you to several paragraphs about my background and how I came to know Ern.
In
September, 1956, I was about to turn thirteen years old. My family lived in a small
house in a subdivision in Athens,
Georgia. At
that time, there were very few horses and mules left in that part of Georgia. Although
almost all our ancestors farmed with horses and mules near the Smoky Mountains
of East Tennessee and
That September, I paid for a subscription to The Morgan Horse magazine. The first issue I received included Ern’s story called “A Man Buys a Horse.” After reading it, I couldn’t wait for another issue with more of Ern’s writing.
About that same time, I made the single best move of my youth by knocking on the door of an impressive house. The residence was on a twenty-seven acre “farm” with a horse barn and several horses and ponies. When the owner, a man named Bedgood, answered the door, I stammered out an offer to clean stalls, feed his horses twice a day, and generally take care of them. The whole contact lasted about a minute. To my amazement, he said something like, “Okay, kid.” I started that afternoon.
Mr. Bedgood and his wife had seven children. The oldest, a boy, was a year or so younger than I. Mr. Bedgood wanted the horses kept shod and ridden regularly so that they would be ready if “needed.” I rode at least one of them almost every day, and routinely took them to the shoer. One of Mr. Bedgood’s employees dependably delivered hay and grain. It turned out that the horses were rarely needed. About once a year the children came out of that big house to ride. I enthusiastically brushed, saddled, and held horses for them. (They were good kids──just not crazy about horses.) The rest of the year, I might as well have owned the outfit. I took good care of the horses and rode them all over creation. I used my bicycle to commute from home to the farm and to school.
Why Mr. Bedgood didn’t get rid of the horses, I don’t know. Maybe he just liked seeing them out his back windows. Though I worked there until I graduated from high school and left for six months of Army Reserve active-duty training, I only ever saw Mr. Bedgood a few times. He must have been occupied with his business interests.
All that time, I was receiving the Morgan magazine, and Ern was galvanizing my attention with stories about his part of the West. There, it seemed, a rider could ride almost forever in the public lands’ wide open spaces of mountains and desert. On the other hand, lucky though I was to be riding at all──and I knew it──my horseback exploring all too often found me on busy paved roads and encountering entangling kudzu vines and other dense, sub-tropical growth. It fairly quickly became clear to me that I needed to be in Ern Pedler’s West. I worried that the mustangs would all be gone before I could get there.
In 1961, I
obtained a summer job with the U.S. Forest Service in Southwestern
Wyoming. (The Army Reserve gave me a waiver from drills and annual
summer training because there was no accessible unit in the
On my first Saturday afternoon in
Fifty years later, I remember that day more clearly than anything I did last week. As I walked past the truck, I could see a corral ahead. A few more steps, and there was Ern. (The above photograph was taken around the same time. It shows Ern as he looked that day.) We shook hands, and I realized that the saddled horse standing nearby had to be Flying Jubilee. He looked even better than I’d imagined. He’s the horse in the photograph. Also, in irregularly shaped corrals built of a variety of materials there in the scrub oak, were a mare named Geny and “The Outcast.” He still ranks as the biggest and best developed Morgan two-year-old I’ve ever seen
Ern was dressed as he would be almost every time I ever saw him. The only difference that I can see between his appearance that day and the way he looks in the above photo is that he was not wearing chaps when I met him. He wore working-western boots with high, under-shot heels and no decorations. His Levis were secured by a wide belt fastened with a good-sized conventional buckle (not some silver-plated bucking horse buckle). The buckle was worn on the side. His shirt was also plain (with regular buttons--not fancy snaps). His hat was as you see it in the picture. As was true though all the later years, he had a neat appearance──never a shirttail out, etc.
It turned
out that Ern’s pretty wife Virginia and another lady were also going on the jaunt.
The destination was the Olson Ranch west of Vernon,
The truck was a one-ton flatbed on which he had built the only combination horse rack and camper I’ve ever seen that used the same space for both functions. (I’ll tell you more about that rig later.) Flying Jubilee followed Ern to the truck, and boarded in a businesslike manner.
The passenger list and available seating meant that I needed to join Flying Jubilee in the back. Nothing could have suited me better. I had a couple of hours to get acquainted with him up close. Because of Ern’s articles and stories, his stallion was already legendary, at least to me and a lot of other readers of the national Morgan magazine. Nothing about him disappointed me. His whole presence projected intelligence and gentle, disciplined power and speed. He looked capable of doing most anything the best horses can do, and he seemed very willing. By the way, he was one of the best-bred Morgan studs of his time──sired by Flyhawk and out of a mare by Jubilee King. Ern stopped in Tooele to see how his horse and I were getting along──no problem.
