The Mother Who Heeled For Her Boy

Fourth Out

There is a moment in team roping before the header nods when everything goes still. The steer stands in the chute. The header’s horse is set in the box on the left, the heeler’s horse in the box on the right. The barrier rope is stretched across in front of the header.

The first three teams came and went. One got a time, eleven seconds and change. One broke the barrier, which is a ten-second penalty. One roped a leg and was out.

Then they announced Lance and his buddy. The announcer said Lance’s name like everybody knew it, because everybody did.

Lance’s buddy nodded. The steer came out fast and ran left, and the buddy’s dun was on it in three strides. He threw. The loop hit the horns. For half a second it looked good.

Then it popped off. The steer shook its head and the loop slid down off one horn and dropped in the dirt, and the steer ran on down the arena toward the stripping chute by itself.

No time.

You could hear the grandstand let its breath out. Lance pulled his bay up. He sat there a second and then started coiling his rope, slow, and he rode out of the arena past the old ropers on the fence without looking at the stands.

I did not feel glad. I want you to know that. I sat on Pepper and I felt sorry for him, because I have missed steers in front of people too. A miss is a miss. It happens to everybody who has ever swung a rope.

But I also knew what he had traded for that miss, and I did not let myself forget it.

Ninth

Teams five through eight went by. Two clean times, the best of them nine-point-six. One leg. One more broken barrier. Then the announcer called us.

“Next up, team number nine,” he said. “Colt Kolb heading, and heeling for him, folks, his mom, Trish Kolb.”

There was a little stir along the fence. One of the old ropers leaned and said something to the man next to him. I saw the man nod.

I backed Pepper into the heeling box myself. Nobody had to lead her. She went in backward like she had done it a thousand times, which she had, and she stood with her hind feet square against the back of the box.

I built my loop. My hands were wet. I said the prayer my mother taught me when I was little, the one about being still and knowing. I said it fast.

Colt was in the header’s box on the other side of the chute, sitting his sorrel gelding, his white straw hat pulled down low. He had his loop built and his reins set.

He looked over at me once.

I nodded. Not at the chute. Not at the steer. At him. I nodded at my boy the way you nod to a man you trust.

He turned his face back to the steer. He nodded for it.