he parade of trucks carrying workers up Highway 14 to the methane line starts early, a little before the day reaches her window. Mona lies on her back attempting to mentally radar-gun their speeds in the dark. She's at it a while, waiting for the sun, but it does not follow. Mona gets out of bed and makes room between the tall draperies. The bales of evenly spaced hay in the field across the two lane lie there dully, absent their usual pre-dawn sparkle. She can feel the vibration of cold through the glass as she searches the whole sky. She'd heard someone joking "In Wyoming, if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes or go five miles." Today, Mona looks to the cattle dotting the prairie and not the tourists in Rockefeller Plaza lined up behind Katie Couric with or without umbrellas for her morning weather debrief. The bovine are laying down.

John Wayne set Mona's cowboy standard. As the story went, five- year-old Mona sees Hondo one lazy Sunday afternoon and promptly writes him a proposal of marriage. The green crayon she uses does little to off set the directness of her desire. Mona the adult, is sad to admit this union would never have worked. Republican.

With no legit cowboy in sight, Mona settles for a stock broker. Though even when the Duke has fallen from the favor of her memory, and the Marlboro Man begins mourning his lung, Mona decides her husband's in the wrong kind of bull market, cashes in her 401K and sets out West.

Late in the season, Mona takes a position at a working Guest Ranch set in the foothills of the Big Horns—in the office. Wrangler jeans were nice, but not made for anyone with hips. She didn't want to be a cowboy. Mona came to Wyoming to watch. Mona's routine has once included lunch hour shopping trips to Bendels and a weekly appointment at a day spa in Soho, where she elbowed through a crush of stick figures to her regular waxing room. So, they are all pretty darned suspicious at first amused by her trying to scrape the mud off her Prada shoes. "New Yawk Citee! " the sun-baked rancher hoots, shaking her hand. "Now there's a few people there. Go ahead and hire her Bee," he tells his wife before heading out the door. "She'll be fun to have around."

Mona puts on a turtleneck, pours coffee in a go-cup and drives up the road to the stables for a real outlaw horseback-riding experience. At least that's how she convinces herself this is a good idea, this trail ride she's been promised "just as soon as the weather is too poor for the guests to want a ride." The guests are retirees vacationing with grade school grandchildren who are trapped with grandma and grandpa that one last summer before the realize they can object. The boys get along pretty well on their own; there's an in-ground pool and a game room. But universally, the girls more or less pout and squirm single file up the bluff, tearing the hair off the neck of a submitting animal.

It is Chad's first summer wrangling at the ranch but he handles livestock, and uncooperative preteens so well that he is trusted out on trail rides alone. After an hour on the prairie, they come back in love with their cowboy and before the tour buses pull away, catch him in the cross hairs of an instamatic. This happens so often, the other wranglers nick name him Flash.

Mona sees two horses saddled and tied in the otherwise empty corral. The rain, non-committal at first, has changed its mind and Mona straddles her tires across sloppy ruts forged by much larger vehicles. The wranglers are hauling irrigation pipe, their hats pitch toward the wet ground. Two of them notice her and stop the train of movement which makes Chad look. Wordlessly the older men lay down the pipe. Chad walks around the back of Mona's car, hands stuffed into his pockets. He bends in half to look inside. She waits for the usual recrimination about her always driving instead of hoofing-it between the ranch buildings. "You're late."

Mona looks toward the corral. "It's raining."

"They're horses."

"I figured there'd be some sort of ranch rule or something."

"You signed a release when you started."

"I should have read the fine print, huh?" Mona is staring at his belt. "You're not dressed right."

She isn't. She lowers her chin to consider her thin leather jacket. The fact is, Mona hates being wet. The tickle of dish water skating off Platex gloves toward her elbow while wrestling dinner dishes makes her want to launch her Fiesta Ware across the kitchen. But Mona is in the mood to surprise herself. "I'll be all right. I mean, if I get cold, we can turn back."

"Yeah. We could."