When you
are at the Olson Ranch, there is a lot of nothing but scores of miles of Ern’s
kind of country between you and the
The purpose
of the trip was for Flying Jubilee to breed a couple of mares. They were part
of a semi-wild bunch of mares from the L.U. Ranch in
Ern pulled a brown Olson gelding out of one of the corrals and showed me where to get a saddle and bridle. Virginia and her friend found a shady place to sit, and quickly Ern and I were on our way out into what I believe Ern said was a thousand acre field. We located the bunch of mares──about six or seven, I think. There were several foals. I doubt that I was much help, but I was trying. We, Ern and Flying Jubilee anyway, pushed the bunch along. They made a couple of escape attempts, and Flying Jubilee made some dashes to turn them. After they were in a big corral, Ern herded them on into a smaller one, and I shut the gate.
A few minutes later, Ern was on Flying Jubilee who was standing quietly in the middle of the small corral. Virginia and her friend were watching from the shade. I was sitting on the top rail of the sturdy corral fence. The mares and foals were tearing around and around the stallion and rider. After all, in addition to the excitement of being run in, two of those semi-wild mares were in heat. The dust was boiling up. Just then, Ern said something like, “This pony is fairly hard to handle.” With that, he swung off Flying Jubilee, crawled under him, and lay there face-up. He spoke to the stallion and instantly a forefoot went up. Ern wiggled under that hoof, and Flying Jubilee kept it poised over Ern’s face. Then, they repeated those maneuvers with each of the other three legs. All the while, the ruckus continued. Some of the horses were barely missing Flying Jubilee as they careened around. Whatever else you want to call it, it was an impressive display of trust and obedience. Soon after that, Ern and Flying Jubilee cut one mare into a tiny corral, and within a few minutes she was served. Later, the other one was also bred.
During the delay between matings, Ern showed me the underside of a fender of his saddle. The maker’s name was stamped there: “Bona Allen Co., Buford, Georgia.” Buford is about forty-five miles from where I grew up. The Bedgoods had a couple of Bona Allen saddles. Small world! Ern and I had been using the same obscure make of saddle.
After we got back to his place that day, Ern took me around to show me several different bunches of horses. I particularly recall two stallions──Gaylo’s Victor in Sandy and Desert Hawk in Draper.
At one point, Ern stopped at a little mom and pop hotdog-stand and ordered lemonade for both of us. I bought a hot dog. He seemed a little taken aback when it instantly vanished. I realized then that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast at the Forest Service camp the previous morning. I hadn’t even thought of food in the meantime.
I don’t recall anything about how I
got back to
Toward the end of that summer, I made another trip to Big Cottonwood Canyon. That was the first time I rode Flying Jubilee. Ern used my camera to take a photo of me on his horse. (I lost it long ago.) I wanted to snap a picture of Ern and Flying Jubilee, but Ern said, “I don’t much like to photograph.” He meant, of course, that he didn’t like to have his picture taken. That phrasing was unusual for Ern. He used good grammar and enunciated each word in his resonant, clear voice. He seldom resorted to the vernacular and, when he did, it was intentional.
Ern had been a carpenter for many
years. At that time, the construction company which employed him had a project
in Brigham City.
From the first time I met her, it
was my impression that
The
following summer I packed horses for the Forest Service again, but that fall I
didn’t return to Georgia.
Jean Beck and I had married that summer. She was from
That same summer of 1962, Ern and
Ortho Eusey, the editor of the
magazine, and his wife took the Pedlers on a tour of New
England. One of the places that seemed to make an impression on Ern
was the “Hawthorne Manse” in Concord,
The Euseys also took the Pedlers to
Quebec City,
the capitol of
Like the Fergusons, the Euseys later visited the Pedlers and rode with them.
Over the remainder of his life, Ern
sometimes mentioned people and horses he had encountered at the 1962 national
Morgan show and on various parts of his and
According to my understanding, the
only two trips that Ern ever made to the Mid-West or the East were the 1956 horse-buying
foray to
Here’s how I would describe the Big Cottonwood Canyon place as I knew it in those days: From Big Cottonwood Canyon Road, a graveled lane curved a few hundred feet to the sturdy wooden bridge over the creek. That was the entrance to the Pedler property. Straight ahead as you crossed the bridge, was the Wasatch Range. (You were already in the mouth of one of its canyons). As you exited the bridge, you entered a sandy-looking open area. It was definitely big enough to turn a good-sized truck around in without much backing. I believe its surface was sand and gravel. From the bridge, ahead of you (but slightly to your left) about seventy-five feet or so, was the Pedlers’ one-story house. It was located very close to the creek. Their two-car garage was also in front of you but slightly to your right. Both the house and the garage were white, wood-frame structures. From the Pedlers’ kitchen door, I’d guess that it was about fifty feet across the open area to the garage. Looking to the far right from the bridge, past the open area, there was a driveway that disappeared into the scrub oak. It led to a second house. Everything was as neat as a pin, but there wasn’t much room for lawn. A strip of grass about eight feet wide ran the short distance from the left side of the bridge to the Pedlers’ house. On it was a small screened structure where the Pedlers frequently dined in the summertime.
Between the house and the garage, a driveway led a short distance to where the horses were kept. You came to Flying Jubilee’s corral first. As you looked at his area, the other corrals were to your right. The stallion’s corral included a simple, three-sided shelter. There were also shelters in the other corrals. Scrub oak was everywhere. The trees and the canyon itself also offered some weather protection.
