Making The Cut

Laurie arrived in Fort Worth from Oklahoma, and we went to a pleasant Italian restaurant on Camp Bowie Boulevard called Sardine's, where she described every good horse she had seen in Ardmore, and I described every good horse I had seen in Sweetwater.

"How's your horse?" I asked.

"Solid. How's yours?"

"Hotter than a two-dollar pistol. Did you have any problems?"

"Did you?"

"Let's just enjoy our meal," I said. She seemed to be regarding me, twirling her pasta fork in the air and sizing me up. Cutting is a sport for the whole family.

Laurie was assigned to ride on Nov. 26, the first day of the Futurity. The day before, Will Rogers Coliseum was surrounded by trucks and horse trailers with license plates from across the nation. I walked in and looked around the coliseum's spacious interior, a venerable place to cutters. The bleachers were empty, the judges' boxes untenanted. I sat down close to the rail and remembered a night 13 years earlier, when Buster had won the Futurity on Little Peppy, "the clearest-minded colt to ever look through a bridle," he said. I had never seen anything like it in my life, the mercurial speed of that young stallion, his impact on a coliseum filled with people who had nothing on their minds but a love of cutting horses. It would seem like a privilege to ride my young mare onto that sand—win, lose or draw.

Laurie had a nice controlled run that assured her of a slot in the second go-round. I couldn't help but notice how quietly she cut her cows and how lightly she sat on her quick little horse. I wouldn't work until the next day, so I watched and tried to make myself memorize individual cattle in the herd.

Heather Stiles had a fine run on a horse Buster had trained. Heather is a high school senior who has grown up on the 1¼-million-acre King Ranch in South Texas, where her father is in charge of the cattle. She is a natural rider and a remarkably serious individual. I would have been quite pleased if Heather had won the non-pro class and its $35,454 first prize. I even had generous thoughts about Laurie getting to the finals or even winning. So many horses were making their way through the go-rounds, 165 in the non-pro alone, that no one really cared what happened to you until you did enough to suggest that it would be a shame if you failed.

Nevertheless, there was a feeling of interne scrutiny; and indeed the five judges, sequestered in their towers, clipboards on their knees, were looking at the riders very closely. You felt terrific internal pressure to cut the right cows and ride your horse well.