The Vandevert Ranch Writers’ Conference
Told by Mark Newman

I fed the horses early so I could straighten up the barn one more time.  The Schramms drove up at eight-forty with coffee urns and boxes of pastries.  I carried the coffee upstairs to the loft above the horse stalls and plugged the urns into the extension cords I’d laid out the day before.  The writers would arrive at nine after having breakfast in the ranch owners’ homes where they were staying.

They’d all had cocktails and dinner at one of the houses the night before.  But this would be the kickoff meeting of the first writers’ conference the ranch had ever attempted.  The owners had been planning it for years.  If the conference didn’t go right there wouldn’t be another one. 

“Look like a cowboy,” Ron told me.  The owners had decided to focus on writing in the west.  It was supposed to include both the old west and the new west.  Ron said the “new west” could cover just about anything as long as somebody mentioned a western location or cattle.  I wore jeans and a checked shirt with pearl buttons and button-down pockets.  I figured it was western but still wouldn’t look like a costume to anyone who knew me.  I cleaned my boots and put a little polish on them.

The first carload got out and made a beeline for the corral.  Some of them had jeans on but they looked like city people - not much time outdoors in the weather, good or bad.  Even the fittest looking didn’t look as though they’d ever had to lift anything more times than what their trainers recommended

“Hey, Dave,” Ron called to me from the second car to arrive, “our guests want to know the names of the horses and a little about them.  Can you help them out?”  Ron was the president of the owner’s association and was in charge of the conference.  He and Molly didn’t have a horse.  I walked over, looking down at the ground, and leaned against the rail fence before I looked up at the people.

“This here’s the mare corral.  The geldings are over the other side of the barn.  We don’t let any stallions on the ranch.  This big red quarterhorse is Rosemarie and she’s the boss.  She’s sweet-natured but all the other horses, male and female, know not to mess with her.  Rachel is the paint.  She’s good on the trail and she is really good with children.”  I was getting going.  I was trying to keep their attention while still sounding like someone whose horizon didn’t extend much beyond cleaning stalls.  Only one or two of the owners knew I led a band that played three or four gigs a month.  I could get a hundred people clapping, shouting, and having a great time without my breaking a sweat.

“Have we got any carrots for the horses?” said Ron.  This sounded pretty high handed for him.  But in this script I was the kid whose worth only the writers would perceive.  

“We may have some in the barn,” I said with careful deliberation.  “I’ll go look.”  Ron and I both knew there were carrots. 

There were more people when I came back.  There was a girl about my age in the crowd.  She had long dark hair and an unfocused look in her eye.  If you had a mare like that you’d have to slap your boot to get her attention.  Her name tag said “Leona”.

We had five horses at the rail and a dozen people feeding them carrots.  Ron had walked away toward the barn.

“Do you put the horses in the barn at night?” asked Leona from the back of the crowd.

I replied to the group as a whole.  “We do in the winter if the owners want us to.  But the horses can stay outside all year here if they get enough to eat.”

“Okay people, let’s get started,” yelled Ron from the landing outside the meeting room.  The crowd was already drifting away.  They had paid their money for the conference, not to watch horses.  Leona stepped toward me before she left.

“Do you live on the ranch?” she asked.

“No, I live in La Pine.”

“With your family?”

“Just with two other guys.”

“Well, have a good day,” she said.  I wished her a good day too.  She turned to join the others.

I exercised some of the horses in the corral by the barn.  I heard laughter from the loft every few minutes.  I’m sure Josh Wuchinich spoke.  I saw him go in.  Of the writers on the ranch, published and unpublished, he was the only one that was well-known.  You could find his detective stories in every bookstore.  Ron said Josh was a big draw for the conference.  Josh had agreed to participate for free if he didn’t have to host any of the writers, didn’t have to come to the meals, and nobody found out which house was his.  Ron said okay and Josh signed up.

After lunch the writers were going to float down the river from the top of the ranch to the bottom.  The conference brochure promised untouched nature and historical sites with white wine and cool water.  I thought the people would enjoy it once they got on the water.  People always did.  A string quartet was going to play at the put-in and again just below the Homestead as the boats went by.  Many of the owners were going to accompany the writers.  They’d brought out anything that would float and borrowed from their friends.  

Tad, the ranch foreman, and I would help get the people into the canoes, kayaks, and inner tubes.  Then we would shuttle the cars to the takeout and help the people out again.  The quartet showed up a half hour before launch and started playing in the shade of the canvas we had rigged up for them.  There was no one there to hear them but Tad and me.  I just lay back in the sun with my hat over my face and enjoyed it. 

The first carloads came on time and we tried to herd the people toward the boats.  They were busy talking to their friends and milking the whole process for every comment they could come up with.  One old guy protested that this was a ridiculous and childish waste of time.  He was quite adamant.  Nobody paid him the slightest attention.  We got some of the more cooperative ones into boats and sent them off.  Some wanted to wait for their friends in other cars.  I convinced them to get in the boats and explore upriver until their friends came.  If everyone dilly-dallied the float would take all afternoon.  Ron had told me we had to get everyone off the river again in two hours.  I told people that the water master was going to drop the water that afternoon and the river would slow down if they waited. 

“How do you know that?” Ron whispered to me.

“I read fiction sometimes myself,” I said.  Ron barked a quick laugh.

Leona hung back until there were only three people left. 

“I’m actually terrified of moving water,” she said.  “I am going to pass on this expedition, if you don’t mind.”  I put the other two people in a canoe and told them to paddle hard to catch up.  The musicians packed their instruments and drove off downstream.

