J.D.’s Columns

  Catching Dewie’s Mare        I was a tad grouchy that October morning, forty-some years ago, when my old stock truck rolled along the Snake River and onto the flatlands where Dewie and Carolyn lived in a barn above their fluctuating herd of horses. Dewie was a horse trader, Carolyn a horse tamer and carpenter. Dewie said he always had more horses than he could afford, and Carolyn claimed they had three doors in the barn house that went nowhere.      Dewie stood with a rope halter outside a pole corral with half a dozen horses all snuffy, tails in the air, stirring up dust. When he saw me, he turned and hooked a boot heel in the corral fence and stuck out a paw. We shook hands and he asked what I was doing.       I allowed that I was headed to find winter work in California, that I had quit my ranch job in the high country yesterday when I discovered all my missing work gloves under the seat of th...