One thing that detracted from the pleasant atmosphere of the Cottonwood Canyon place was that a sand and gravel type operation was located behind it. You were well aware of its presence if you were at the Pedlers’ corrals during business hours.
There was a sign on
Along about then, Ern happened to mention that typically his breakfast consisted of leftovers from the previous evening’s dinner. I’ve still never encountered anyone else with that routine.
Ern and
Ern talked about movies. He and Virginia went to the movies together and seemed to enjoy them. I specifically recall that he commented at length about the film “Elmer Gantry” and the hypocrisy it depicted.
By the way, if Ern or
Both
When there was sudden melting of the snow pack on the mountain, Ern used sandbags to protect the house from the adjacent creek.
Ern’s saddles were on racks built into the back wall of the garage. He often shod horses in the garage at night. It was also there in several evenings that he tried to teach me the rudiments of horseshoeing. The effort was only a minor success. After that, in a pinch, I could do emergency shoeing repair──nothing more.
Ern frequently hauled horses out
for rides. But, when time was limited, he used his nearby, set-route trails on
the mountain. He had ridden them hundreds of times, and he knew exactly how
long it took to travel each under various conditions. He had to cross a road or
two to get to them. As I wrote the above, I remembered
It was well known that Ern liked to ride alone. However, at least three times in the winters of 1962-63 and 1963-64, he invited me along on snow-covered mountain rides in the Wasatch Range. One of those times he rode The Outcast’s dam (Geny), and I rode Flying Jubilee. On another occasion, I rode the stallion, and Ern rode Flying Jubilee’s typey, but small, son Little Fry. The other time Ern rode The Outcast, and I rode Flying Jubilee. The powerful but sensible way the stallion handled the ice and snow on the steep ground was impressive. (The Outcast was terrific at that also, and the others were better than average, but, as with many things, Flying Jubilee was a master at it.)
About dusk one
frigid afternoon, I dropped by the Pedler place. An empty corral hinted that
Ern and Flying Jubilee were out on the trail. As I started to leave, they
arrived from what Ern indicated was a good, most-of-the-day ride. I watched him
unsaddle, and we visited briefly. As I turned onto
For whatever reason, by the time I came along, Ern and “the Mosher boys” (Amos, Leo, and Howard) were on the outs with each other. However, Ern would sometimes mention one of them──usually Amos. For example, in about this time-frame, Ern told me that he’d heard that Amos, who had fairly recently taken up the activity, had informed a group of horse people, “a half hour of cow-cutting is as much of a workout for a horse as a day of hard trail riding.” I think that quote was about all Ern mentioned on the topic, but there was a strong feeling of “yeah, right” in the air.
Ern seemed to respect the Moshers’ stallion, Condo, as a tough, using horse, but not as a breeding animal. By the time I was around, Condo had numerous mature offspring. Ern thought that many of them lacked the gentle, cooperative intelligence of the Flying Jubilee horses. Also, many of the Condo-bred horses tended to be a little course in appearance. On the other hand, there was no denying that some of them had good bone and were tough like their sire.
Ern told me
that he attended an event at the Utah State Fairgrounds a number of years
before when J. Holman Waters’ Government-Farm-bred horse Stellar, was ridden into
the arena. The announcer talked about how the stallion was heavily used in cow
work in the mountains. Ern said something to the effect that Stellar looked
good, but any knowledgeable observer could see that he was not in any condition
to handle the kind of challenge that the announcer was describing. Stellar had
been the junior champion stallion at the National Morgan Show. I have an item in
which Ern wrote that he was present in 1951 when Stellar arrived from
One warm day in 1962 or 1963, I was
at Ern and
One evening in 1963, Ern and
Ern had trouble understanding why some people bought and kept horses but didn’t ride them or drive them or do anything with them except feed them, take care of them, and look at them. At a certain level, though, I believe that he understood that while he liked being around horses and riding, riding, riding, some people just liked being around them.
Ern had a sense of humor. In a dry sort of way, he could say some really funny things. You’d think that I could dredge up a host of examples, but I’m afraid the following is the only one I remember: Ern mentioned a couple who had lived in his area at some point in days gone by. He said, “They were in the iron and steel business.” I’m sure I looked puzzled. He explained, “She ironed, and he handled the rest.”
In the spring of 1963, Ern took me on a Sunday riding trip several miles beyond the Olson Ranch in the west desert. He rode The Outcast, and I rode Flying Jubilee. As I recall, we started from the site of the Lookout Pass Pony Express station. At that time, the original marker was still there that commemorated three little dogs of long ago. It included an iron likeness of each of them. The marker is long-gone now──destroyed by vandals. I don’t remember knowing that the dogs belonged to the wife of the stage-station-master, but according to the Tooele County website, they did. It says the dog (and human) cemetery is still at Lookout Pass, but I don’t recall seeing it. It says the stationmaster was Horace Rockwell, a brother of the infamous Oren Porter Rockwell.
