The Last Of A Dying Breed? Montana Cowboy Thinks So

SNOWLINE, Mont. - High on a windswept ridge, far above the valley floor, Fred Stewart gently pulls on his horse's reins and settles deep into his well-worn saddle.

His arms rest on a scarred saddle horn as he leans forward into an ever-present breeze. His peppered gray shoulder-length hair falls from a dusty black cowboy hat. With a gentle smile that's almost lost in a full beard, Stewart takes in the view.

From here, he can see nearly every corner of this Southwestern Montana range that he's been entrusted to oversee. Over the past five years, Stewart has learned every nook and cranny. He knows where the cattle will go when a storm sweeps through. Or where they'll be when the days turn cold as winter approaches.

He's the last of a disappearing breed - a man who knows the hardships of a life lived on the back of the horse. In a part of the state where snow storms can surprise the unwary in July, Stewart rides herd on cattle that spend their summers snacking on sweet mountain grass.

This cowboy wouldn't have it any other way.

"It's what I chose to do some 30 years ago," Stewart says. "It's really the only reality I know."

"You know, I ain't never seen a rich cowboy," Stewart observed, his arms crossed against his chest as he takes one last look at the aspen turning bright gold against the Lima Peaks.

"But there's got to be something more to all of this than money. Half of this job is a peace of mind."

With that, he gives the reins an almost imperceptible tug, and his horse wheels around to begin the journey back down the hill. Stewart leans back to compensate for the steepness of the grade, and says to no one in particular, "Who in the world wants to be rich anyway?"

To spend a day with Stewart, 49, is to take a step back into time.

In earlier days - not really that long ago - men and women tested their cowboy skills daily on the Montana ranches, many of which depend on federal land for their summer range.

In Beaverhead County, where cattle still far outnumber people, the cowboy way is slow to disappear.

And at Snowline - where the nearest town of Monida boasts a handful of residents and no stores - the men who ride the range depend on skills that take a lifetime to hone.

Stewart works with three others to care for about 4,500 cow-calf pairs that belong to 23 ranchers with places in either Beaverhead or Madison counties. Each cowboy can go for days without seeing the other.

The Snowline Grazing Association was created after small ranchers pooled their resources to purchase deeded land southeast of Lima. They obtained grazing rights to federal lands that border the property and began to ship cattle there each spring.

Art Robinson, the manager of the property, said the idea was to secure grazing for family-sized operations in Beaverhead and Madison counties.

Around the first of June, the ranchers truck the cattle to this high mountain valley. Sometime around early November, usually long after the first snow has dusted the ground, they arrive to take their cattle home.

Through long summer evenings and into the brisk days of fall, Stewart and the other range riders doctor calves, fix fence, shoe horses, move cattle from one pasture to the next, shoot coyotes and distribute salt. Along the way, they get kicked, stepped on, bucked off, and occasionally tromped by angry mother cows.

About once a week, Stewart's wife makes the 70-mile trip from Dillon to the old homestead that becomes his home. Often, he has some kind of new bruise to show off. Just a few weeks ago, he painfully recalls working on a calf when its mother decided she'd had enough of the cowboy.

Blowing snot, the cow charged. She knocked him to the ground and before his dogs intervened, the nearly 800-pound beast stepped square on his back. Stewart said it created an impressive bruise.

"My body usually hurts from here down," Stewart says, with his hand just under his chin. "After a while you get used to it. You just don't think about it much."

It may be the pain that goes with the job. Or the long hours. Or the loneliness. Or a lack of know-how. But whatever the reason, the true working cowboy is slowly becoming a thing of the past.

"I think we're becoming an endangered species," says Stewart. "This is the kind of job that you just can't explain to someone. You have to live it to really understand what's expected of you."

Being able to spot a calf that's sick. Knowing when you need to doctor a heifer or whether you best hurry to the phone to call a vet. Or just being ready for the unexpected - the rodeos, the crashes, the wipeouts.

"It's really something that you have to grow up with . . . and there ain't many left who are growing up with it anymore," he says.

Stewart says there's probably good reason people shy away from this job. There's little money in it. And plenty of frustration.

"Sometimes I think we're here with our wagons circled," he says pointing to a bolt on the top of his kitchen table. "And everyone else is riding around and around, picking us off one by one."

Some city folks don't understand what it takes to raise a cow, or cattle ranching in general, he says.

"If you're sitting in New York and you're reading a newspaper that says ranchers are raping the West, well then, that's what you believe," Stewart says. "They've forgotten where their food comes from. They think it grows in Safeway.

"We're just harvesting grass - a renewable resource," Stewart says. "People can't eat it. Cattle and elk do. It's our job to make sure there's grass here for the next year and the next. If it isn't, then we're out of a job.

"If we ruin the country, we're just cutting our own throat," he says. "This isn't like the stock market for us. We can't get into it and then get the hell out. We're in this for life."