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A Taste for Beef
By Bill Gann
One Spring morning a lone rider in sunrise light poked slowly down Black Mountain. Horse hooves kicked up golden puffs of dust, and majestic swaths of impossible color painted the hills then in full bloom. Yellow, red and orange fields framed the cowboy as he picked his trail. The horse's blond mane and tail flared in the slanting sunrays. The man rocked his shoulders in lazy time with his mount's gate as beast and man danced down the eastern ridge of the El Paso Mountains. Bedroll and saddlebags clapped out a steady rhythm as the rider gave the Palomino gilding his head. As he sat in his outhouse, Lowell Greenberg's eye caught this panorama when he happened to lookup from reading to sip his coffee.
Greenberg was a man who lived closer to the edge of society than most people. It was said he had long ago given up some sort of successful engineering career to follow his heart. In his new life, he was a karate master. He ran a martial arts school in Mexico for six months out of the year, and spent the rest of his time more or less at leisure at his remote cabin in Last Chance Canyon. The rider sidestepping the beautiful horse down Black Mountain among spring flowers was an unbelievably beautiful sight.
"It looked liked like the wide-screen opening from 'The Good, Bad and Ugly,'" Lowell always said when telling this story. "I kept waiting for Spaghetti Western theme music to pipe in, and I fully expected Clint Eastwood to be the rider." He said that he actually poked his head out of the privy, and looked around to see if a camera crew was capturing the dramatic telephoto entrance.
It was as if Central Casting had costumed the cowboy and choreographed the scene to play as the credits flashed in the desert sky. Lowell said he became so mesmerized by the approaching rider that he didn't bother to pull up his pants and hike out to greet the visitor.
As the rider got closer, Lowell could see the stranger was a tall, tan, Marlboro man who held himself as if he were leading a thousand cavalrymen. "I just sat there and watched the movie," he said. "I expected the rider to just go on by but he seemed to be coming right toward me."
The man rode right up the open privy and framed himself in front of Greenberg. His saddle leather creaked and his horse stomped and snorted bringing new sounds to normal desert quiet. The morning suddenly smelled of greasewood and steamed horse sweat, as the rider opened a B-movie dialogue.
"Clear morning," said the cowboy, tipping his dusty black hat to the man seated in the outhouse. He wore a six-shooter slung close to his right hand. A Winchester lever-action rifle poked out of a side scabbard. A well-used lariat hung across his saddle horn. He wore a tan leather vest and red flannel shirt. Scuffed and pointed buckskin boots framed by ragged Wrangler cuffs poked out of tooled Western stirrups. A toothpick dangled off his lower teeth, and a pencil-thin mustache marked his top lip. The round outline of a snuff can showed in his pocket.
"Looks to be a clear day too," he added, taking in a panoramic view of the country as his head bobbed in a slow look about. At first Greenberg didn't speak and sat dumbstruck on the wooden toilet seat. Finally he managed a short comment on the morning. "It does look like a nice day," Greenberg replied excusing himself for not standing. Lowell always wished his line had been a simple, "Yep."
"I'm looking for a sheepherder," the cowboy said. His words came out slowly like a thousand B-movie gunslingers before him had also said. Naturally he was looking for a sheepherder, that's what range-riding cowboys always did, Greenberg thought. In this case the lone rider explained further that he really was trying to "track down some sheep-stinking, range-spoiling jasper."
A few miles to the north of Bickel Camp are the Alabama Hills of Lone Pine, California. In those classic rocks, a thousand Western movies were filmed. One wonders how many of those films had lines like exactly like Greenberg now exchanged with the horseman. "Name of Lorenzo," the rider went on speaking of his quarry. "Seem he's got a taste for beef."
A sheepherder with a taste for beef, name of Lorenzo, thought Greenberg. He actually waited at this point for a knowing smile, a punch line, or a candid camera crew to appear. Nothing happened as the Palomino lifted his tail and plopped out a steaming pile of green balls. The cowboy just waited tall in his saddle, and squinted into the horizon as if searching for movement.
Lowell told the rider what he knew of sheepherders in the canyon. Sheepherders from the Basque area of Spain can be found all over the desert in the spring. These lonely men are dropped off with a flock of sheep and a trailer when the Mojave is green and beautiful. They tend the sheep that graze on the desert flowers.
While these Spanish herders were simple men doing an honest job, many people hate what they do to the desert. The sheep tend to over-graze and damage the flora. Not just cowboys want to see herders off the land, but desert lovers abhor the practice of destroying the annual bloom. In hours a flock of sheep can turn the land from a vibrant artist's pallet to a grey wasteland.
Still Lowell, who was fluent in Spanish, often visited with these herders from the Pyrenees Mountains. I've met a few of these herders myself and they tend to be quiet peaceful folk who speak strange Spanish. Lorenzo, however, Greenburg didn't know. The cowboy tipped his hat said, "Obliged," and rode off to the southern horizon.
Greenberg was left to wonder if the event had really happened. A little hay-ball pile of droppings in front of the outhouse and horse tracks riding off from his cabin documented the brief scene. "Obliged, he actually said obliged, "Greenberg would say shaking his head when telling the story.
If the dialogue weren't so trite, one could use this occurrence in a fiction story about any of the cowboys who came to live at Bickel Camp over the years. Otto Adams, the famous rodeo bull rider, for example, arrived in the canyon by flashy yellow Corvette when he moved to the area. Adams was still tough as nails but had decided to stop breaking his bones for a living. A battered old Texas truck brought ranch cowboy John Adair to Bickel Camp. As far as anyone knows, the lonesome rider Greenberg met that morning just kept moving. No one ever found man name of Lorenzo strung up by lariat in a canyon tree. Maybe he's out there still.
As for Lowell Greenberg, I didn't see him much after he and Ursula broke up, and I moved to Brazil. His usual half-year visits to the canyon stopped, or I missed him when I visited. I remember hearing of some sort of trouble with his martial arts school in Mexico—fire, flood, or something—ended his career down there. I understand he passed away peacefully a little while back. I now suggest that movie credits of Greenberg's life flash across the sky as we all imagine The Intrepid Lowell Greenberg riding off into a spectacular cactus-framed desert sunset.
This is Bull Rider Otto Adams giving the Bull his turn. Adams retired in the canyon and mined the area for many years.
Cowboy John Adair is one of the many colorfuo characters who once lived in Last Chance. He's shown here with my second wife Linda Baily.