I recall that Ern said that when he first started riding from the Salt Lake Valley to the Olson Ranch, the then-eldest Olson told him, that when he was a kid, there were still some old horses on the range carrying the “OP” brand of Oren Porter Rockwell. That was reaching back in time. (O.P. Rockwell died in 1878.)
I don’t know if it was that day or a different time, but at some point, Ern and I rode to the location of the Simpson Springs Pony Express station. By the way, there are nice Pony Express historic markers now, and replicas of some original structures have been built. There was none of that at the time I’m describing.
The meetings of the Rocky Mountain Morgan Horse Club seemed to generally have good turnouts in those days. Ern didn’t say very much during the handful of meetings that I attended, but I observed that when he had something to offer, it got quiet. People listened.
About the
spring or summer of 1963, Ern and
I never was much of a horse show enthusiast, but I attended the Rocky Mountain Morgan Show that summer. Ern was the announcer. As was his way, he approached the assignment seriously. All around that part of the Utah State Fairgrounds, you could hear his distinctive, precise voice calling the names of the horses for the next class, etc. At that show, Flying Jubilee won the Get-of-Sire class against stiff competition.
By the time of that horseshow, I was aware that Ern had recently suffered something like a sun-stroke. I believe that it occurred while he was on the job as a carpenter. He had always done a lot of night riding, but for quite a while after that incident, all of his riding in the hot and sunny times was supposed to be at night (or in the dawn or twilight). He could no longer work outdoors as a carpenter. He took a job in a cabinet shop owned by his brother Grant. It was obvious that those changes bothered Ern, as they would most anybody.
In 1964,
Ern and
The two acres at Alpine looked very different from the Big Cottonwood place. Whereas, the latter reminded me of a nest back in the mouth of the Canyon, the Alpine property was simply a rectangle with an open appearance. For example, you could drive past it on the road and see the horses in their corrals or grazing on the acre or so of pasture that comprised the far end of the property. As you approached from the village of Alpine, there was a ranch type gate at the north end. The gate opened onto a short lane that led straight to the small, roofed-basement where the previous owner had apparently lived. It was close to the northwest corner of the property. There was also a shed nearby where Ern kept his saddles and horse gear. From most anywhere on the property, you could look east beyond the road to the closest mountain. The single-level house the Pedlers built was not large, but it was nice. The living room had an impressive fireplace and built-in book shelves. Other features were a nice kitchen and a big garage. The corrals were behind the house. They were rectangular and had shelters. Ern’s path from the back of the house to the corrals passed under a chinning-bar. I saw him use it early in the morning (on his first trip to feed the horses). Ern retained the big gate and lane. His horse truck-camper was usually parked with its rear-end against a terrace near the covered basement. (I assume that the terrace was the dirt that was removed when the basement was dug).
In 1964, my wife Jean and I accepted
an opportunity to work in South America for
two years. I owned a Morgan mare. Ern kindly offered to take care of her while
I was gone in exchange for the use of her, with the understanding that any foal
she produced would be his. She had a smooth way of going, and
Ern wrote us a couple of letters while we were in Peru. I remember that he described how the mare was doing and the arrival of her foal. He also wrote when Flying Jubilee died. (I didn’t manage to keep the letters.)
After we had been back in the U.S. for a few months, Ern’s obituary for Flying Jubilee appeared as the cover story of the June, 1966 issue of the Morgan magazine. It is quoted earlier in this article. In my opinion, he was one heck of a horse.
Around that time, Ern went to work at the Utah State Prison (as mentioned in his “discharge-summary” quoted in full near the beginning of this article).
Upon our return from South America, Jean and I moved to
Along about then, I remember watching Ern riding in the area between his lane and garage at Alpine. He was showing me that the horse he had been working with since my previous visit could “rack.” They were really getting it done. I’m sure I didn’t say anything negative, but I had mixed feelings. From experiences in Georgia, I associated gaited horses with broken tails, metal straps holding huge hooves together, and blankets with tail-set harnesses, even in the sweltering summers. Also, I was interested in distance riding, and as far as I knew, the trot was the easiest ground-covering gait for the horse. Many years later, I was asked about Ern’s horses single-footing, and, momentarily, despite the many miles I’d ridden with Flying Jubilee, The Outcast, and Ern, I couldn’t even come up with the memory of it. I know it’s odd, but I think I’d sort of repressed it.
From what he said, Ern’s interest in gait was first sparked by the ground-eating, swinging walk of Buck, his first outstanding horse. In the mid-to-late 1950’s, there were some Tennessee Walkers around Ern’s area that were used for trail riding. He indicated that he was favorably impressed with two of them that were ridden by a well-liked educator. I believe that his name was Bennion and that he was a principal or school superintendent. Ern was candid in acknowledging that pair of Walking horses could stay in front of him on the flat, but he indicated it was a very different story when they started up the mountain. Ern was also acquainted with some people who rode Saddlebreds on the trail. Overall, Ern’s exposure to gaited horses was a lot different than mine. In addition, of course, Ern was a true horseman, and that meant he was a horse trainer. On my best day, I was just a rider. I took meticulous care of my horses, but I never once thought of myself as a horseman. I seriously doubt that I could have put any kind of gait on a horse even if I’d had the interest.
