One of my favorite riding companions was Doyle Williams, a sandy-haired cowboy who owned the Skyline Ranch on Baseline Road in Phoenix, AZ.
Doyle ran a weekly school for bull riders at the ranch. Each Saturday morning a group of aspiring bull riders -- we referred to them as whacko cases -- would gather at the ranch to wait their turn to mount a Brahma Bull and try to ride it.
Sometimes they succeeded, sometimes they didn't, but it was always fun and the excitement never ended!
Williams also owned a riding stable at the foot of South Mountain. There he rented horses by the hour. It was located next to a cowboy bar called the Last Chance Saloon where some of us would gather in a back room on a weekly basis and play poker.
Doyle loved to play poker and so did his older brother, Red. A cute waitress named Dixie would serve us beer and tequila. When we would tip her, she would smile, place a shapely leg on a chair, and slide the tip into a black garter.
I made a habit of driving to the Skyline at least once a week and taking a ride with Doyle and his son, Eddie, into South Mountain.
Williams would saddle one of his horses for me and we would spend an hour or two roaming the cacti-studded hills. He would take me to a secluded spring where we could drink cool running water or to the site of an old gold mine.
Doyle said the mine still had gold and I unsuccessfully tried to talk him into exploring the mine with me. He promised we would do it, but we never got down to setting a date.
One day he called me at the Phoenix Gazette where I was working as a reporter and said he had a new horse for me to ride.
"She's a cute little mustang and she's fast," said Doyle. "She's so fast if you ain't careful, she'll run right from under you." We made plans to meet at his riding stable the following saturday at 10 a.m.
The horse's name was Diablo, which means Devil in Spanish. She was a brown little thing with a white chest and a white forehead that looked like a star. When I pulled up to the railing around the corral, Diablo was pawing the ground impatiently.
After a beer in the Last Chance Saloon, Doyle and I headed for the corral. Our horses were saddled and we mounted. I touched my boots to her sides and Diablo took off like a rocket. I almost lost my seat!
Williams grinned. "I warned you," he said.
As we rode up the trail into the mountains, Doyle told me the horse had been trained as a cutting horse and worked on a ranch for years before the owner sold her.
"I have her here on consignment," he said.
"The owner has her for sale for $600. I thought you'd enjoy a ride on her before I got rid of her. She's not afraid of anything. Point her at that mountain and she's likely to go over it like a space ship."
He whipped his buckskin across the neck with the reins and his horse broke into a gallop. Diablo laid her ears back and surged into a furious gallop that passed Doyle like he was standing still.
We spent the morning riding up to the spring, watering our horses, and then headed back to the stable.
As we dismounted from the horses, Williams said, "What do you think of her?"
"She's definitely worth $600," I said. "She gives a great ride."
A couple of weeks later I wrote an article about a rodeo in Wickenburg, nicknamed the 'Dude Ranch Capital of the World.' Besides the rodeo...
...the Chamber of Commerce was featuring something called a Cowboy Race. Anyone with a horse could enter the competition and first prize was a silver and turquoise belt buckle.
I called Doyle, told him about the race, and asked if I could borrow Diablo to enter it.
"Sorry, Son," he said. "I'd love to lend her to you but somebody bought her last week. However, I have another horse you can borrow. She's not quite as fast as Diablo, but she'll give you some excitement."
The other horse was a red roan. We broke seventh in a 10-horse race and finished sixth. Damn!
I'm STILL convinced Diablo would have won it.
