The Maker Stamp Under the Saddle Fender

That July, she called and said the store had found a dealer in Oklahoma who would take my saddles wholesale, steady, at $1,700 apiece.

After the store’s $200, that came to $1,500 for me.

I said that was less than half what they brought on the rack.

She said the rack was not selling, that ranch money was tight with cattle where they were and fuel where it was, and that a steady check was better than a pretty saddle sitting under a light.

I believed her. That is the part I am least proud of.

I had a daughter starting her junior year and a truck that needed tires, and $1,500 every few weeks was money.

I told myself a dealer in Oklahoma was still a cowboy in Oklahoma riding my work.

So I kept building them. I took the same care.

I struck every square in the basket weave the same way, cut every oak leaf by hand, tooled my stamp under every left fender. Eleven saddles over fourteen months, numbers 204 through 214.

A week after the check for 214, Hailey came out to the shop after school. She is seventeen, tall like her dad, with my hair before mine had gray in it.

She works the counter at the store on Saturdays for spending money and because she loves the smell of the place.

I was casing a fender at the sink. She came and stood beside me and did not say anything for so long that I turned the water off.

“Mom,” she said, and held her phone out to me. “Isn’t this yours?”

It was mine. I knew it from the picture before I could read a word. My basket weave.

My oak leaves on the corners, the left one with the little curled stem I always do and never meant to. My rawhide horn wrap.

The listing was on the store’s website. It said: Hand-built in-house by owner Clint Haverkamp. Store-made ranch saddle. Under that, it said $3,800.

Under the price, in green letters, it said Sold.

Hailey reached over and scrolled for me, because my thumb would not do it. There was another one. Mine. And another. Mine.

Every one of them said store-made, and every one of them said Clint, and every one of them said $3,800, and every one said Sold.

I counted them out loud. I did not mean to. One, two, three, all the way to eleven.

Eleven saddles. Every one I had handed across that counter since July of the year before.

There was no dealer in Oklahoma. The ship-to towns on two of the listings were right in the comments, where happy buyers had written thank-you notes.

Gordon. Mullen. Ranch country I could drive to before dinner.

I got a pencil and did the arithmetic on the wall calendar, the way I figure everything. $3,800 a saddle.

Take off the store’s $200 under our deal. That left $3,600 that should have been mine on each one. I had been paid $1,500.

$2,100 a saddle, eleven times. $23,100.

But I will tell you the truth. The money was not what made me sit down on my stool.

What sat me down was the word owner, and the name after it, and the thought of some cowboy in Gordon telling his neighbor that Clint Haverkamp built him that saddle.

Clint has never built a saddle in his life. He can restitch a stirrup leather and set a conway buckle and oil a latigo, and he has always been honest about that much.