In
In the
early spring of 1967, Ern stopped by to visit us in
Ern’s time was limited, but I
wanted to show him
Ern was fifty-three years old that year──1967. Late that November, one of the most memorable events of my life occurred. Ern invited me to go on a mustanging and
camping trip with him in the wild horse country that he knew
so well. I was pleasantly startled──mostly because it was my understanding that
it had been several years since he’d done any mustanging. He sent me a letter
telling me to meet him on a certain evening at
From our place, it was hundreds of
miles to the rendezvous point. I was unsure of both the weather and my
equipment, so I left very early in the morning. The weather held, but my old
truck had mechanical problems in Lovelock,
It was below freezing when we got to the camp site Ern had chosen in one of that desert’s rare grassy spots. It was a holding area for sheep; about an acre or two was enclosed with hog-wire fence. There was a spring-fed water trough nearby. We pulled inside the enclosure, shut the gate, unloaded and watered our blanketed geldings, and turned them loose together. Incidentally, in two and a half days of riding, that little sheep pen was just about the only fencing material of any kind that we saw.
We removed the manure and swept out Ern’s truck. Two fittings at the lower end of the ramp allowed short pieces of pipe to level it into a porch. The back of the truck was then quickly enclosed by a plywood wall with a pre-fitted door and window. It was secured in place by wing-nuts. (When not in use, that panel was kept out of the way against one of the truck’s sidewalls). We rolled out a piece of carpet. A little stove was moved into the middle of the space on a protective metal sheet. A hole in the roof was uncovered and the stovepipe was pushed through it. Ern touched a match to pre-laid fuel, and the camper-conversion warmed up. We unrolled our sleeping bags, and crawled in. It didn’t take fifteen minutes to convert that rig into a camper.
By daybreak, we’d fed our horses and ourselves. We saddled up and headed out.
Ern knew the country like the back of his hand. We moved at a good clip. According to Ern, The Outcast had been an ugly colt. He’d always been big, but by then he was an excellent, up-headed, using horse. He was setting the pace with his seemingly tireless, head-nodding, “trappy,” way of going. (Ern had a distinctive way of saying trappy, and he used the word fairly often. It fit.) My Slim horse trotted right along behind. I didn’t want Ern to think we’d be an anchor, and we were not.
We rode up on high places where we could
look far off into
From time to time, Ern would stop and describe where something had happened in the past. Usually it would be a horse-run. He’d point to where the mustangs were when he spotted them and then, as we rode along the route where events unfolded, he’d give me the continuing play-by-play. I recognized some of the incidents from his articles── others I didn’t. They were all interesting to me, of course. We stopped by a spring in the early afternoon and ate some of whatever was in our saddlebags.
Back then, I already knew a little about judging trail-riding distance, and I picked up a lot more experience at that in subsequent years. We took our time as we looked for horses. I’d estimate that we rode thirty miles or so that first day. We got back to camp before sundown.
That night there was time to visit some before we put out the light. I wish I could tell you what we talked about, but I don’t remember. (I should have written a description of the entire trip as soon as possible after I got home, but I’m sure I thought I was too busy.)
It was plenty cold at night, but all three of the days were comparatively mild.
About the middle of the morning of
the second day, Ern spotted mustangs. After he pointed them out to me, I could
make out six to eight specks well up on a mountainside several miles from us.
We eased back behind a juniper and watched them with binoculars. Ern plotted a
course. We headed directly away from the horses until we were out of their sight.
Then, using the next mountain as a screen, we were able to go around and
approach them from upwind. Ern’s plan was to come up over their mountain and
push them into the desert valley for the run. It didn’t work out very well. I
suspect that I caused the problem; though Ern didn’t say that. Anyway, they
spooked into a run sooner than we hoped. They hit the valley floor with quite a
lead. We ran hard, but we never got closer than a couple of hundred yards. I
don’t remember much about the horses in the bunch except that there were white
markings on a couple of them, and they seemed a little bigger than the horses
I’d been seeing in
I didn’t mention it, but I was surprised that our tactics hadn’t involved me surprising the bunch from over-the-top with Ern waiting hidden down in the valley for a run after some of the vinegar had left them. My guess was that the reason Ern planned as he did was that he doubted I was ready for that kind of run. Or maybe he didn’t feel like a hard mustang run that day. I’ve just had a thought. (I hadn’t focused on the details of all this for many years until I started trying to write this article.) Maybe he wasn’t as concerned about my abilities on the run as he was about what the result might be if I happened to make a catch. My rough riding skills were pretty decent, but my rope skills were abysmal. (There’ll be more on that deficiency later.) Anyway, we made a run. As Ern may have guessed I would, for all the years since, I’ve been able to say, “I chased wild horses with Ern Pedler.” At this point, I’m probably the only guy left who can make such a claim.
