The Maker Stamp Under the Saddle Fender

A man three rows up stood and climbed down the bleachers and walked to his trailer. Then a woman from Gordon whose husband had bought one for their son.

Then a young cowboy from the team that had just ridden, who led his horse over to the fence by the trailers and flipped his fender right there.

I could see them all from where I stood, because the trailers were parked in a line along the back fence.

One after another, people folded up the left fender of a saddle and bent their heads to look at the underside.

The woman from Gordon was the first to call it. Her husband’s saddle was on their son’s horse, tied to their trailer.

She lifted the fender and read it and turned and looked straight across the arena at me.

“Two-eleven,” she called. She did not need the microphone. Ranch women can carry a voice across a branding pen.

The young cowboy called his next. “Two-oh-nine.” Then the man from three rows up, who had his saddle in the tack room of his gooseneck. “Two-oh-four.”

Four of my eleven saddles were at that rodeo. I had not known that.

Shirley, who keeps the books for the ranch rodeo and sells the raffle tickets, told me later she counted, and she said all four owners went and looked within ten minutes.

Brandi was standing very straight beside her stack of flyers. Her face had gone the color of her blouse.

The sign that said store-made saddles, built right here at home, was still on its stand in front of her, and there was nothing she could do with it that would not be seen.

Clint had stopped talking to the man from Merriman. He stood behind the table with his hands flat on it, and I watched him look at the line of trailers, and at Wade, and at the bleachers full of people he had sold boots and feed and tack to for nineteen years.

Clint Haverkamp is a lot of things, and some of them I did not care to be married to anymore. But he is not a coward, and he never has been.

He came out from behind the tent table. He walked across the gravel to the arena gate, and through it, and out into the dirt where everybody could see him.

Then he walked the whole length of the arena to the announcer’s stand, with the team from up by Cody still sorting at the other end.

He stood where Wade had stood. He took his hat off and held it. He said something up to Duane, and Duane handed him the mic.

“Folks,” Clint said. His voice was steady but it was not loud.

“I’m going to keep this short so these boys can finish their run. Tess built those saddles. All eleven of them. I didn’t build any of them. I’ve never built a saddle in my life, and most of you know it.”

He looked at his hat for a second.

“It said on our website that I did,” he said.

“I saw it said that and I let it sit. That’s on me. That’s my name on the store and it’s my fault. Anybody who bought one, the saddle’s good. She builds the best saddle in this country. Come see me if you want to talk about it.”