Where's the Silver Lining?

The making of a horse breaker

When Robert was thirteen-years old, a couple of brothers, Hark and Hoot Gibson, rented his father's wheat pasture for their cattle. When the Gibsons wanted to hire Robert to take care of the cattle, he agreed if they provided him with a horse.

The horse never had a name, but she was the ugliest animal God ever made. A wild filly brought north from the badlands of Mexico, she looked like a mangy, staving horse no matter how much she ate. What the Gibsons did not tell Robert was she had never had a bridle or saddle on in her life.

Only a bridle was provided when the wild filly was unloaded, no saddle. The thin, wiry Robert of those days had a stubborn streak that wouldn't quit (thankfully he still has it), so when the horse wouldn't "cooperate," she discovered that he wouldn't let her be uncooperative. No one could understand why she didn't fight him as she did others.

The filly could run, and would run, until she decided to stop. Herding cattle with a "no brakes" horse didn't work well, so Robert created a way to teach her to stop when he wanted her to do so. He ran a rope from the reins by the right side of her head back under the saddle horn so that it hung on the left side of the saddle. When she wouldn't stop, he leaped off, grabbed the rope, and yanked her head back against her right shoulder, throwing her to the ground. After a few such sudden stops, she learned what "whoa" meant, and a horse breaker was born.

Robert also started working for a rancher who lived south of his parents' farm, between Hooker and Hardesty, Oklahoma. He used the filly there, too. The only time she ever bucked him off, he had dismounted to open a gate and tried to remount. She went crazy everytime he raised his right leg over the saddle. He managed to hold on until the reins broke and he went flying. When he grabbed the side of the bridle and used that to pull himself back up, she never objected. Later a rattle snake skin was found, and he wonders if a snake spooked her. Whatever happened that time, she never bucked again when he rode her.

The filly-with-no-name saved Robert's life. As they herded some horses, Robert rode the horse at a dead run along the top of a ridge to get ahead of the bunch to keep them from taking off down a canyon. Suddenly, the filly came to a sliding stop, her tail dragging the ground as she nearly sat like the cutting horse she refused to be. Her front hooves lacked a foot going over the side, throwing both herself and Robert probably to their deaths.

Years later, a nineteen-year-old Robert was driving through the outskirts of small-town Hooker. A group of men were working in a pen inside a fenced pasture, and in the larger pasture was the uglist horse God ever made. Robert stopped his car, climbed over the fence, remove his belt as he walked toward the horse, softly talking to her. She twitched her ears and turned her head to watch him. He stroked her neck before fastening his belt around her neck and leaping on her back. As he rode her toward the pen, men started yelling and screaming.

"Get that kid off that killer!"

"Kid, get off that horse! She'll kill you! She's an outlaw!"

One man just laughed. Knowing the story of Robert and the filly, Jim told the others, "She won't hurt him. They belong together. They're both outlaws."

Yes, they both just needed to be loved and appreciated.