On the third day, we only rode
until early afternoon. We saw no mustangs. The day had that feeling of things
winding down. We returned to the trucks, packed up, and loaded the horses. I
followed Ern all the way to the big road. He headed east, and I turned toward
One morning a couple of weeks after
the
I don’t recall doing it, but I’m sure I dropped Ern a note. I was a happy camper. By then, I’d made some pretty wild rides. On one of my unsuccessful runs earlier that fall, my hobbles flew off my saddle. I backtracked over my route looking for them. A child could have followed the fresh dug-in tracks Slim had made. Some of the side-hills we’d run flat out on and some of the rocks we’d flown over, scared the heck out of me. Anyway, after we finally made that catch, I took stock of things. All my bones were intact. I’d made a run with Ern. I’d caught a wild horse. I talked things over with Jean. (We had a fine little daughter by then.) I decided it was time to move on and just try to be a distance rider──rather than a distance rider and a wild horse chaser. I’ve never regretted the decision.
There was something else that may have influenced the release of my catch and my early retirement from mustanging. Western Nevada had a small population, and, in my work, I’d become acquainted with Velma Johnston, a.k.a. “Wild Horse Annie,” who was engaged in a lonely but ultimately successful battle to provide wild horses some protection. She was a nice, fragile lady who was focused like a laser on her life’s goal. I wasn’t chasing them with an airplane or running them in the spring of the year, but it bothered me to be both an amateur mustanger and a friend of Wild Horse Annie. Later,orse Annie Marguerite Henry wrote a book about Ms. Johnston’s life. It’s called Mustang, Wild Spirit of the West.
Here’s a possible scenario that’s made me shiver a few times over the years. I rode with my lariat tied “hard and fast” to my saddle horn. What would have happened if on one of my many poor throws during a flat-out run, my rope had caught something else hard and fast like a sizeable rock?
In 1968, we
went east for a couple of years so I could get some more education. From there
we moved to Elko County,
When I passed through
Sometime in the mid-1970’s, Ern and
I never rode The Outcast. Come to think of it, I never saw anybody but Ern ride him. About 1976, Ern retired The Outcast with a friend named Shepherd who was also a neighbor (and deputy sheriff). I believe that Deputy Shepherd gently rode him until he was well into his twenties. He was not Flying Jubilee, but he was a very special horse.
During the summer before the mustang trip with Ern, Slim and I had attempted the Tevis Cup one-hundred mile, one day ride, but he was a little lame at Robinson Flat. I finished the ride for the first time in 1968 on an Arabian named Quist. Most of the horses that I rode in the 1970’s were Arabians. (Almost all of them belonged to other people.) Some of them were pretty good. One that didn’t work out so well was a gray Arabian stallion. I was briefly enthused about him. I took him over to Alpine and showed him to Ern. I’m pretty sure that was in 1977. We went riding on the mountain. As I recall, Ern was riding Ug. He was by Flying Jubilee out of a very good Roy Brunk-bred mare named Cynthia. Ug was a fine horse. His name didn’t fit his appearance or the way he traveled. In fact, he looked somewhat like Flying Jubilee, and he moved a lot like him. They could have run circles around that Arabian and me. I don’t think Ern was very favorably impressed with my mount.
In 1978, my ex-mustanging friend Ray Mills repeatedly insisted I try out a big, good-looking, Morgan horse he had. By then, Ray had some back problems. He seemed to think that particular horse had something extra going for him. I had my doubts because he wasn’t built like any of the many good endurance horses I’d been around over the years. Nevertheless, I gave him a go. I discovered that he had a good heart and good air. He liked to travel and could trot over a lot of geography. Long story short──as a horse and rider team, in 1979, that horse, Circle H Caballero (a.k.a. “TBH”) and I had a lot of endurance success. (The acronym was short for “the black horse.”) After that year was over, we’d set several records that stood for a while. His picture was in Western Horseman, and the Morgan magazine asked me to submit an article about him. Also, he was Trail Blazer’s cover story. (More recently, for several years, he was honored with an exhibit at the National Museum of the Morgan Horse.) Ern had some nice words, but I imagine that his views were tempered a bit by the fact that TBH was a son of old Condo. I’ve often wished he had been a Flying Jubilee descendant. By the way, he was a bit similar to Ern’s big lonely horse in that he bucked at the beginning of more endurance rides than he didn’t. In other words, like some of the other Condo offspring, he was not a cupcake.
Life is what it is. You get busy.
Sometimes you don’t do things you later wish you had. The plain fact is that I
didn’t see as much of Ern in the last ten years of his life as I had
previously. It’s a poor defense that I didn’t know it was his final decade. When
I was in
About the time he retired, I stopped at Alpine with copies of photographs and papers I’d gathered about a reclusive Nevada Morgan breeder named Clark Ringling (1885-1969). I’d also talked with many people who had known him. Anyway, Ern recalled seeing references to Mr. Ringling many years before in the Morgan magazine. He seemed intrigued with the Ringling material and with some of the stories I’d heard about the man.