Mona drives behind the stable to where the day help park their trucks. She pulls beside one with the windows open to the weather. Like some kind of centaur, its box is a blue Isuzu and its cab a mustard yellow Toyota. A shot gun lay across the torn bench seat. As she locks her door, Chad is already letting himself inside the corral.

"So, I should tell you," Mona calls, catching up. "That it's not like I've never been on a horse." She talks to the faded pattern of a cowboy shirt. Chad is only a little bit taller than she but his quiet know- how, the repetitive motions of his job, seem to inflate him. "But it was back in Girl Scout camp," Mona continues. "And I think I was about nine. Does that count?"

Chad waits to be sure that she latches the gate behind her. "Some." He moves to the two horses who are conserving energy under the burden of saddles. He stands beside the dark one, both of them wait. "Did you ride English or Western?"

"Western. It was just Girl Scouts."

"Step on back."

"Oh, sorry."

He leads the horse around in a show-offy half circle. "This here's Sparky."

"Of course you are," Mona laughs, and pats the side of Sparky's jaw. If she is going to rely on him to keep her five feet off the ground, it might be wise to make friends.

"Come 'round this side." Perfunctorily Chad offers his shoulder and steadies the stirrup. It is with less effort than expected that he helps hoist Mona into the saddle.

"See, I told you I've done this before." Right away Sparky starts throwing his weight around.

"Now take the reins."

Mona fits them into her hand and Chad tugs them east, west and south. "Left, right, back here to stop and back more to reverse. Got it?" Sparky seems uneasy and starts making sharp circles to the right.

"Make him stand still." Chad waits to see if she can and walks over to his horse.

"I'll make you a deal," Mona whispers to her horse. He is not a deal maker. He just jerks his head around, which is to Mona a clear enough message of his disgust. Chad comes trotting along side. "Everything all right?"

"I think so."

"Ready?"

Sparky stands still. "Come on, sweetie," Mona says, which hits Chad's ears all wrong. He is halfway out of the corral and turns almost entirely around in his saddle, "Give him a kick." Sparky's response is to head back to the barn. "Turn him around," Chad calls.

Mona pulls at his reins. Sparky snorts. "He's not impressed," she shouts. Chad waits for Mona to make her horse behave, then he starts back.

The two animals bump flanks as Chad takes the reins from Mona, but Sparky will not submit. The wrangler hops off his horse in that practiced way, all ease and inattention to reprimand the ride he's selected for her. Mona half expects him to do some horse-whisperer thing, but to her relief he uses a language a City-girl can get. "I don't know what his problem is."

Mona wonders for whom Chad is apologizing, and secretly hopes he'll just go get her a better horse.

Chad gets her horse headed in the direction he wants. Sparky follows his compadre's bemused yellow tail across the yard.

"You're not spooked, are you? Chad calls, bent over to unlatch a cattle gate.

"I'm all right," Mona says. I'm too cool to tell you otherwise and you know it, she mutters.

Mona makes one novice mistake after another. She lets Sparky push her into the limbs of a crab apple tree and then hesitate at the edge of the swift moving Piney Creek.

"Don't let him do that to you," Chad advises simply.

Mona tries to sweet talk Sparky into the water. Chad turns mid- stream, the legs of his horse redirect the flow. "That's not going to work. Sparky doesn't speak English."

Mona's annoyed and pushes her heel into the animal's side. What's the worst that can happen, she thinks. He throws me? I break a few bones? Mona catches Chad lifting a hip to shimmy a tin of Copenhagen out of his back pocket. She asks, "Did you hear the joke about the New York Secretary who all she wants to do on her vacation west is ride a horse and fuck a cowboy?"

"Don't think so," he says, sifting through the dried leaves before turning his head a way to stuff his lip.

"She goes back to the office after her vacation and all of her secretary friends gather 'round to hear about her trip. She tells them about the mountains, and the air and the big sky. They're all impatient. They just want to know, did she fuck a cowboy. The secretary tells her friends, 'No way...you should see the size of their condoms.'" Mona and Chad were losing sight of the ranch, picking their way through a wash. Some of Chad's laughing gets carried to Mona on the wind.