Leona, Tad, and I each drove a car down to the turnaround near the takeout.  When the three of us drove back together to get more cars Leona sat with me in the front.

“How did you get involved with horses,” she asked me. 

“My father ran a hunting camp in the Ochocos.  We kept horses all year so we could take people into the mountains.  I just liked them.  I trained them to do all kinds of things a pack horse or a trail horse never needs to know.  My father let me keep the profits if I could sell a horse for more than he paid for it.”

“And what do you think of the horses on the ranch?”

“They’re great horses.  The owners wouldn’t have a nag.  The horses eat well and the owners get right on it if their horse is sick or injured.”

“What’s the most difficult part of your job?” she asked.  Tad saved me from answering this question.  He knew the answer.

“Excuse me, Leona, let me ask you,” Tad said, “where are you from originally and how do you come to be at this conference?” 

“I’m from Connecticut and I lived back east all my life until six months ago.  I moved to San Francisco.  I’m still exploring the differences between the east coast and the west.  I started writing in college.  I thought coming to this conference would widen my experience of the west and let me meet some western writers.”

“Jeez,” said Tad, “you just started writing and you are making a living at it?”

“No, I still have nothing published.  I have a regular job.  I work for an advertising agency.  Not as a copywriter, unfortunately, but I hope to become one.”

Beside the road, two hundred yards before we got to where the other cars were waiting to be shuttled, the man who had protested at the start stood with wet clothes hanging off his body.

“What the hell?” said Tad as we approached him.

“You need a sign back there,” the man said.  “This river is like the one in the African Queen.  The channel I followed just ran out of water.  I got out of my kayak to find the road.  I knew it had to be in this direction.”

Tad and I got the man’s kayak turned around and got him back in it.  We told him to turn downstream when he reached the river.  We watched him paddle jerkily down the slough.

“How big a fool can that man be?” protested Tad as we walked back to the car.  “There’s no current into or out of that slough.  Anybody can tell it’s a dead end.  The man had to work hard to get around the sandbar and into the slough.  What was he thinking?”

“I expect he was trying to make something interesting happen,” said Leona.

“If you consider stupid to be interesting,” said Tad.

“Let’s hope nobody drowns,” I said, “it would make his day.”

We got all the cars down to the take-out in plenty of time.  Leona and I sat on the grass by the river while Tad went off to smoke a cigarette where nobody coming down the river would see him. 

“Are you working tomorrow?” Leona asked me. 

“You bet.”

“If I came early, could you show me around the barn?  It would be a great opportunity to see what it takes to keep horses.”

“Sure,” I said, “I get here around seven and need about twenty minutes to get the hay out for breakfast.  Then I can meet you anytime you like.”  She said seven-thirty and I said that would work out great.

The first canoe came into sight and I called to Tad.  We held the boats while people got out.  We asked the crowd to step back from the river’s edge because we were running out of room to store the boats. 

Our friend from the slough grumbled about the cheap trick ranch had played by planting a stuffed cougar where the paddlers would come upon it rounding a corner.  Others rolled their eyes at him, or at the cougar, or both.  Two people told every new arrival they thought it was a real cat when they first saw it.  One lady had been truly terrified and I felt badly about that.  One man was sharp enough, and proud enough, to say it looked like the same stuffed cat that lay across a beam in the loft where they had met that morning.  The owners didn’t say much.  I think they were embarrassed. 

Ron apologized profusely for the cougar at dinner that night, he told us later.  He told the writers that some kids from “over the fence” had taken the animal from the barn and put it by the river as a prank.  The kids were getting a serious talking-to and would be grounded for a week. 

“Writers will forgive anything for a good story,” Ron told me.  “They’ll be talking about that cougar for years.”  Ron was the one who told Tad and me to put the cougar there in the first place and “make it look as natural as possible.”

The writers went off to their afternoon workshops while Tad and I sorted out the boats and tubes and got them back to their rightful owners.  I put the cougar back, moved some of the horses out in the pasture, and went home.

Leona showed up at seven twenty-five the next morning wearing a light white jacket and a multi-colored knit cap.  It was cold at that hour.  She’d walked from the house she was staying in. 

I took her through the barn and showed her the circular corral where we exercised the horses.  I explained that we put the horses out to pasture so they would get some exercise on their own.  But we couldn’t let them eat too much green grass or they would get sick.

“Can you show me the tack room,” she asked.  I unlocked it for her and we stepped into the small room.  She reached past me and pulled a bridle away from the wall.

“Can you tell me how this fits on a horse and how it works?”  I explained it carefully but as briefly as I could.  She followed intently but I could tell this was new to her.  When I described how a rider gets a horse to turn she looked like she was getting only about half of it.

“You don’t need to be here on the ranch to learn that stuff,” I said, “You can look it up when you get home.”

“Thanks,” she said with a chuckle.  “Can you show me where you store the hay?”  She did want the full tour. 

“Well,” I said, “let’s take a look.”  I started off down the road to the storage shed.  Leona skipped a step to walk beside me.  We walked fast and her face was flushed from the cold.

We went in through the side door.  I flipped on the light.  The hay bales were stacked against the back wall. 

“We’ll fill most of this place up again in September when haying season is over,” I said.

We walked up to hay bales and Leona sat down on one, testing its texture with her hand.

 “I do appreciate you’re showing me around.  Is there anything more I should see?”

“That’s about all I can think of.  I hope it is enough.”

“It certainly is.” she said.  “I already have a story about the ranch forming in my mind.  I think it will be a good one.  I’ll send it to you when I’m done if you like.”

“I would like that,” I said.  We went back outside and I locked the door.  “Am I in it?” I asked.

“You’re the one who tells the story.”