Ern and Mr. Ringling had some
things in common. They each had a connection with Australia. Ern was born there, and,
as an adventurous young man, Mr. Ringling went there on a tramp steamer and
worked cattle for a couple of years. Each of them owned and prized a son of
Flyhawk. Ringling had Black Winter, and Ern had Flying Jubilee. Also, each man
seemed to have a loner-streak. Mr. Ringling lived by himself on about forty
acres of deeded ground far out in the
About 1983 or 1984, I visited Ern in Alpine and learned that he was planning to move permanently to the Olson Ranch. He had been retired for a couple of years or so, and he could do as he chose. I think that one factor in his decision was that Alpine was growing, and he felt a bit crowded. But there seemed to be much more to it than that. He had been a rider of renown for decades, but he had never been a full-time cowman. Even that late in life, that was a goal. You could tell that it was important to him. As a young man, he had often ridden back and forth between Big Cottonwood Canyon and the Olson Ranch. (A few years ago, I used a vehicle to attempt to approximate Ern’s horseback route. Mapquest says it’s eighty-five miles between the two locations, but Ern’s trail distance may have been a little shorter.) He knew the Olson place and its history. He was eager to call it home.
Around that time, Ern told me about a lady named Nancy. She was a nanny for a well-to-do family in Alpine. It was clear that he liked her a lot.
In the first few days of January, 1985, I visited the Olson Ranch. It was a very cold day. There were many good-looking cattle in the Olson’s main corrals. It turned out that the stock were a joint project between Utah State University and the Olson Ranch. Busy there were vets and cattle experts from Utah State plus the Olsons and the new Mr. and Ms. Ern Pedler. The cattle were being vaccinated and weighed, etc. I watched the work. When there was a break in the action, Ern and I visited. He really seemed to be in his element.
I believe that was the first time I met Nancy. She seemed very nice. She owned and rode a good Arabian gelding. It was apparent that she and Ern were happy──cold, but happy.
About a half mile from those corrals, Ern and Nancy were building a cabin next to the original Olson homestead house and corrals. (Some of the sheds there still had sod-roofs.) In the meantime, Ern and Nancy were living in a small camper trailer. (It looked very similar to the one that Ern had used in 1963. One reason that I believe that it was a different trailer is that I had not seen the first one in twenty years. Ern and Nancy volunteered that they sometimes got pretty chilly in the trailer. They were definitely looking forward to occupying the new cabin as soon as possible.
That same year, I moved to
Dear Robert;
It was good to hear from you at Christmas time and to know where you are located. We are still at the ranch, and I expect to finish my life here. I certainly hope so. I would not give this up to go to heaven, because I doubt it can offer anything better.
We have been in our cabin about a year, and have done a lot since moving in. We have a pressure pump on the well which gives us running hot and cold water in the bathroom and kitchen. Before winter came, I winterized by building a little log cabin over the well and pump. I skirted our cabin down into the ground to keep piping from freezing. I built a front porch with a roof and have wooden pegs along the house logs and porch posts to hang ropes, halters, brooms, etc. The cabin is carpeted upstairs and down--even in the bathroom and kitchen. Our bedroom is in the loft, and quite spacious, for the pitch of the roof is steep. The loft is open over the living room so you can see into the ridge and timbers. The entire interior is lined with heavy wood panels to keep everything rustic. We heat with a wood stove, and I built bookshelves along the full wall behind the stove. I put wide rough-sawed sills in the windows for knick knacks, and have put wooden pegs in the closets and throughout the cabin for hanging clothes. The cabin is snug and warm and dry, and we have been comfortable all winter. In fact, this has been the happiest winter of my life. I have built outside window boxes for flowers under two of the windows. We have a lawn in, and Nancy has planted bulbs and seeds for flowers when spring breaks. I put up over two hundred feet of good ranch fence along the front of our place with swinging gates to the shop, the tack cabin, and the house, and double-swinging gates into the yard for the truck. The fence is of twenty one foot pine poles and cedar posts, with heavy stock fencing below the bottom rail to keep the calves out. Our corral for the horses is directly behind the cabin. I built a new swinging gate from it to the bull pasture where we let out horses run during the daytime.
We have done a lot of chute work such as you saw us doing, but we have done a lot of riding too──scattering the herds along the mountains on the ranch’s various permits, and checking on their whereabouts during the summer. We also rode the Faust Canyon area a number of times during the summer to see the wild horses. They were high on the skylines and peaks, and still a thrill to see. There are about seventy-five of them in that area. It and this ranch are the locale of my story The Dream Never Ends.
Round up was a lot of fun for we gathered cattle from a vast area along the mountains, riding for Calvin [Olson] and the Cattleman’s Association──gathering everything in sight, about five hundred in all. The country is big and empty and beautiful. In fact, looking North, West, and South, the only other residence in sight in forty miles is the [Olson] ranch headquarters. We have eagles, big owls, coyotes, wild ducks, and wild geese. There is a pond of about two acres behind our corral, and the wildfowl hatch on it.