Mona takes a good look around as they wind their way up a steep rise. It isn't as wet above the ranch buildings, but the horses slip some on the dry prairie that the rain has made unstable. The air is thick with minerals and in places steam is rising. Chad's walkie-talkie makes noise but no one answers him back. Sparky takes an unsteady leap up to the top which includes stuffing his nose up the other horse's ass. The wrangler kicks his horse and makes Mona catch up. They walk a little further before Chad says, "Now seems a good time for a story as any. Some of the others disagree, but I don't figure you for the same 'ol kind that visit the ranch."

"What does that mean?"

"Just what I said."

"You've all been discussing me?"

"Some. So, how does a big city girl find her way here anyway?"

"So tell me Flash, you usually take this leisurely a ride? In the rain?"

He spits chew in the dirt. "By the way, you've got lean back when your horse comes to an edge."

"I figured that out."

"Well?"

"I have this compulsion to live out a couple of Eagle's songs 1971 to 75."

"Well, in that case, someone needs to teach you the difference between a real cowboy and the ones who just pretend." He leans all the way left in his saddle. The back of his right knee hooks him into place. It makes for easier conversation sure, but Mona is irritated by the indication he is not taking their trip at all seriously.

"And what might that be?"

"Well, boots, for one. Yours don't fit, by the way."

"They're Tony Lamas!"

"Tony Lamas that don't fit. I felt your heel slip."

"Hey, I got them for twenty bucks at a Corral West tent sale in Cheyenne on my way up here. For twenty bucks I figured I'd suffer."

The wind twists the turkey feather in Chad's hat band.

To get to the ranch from Cheyenne, Mona has to drive a long distance during which time no one passes her coming from the other direction. Motorists lift their trigger finger off the steering wheel when they do. The populated areas of Wyoming are connected by a series of lonely roads and these salutes, Mona is convinced, are a muscle reflex, a combination of relief and surprise. The ranch is located on the southern point of a 22,000 acre parcel of land that was once just a stop on the Pony Express.

"Been to the Mint?" Chad asks.

Sparky, for no reason at all gets a taste for the lead and does not want to be held to a walk. Chad and Mona break far from the narrow path and are riding though she didn't really think she knew how. Mona looks over her shoulder. "Is that one of your haunts?"

"If I'm careful."

"Girl trouble, Flash?"

"No."

"Then what?"

"I'm a little shy of drinking age."

"What's a little shy?" Mona wants to know.

"I'm about a year off. But they usually leave me alone when I go all cowboyed up." "You have another way?"

Someone lets the herd out to pasture and as Mona and Chad switch- back up a narrow path, Sparky sees their flashing colors through the cottonwoods. He tosses his head high and impossibly, tries to turn around. The creek is just below and Mona is not convinced the rabbit brush will do much to break their fall. Sparky's shoes clack on the loose rock and occasionally his knees buckle. Mona loses sight of Chad's flannel around the next turn. "You're dramatic, Sparky. Now quit," she says and yanks his head away from the ravine.

Chad kicks his horse up to the top of the bluff. "We're here." He is seated in his saddle the right way now, knees almost perfectly straight. The reins are slack in his hand and he guides his horse with a subtle shifting of his thighs. His horse steps delicately, tracing the two hundred year-old tee pee and fire rings just about invisible in the grass to someone level with the ground. Chad points his hat down left and then right over each shoulder, telling Mona the story of the lichen covered rocks as he's no doubt heard it told. Mona only hears some things. She is too busy feeling the dance that Sparky has decided to follow. "Makes sense," Chad says. "We're about five hundred feet above the valley. You can see the whole plain from up here. Young Crow on the look out for hostile New Yorkers."

Sparky cuts his circles tighter. Mona feels his increasing agitation, she's long resigned to the fact that he just doesn't like her. Chad stops his horse and looks at the sky. Sparky will not stand still, but there's a lot more room around her now, so Mona doesn't care. "What?" she asks, the tableau spinning.

