STICK HORSES And Other Stories of Cowboy Life
HERE ARE TRUE-LIFE STORIES about cowboys, Indians, (ranch hands, sheriffs) and the milieu of characters that populated the legendary American West. McRae tells about his heroes and also the town vagabonds who came and went through the landscape of his growing up as a ranch kid and his adult life as a third-generation Montana rancher. Both humorous and poignant, the people and events in McRae's stories portray the living Cowboy Code. Enjoyable, can't-put-it-down reading in a conversational style from one of the West's best storytellers. Don't pass this one up!
McRae's cowboy poetry collection, The Cowboy Curmudgeon, has sold more than 25,000 copies.
McRae was the subject of a feature article in Range magazine in summer 2008.
McRae has been featured on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion.
McRae is one of the "stars" of the granddaddy of all cowboy poetry gatherings in Elko, Nevada. He was the keynote speaker for the Elko Gathering's tenth anniversary and has performed his poems across a wide range of venues from cultural exchanges in Australia, Scotland, England, and various settings in the United States.
McRae's reputation in the field of writing and performing cowboy poetry is unsurpassed. His poem "Reincarnation" is the most recited of contemporary cowboy poetry.
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Wallace McRae is the recipient of A National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts. He was appointed to the National Endowment for the Arts Council by President Clinton. His poems have appeared in numerous poetry anthologies. He is the author of The Cowboy Curmudgeon (Gibbs Smith). He lives in Montana.
Nearly every morning one of us would wrangle the horses. Occasionally there was other, more compelling, work to be done, but we preferred to ride. We kept a wrangle horse 'up' by picketing him to the gatepost at the back door of our grandparents' house.
As was the case with the ones we rode, we rotated the wrangle horse. Not all members of the cavvy were fit to ride to gather the rest, however. Some were afflicted with defects-a fistula, cinch sore or wire cut. Some were packing just a bit too much of that hot Thoroughbred blood crazying them up, so using them for running in the other horses rendered them mentally unfit to ride for weeks. Some were either permanently or temporarily unsound. Some were not sufficiently broken and considered too green for the job. . . .
Our shared grandfather was the only adult on the ranch who understood, and believed, our remuda to be comprised of real horses. They most definitely were not mere stick horses. From his rocking chair on the screened porch, Grandpa would watch us wrangle. He understood what we were doing and probably didn't approve, though he never spoke of it. . . ." -excerpted from "Stick Horses"