During the winter we help scatter hay for the herd, and Nancy and I are feeding twenty seven hold-over heifers twice a day at the corrals near us. Right now is calving time and will be for another sixty days. We have twenty-nine so far and expect another one hundred and thirty-one. We are sometimes midwives helping pull calves when birthing is hard. We start feeding each morning at seven and get through about nine thirty, and have breakfast after that. We stay busy, but are not under pressure, for we donate our time and work, and feel no responsibility for the management of the ranch. We have ridden a time or two for another cattleman’s association, and our abilities are respected and our services sought. We have had two offers to move onto other ranches, but will not do so for we own our cabin and are happy to stay here.
Nancy spoils me. We work together daily, and get along unbelievably well. I am the happiest I’ve ever been and hope the years string out ahead for awhile yet. I have given readings of my stories for several years now, and they go over well. Some of them are on cassettes, but I have not tried to sell any.
About the Morgan Horse
Museum [which was then
about to be located in a building under construction in Shelburne,
Congratulations on your new job. I hope you are happy there. I toured New England as a guest of Otho Eusey who used to publish the Morgan Magazine, and I thought it was, as you say, quaint and beautiful. I have dreamed of riding some of that land during the autumn of the year, but it is only a dream now. I hope that you find the place and position that will make you content enough to put down some roots before you get old. The years run out faster than you think. The best of my wishes to you.
Your old friend, Ern
At that time, one of my daughters
lived in
I was there again in 1987. By then, Ern had been diagnosed with lymphoma. He described some of what he had been through, but he seemed to believe that that his condition was improving. Nancy was baking something──cookies, I think──and she and Ern were telling me about the annual cowboy poetry event that had started in Elko. That’s about all I can remember about that visit. It took place entirely in the cabin.
I visited Ern and Nancy in 1988. All things considered, Ern seemed to be doing pretty well. He took me out to Lookout Pass in a vehicle and showed me an area where he said he and Nancy liked to play in the snow. He mentioned that Nancy, riding a horse, would pull him on an inner tube. Don’t misunderstand. Ern’s mind was sharp. Though I had trouble imagining it, they really were doing that. Obviously, it was a sign that he was feeling better. He struck me as being happy the way young guys sometimes can be.
I regret to say that I didn’t get
to
Postscript
In 2006, I visited Virginia Pedler
at her condominium in Murray,
I know I’m forgetting many, but, besides the people already named in this article, other individuals I recall Ern mentioning repeatedly over the years include, in no particular order, Cliff Miller, Wally Ripple, Hal Shulthies, Larry Weight, Al Goodwin, Lafe Case, Dr. James Orme, Allen Smith, Mary Woolverton, Bud Higgins, and a (then) young man named Craig (I think his last name may have been Green, but I’m unsure.)
Ern was a singer. People hired him to sing at weddings and funerals, etc. (See his self-description at the beginning of this article and in the preface to The Big Lonely Horse) It occurred to me recently that that I never heard him sing.
How Ern ever managed to be a school dropout is a puzzle to me. He was one of the smartest people I’ve ever been around──always thinking, well informed, and articulate. His talents were so numerous and varied that it was more a question of what he couldn’t do than what he could.
I’ve often wondered what became of Nancy. It’s my impression that she moved to the Northwest, and at some point she remarried and had a child.
As a young fellow, it took me several years to realize that the position of being Ern Pedler was already taken. Nevertheless, he affected my life. I was not alone. In my travels over the years, I’ve encountered many people who described how Ern influenced them, either in person, or through his articles and stories. Some chose Morgans because of him. Others took up trail riding. A few even tried writing.
Like all people, Ern was flawed, but he was the genuine article. He was what he appeared to be. He had no hidden agenda, and there was not a phony bone in his body.
Why Ern ever gave the time of day to that odd-ball kid from Georgia, I don’t know, but I’m forever grateful that he did. What I would give to take one more ride with him, Flying Jubilee and The Outcast. It has been more than twenty years since he departed, but I still think of him every day. I often reread his stories and articles. I can usually hear his voice in them. With no close competition whatever, he was the most memorable person I’ve ever known.
All Rights Reserved 2011 by Robert Manley
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LET’S COMMUNICATE
I would appreciate hearing from anyone who would enjoy discussing Ern. Also, please let me know of any errors you notice in the above article── typographical or otherwise. Corrections can be made. My email address is manley.robert42@gmail.com.
It occurs to me that there must be many other people with memories of Ern. If you’re one of those folks, I encourage you to write or record those stories and make them available to the rest of us. I, for one, would really like to read or hear them. (It doesn’t need to cost anything. For example, you are reading this article on a free website.)
MY THANKS
Seldom does anyone complete a project without help. This one is no exception. I’m grateful to my Grandson Caleb for his technology assistance. (Without him, you wouldn’t be looking at this website.). I thank Lynne Pedler Boren for her assistance and encouragement. Lynne’s illuminating article about Ern is found at http://www.cowboypoetry.com/photowk50.htm. Morgan horse historian Gail Perlee kindly supplied the above list of Ern’s writings. Last, but certainly not least, my gratitude goes to wife Linda for her help with this effort and for two wonderful decades.