"It's gonna "

"HAIL!" Mona's laughing. Sparky does not agree with the humor and suddenly Mona is horizontal. He comes down hard and she slides against the saddle horn. There's half a breath before he takes off, running like he means it with Montana on his mind. Mona smells leather and what is the straining engine of her determined horse. Ice hammers her in the head and stings were there's bare skin. Mona's hands are slick but when she checks, the reins are still there. She feels her hair, wet and heavy, slapping her in the back. Sparky is kicking up the earth, trying to run away from the weather. Stupid horse. Mona has no idea how far they've gone and what will happen when they run out of flat. Chad is nowhere. She's laughing hard and gulping cold air, which stabs her in the chest. "Hey," Mona shouts. "I don't even drive this fast!" She has no technique, but neither is she hanging off the saddle. She pulls on Sparky's reins but he doesn't seem to mind the poor aerodynamics of racing with his head in the air.

Chad comes up on her, riding with just his legs so that he can grab what he expects to be runaway reins. For a while the two animals are in perfect sync. At once Chad's horse breaks away and the wrangler has Sparky by the throat. Mona waits for Chad to tell her what to do. The dark of her horse's eyes have disappeared, but he slows enough that Chad's feet get hold of the dirt.

"Get down," he says with a seriousness that makes Mona hurry. "We're going to do this the cowboy way." Chad holds Sparky's bridle while the animal heaves between them. "Hold onto him while I go get mine."

Mona wonders what made Chad choose Sparky as her match.

The hail is evenly mixed with rain. Chad walks his horse around so that he and Mona can stand pressed between them to wait out the storm. Sparky is breathing hard but does not stomp around as much.

"You know, I've been thinking," Mona says. "I'm pretty sure I lost my virginity the year you were born."

Chad is perfectly still beside Mona. He says, "So did my mother." The rain mix continues. Mona ruminates. "Is there a difference between a cowboy in a straw hat and one in felt? What's the difference between short chaps and long; lace ups and Tony Lamas that don't fit; between a white shirt with creases and one without? What about a buckle from this years' rodeo, as opposed to last; Copenhagen or Skoal. It all comes down to those tight Wranglers after all." Mona is laughing.

"I think that hail hit you hard," Chad tells her. "Let's try to walk them down into the wash."

Mona steps carefully. Sometimes Sparky leans against her which is OK since he is warmer than she is. The narrow cut in the terrain blocks most of the wet wind and Chad figures Sparky is calm enough now to ride. Mona takes his word for it and pulls her water-logged self back into the saddle.

"Careful," Chad warns too late. "Them fancy tooled saddles collect lots of rain. I was thinking maybe I should put you on mine, but I can't figure who'd be quieter at this point. I don't understand it. I hadn't noticed any burrs in your butt."

"Oh, you're blaming that episode on me?" Mona asks.

"Never saw him act that way before. You know I usually put young girls on him. Hafta say, I'm surprised you never dropped your reins. It's usually the first thing that happens. But you cowboyed up pretty good."

Chad's radio crackles to life. "You all right out there?"

Chad examines Mona and answers, "Yup. A little wet. Havin' a good time, though."

"How far out are you?"

"Some."

"Come on back. Bee's got some whiskey warming."

Chad doesn't answer his boss. He looks at Mona. "Up to you."

"I'm all right. You're too young to drink anyway."

Chad lifts his radio again. "We got some more riding to go." There is silence on the other end. Then through some static comes, "Well, safety first."

Chad clips the radio back to his belt and points out the way.

"So who were you saving back there?" Mona asks.

"Well, it wouldn't be right coming back with just one of you." And then he adds, "It would take a mighty long time to pay the ranch back for a lame horse on six dollars an hour."

Mona smiles. "I hear in ranch country the men are valued most for their ability with horses. You telling me it's true?"

© RoseMarie London