Happy Trails Gentlemen On Horseback Keep A 50-Year Tradition Alive
“Never print the facts, just print the legend.”
- Jimmy Stewart in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”
Pneumonia-inducing rain starts at midnight. By 6 a.m. even a few horses are shivering.
Yodels of “Why me, Lord?” occasionally echo from the collection of trailers, campers, tents and tarps. Wind and rainwater fold one of the more tenuous shelters.
Lesser men would head for cover. But these men - average age better than 65 - head for a day on horseback.
The rain pelts harder.
“It’s all right…I could do without it,” 77-year-old trail boss Al Mebius says. The lean, yellow-slickered man with long, white sideburns and burning blue eyes feels compelled to explain, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that “once you get on your horse, it’s not so bad.”
Mebius later admits that if he were at home, he wouldn’t ride 20 miles on a day like this. “Here, I’ve never given up,” he says.
Here is a boggy meadow east of Potlatch, Idaho, base camp for last week’s 50th anniversary ride of the Gentlemen on Horseback. The loosely organized Spokane group got its start in 1948 on a lark - a three-day, 150-mile ride from Spokane to Okanogan that nowadays would be classified as an “endurance ride.”
Considering five decades of rides have delivered everything from 6-foot snow drifts to 100-degree heat, this is hardly the worst weather the Gentlemen have endured. And the peer pressure is as intense as it is unspoken. No youthful rider - youthful being about age 50 in this group - is going to be shamed by 70- and 80-year-old riders who saddle up with indifference to the weather.
“My grandmother walked out here from Independence, Mo., behind a wagon when she was 9 years old,” notes Rolland Hawley, a 70-year-old third-generation Moscow farmer.”We think we have it tough riding in the rain?”
There’s many an Old West tie here. Phil Henderson, a Colfax implement dealer, was hooked when he heard his great-grandparents talk about their pioneer trek.
He is an avid Western movie buff, able to name not only the stars and their doubles, but the horses used and the horses’ doubles.
“If it’s not important, I can remember it,” Henderson jokes.
He laments the loss of the days when riding clubs, not golf courses, provided Sunday entertainment.
Several of the Gentlemen grew up on horseback and ride with the ease that others walk. Mebius was so young he doesn’t remember when he learned to handle a horse on the family’s South Dakota farm.
Mebius liked to drive a horse team better than the family’s 1928 Case tractor. Gentlemen on Horseback has allowed him to take that passion even further.
“You gain confidence when you realize you are going out to do something not everyone can do,” Mebius explains.
Dave Belyea and Larry Durheim preferred cowboying to their Spokane day jobs - to the point they regularly volunteered for arduous fall roundups on the Colville National Forest. They have retired to cattle of their own, but still have a need filled only here.
Beyond this Western lore and what ‘90s guys might call male bonding, men can stretch. They eat eggs, French toast, sausage and hash browns for breakfast because they need the fuel. They see the young black bear scooting across the trail, followed later by deer and moose.
These are not geezers on old gray mares, despite their ages. They ride everything, from mules to mares, Tennessee Walking Horses to run-of-the-mill grade horses. Most of their mounts are lively stepping and hot blooded, with names like Joker; most seemed to be nick-named “You Son-of-A…”
Such spirit is in keeping with the beginning of this expedition. Spokane livestock auctioneer Charles C. Glover was 55 when he initiated the first ride. He quit only when he died, in 1985, at age 92.
Glover figured the trip was a scenic way of getting to the 1948 Washington Cattlemen’s Convention in Okanogan. Forty-five men each paid $14 to participate.
At one point, the grade was so steep that riders had to dismount, grab their horses’ tails and be pulled over the top. Some jokester flew over during the lunch stop the last day and dropped a parachute bearing a bottle of liniment.
Despite the posterior-pounding, the event only grew in popularity. For the first 20 years, the ride always went to the Cattlemen’s Convention, and then it evolved to farther-flung points.
Over the decades, Gentlemen on Horseback have ridden more than 10,000 miles, covering trails to Canada, the Washington coast, and a 400-mile trek to the federal bison range north of Missoula.
Horses were changed at noon. Riders stayed in the saddle all day.
Glover, who got in shape by riding from his home in Veradale to work at the Old Union Stockyards, warned his gentlemen to train by “riding until their blisters turned into callouses.” Those who ignored his counsel spent evenings cooling blistered behinds in a stream.
There also are ready flasks of “snake-bite medicine” - Black Velvet, blackberry brandy and the like to ease the cold and soften the saddle.
After the second ride, two Spokane businessmen tried to persuade Glover to convert Gentlemen on Horseback into an exclusive fraternity. Glover refused, saying he knew it would “end up in a drinking club, the election of officers and haggling over ways and means,” according to his book, “History of the Gentlemen on Horseback.”
Miraculously, the group has managed to organize a ride every year without a president, board of directors or formal membership. The only exception is 1992, when their cook backed out at the last minute.
The only quasi-official person is the trail boss. Glover was the first to fill that role, followed by Ray Reich of Colfax and, since 1991, Mebius. Two men will replace Mebius next year - Glen Gower of Nine Mile Falls and Ed Brisboy of Sagle.
Glover easily is the most legendary trail boss, not only because he was the founder, but because of his deft touch with equines and humans. The son of a Methodist minister, he had every reason to disdain horses. At age 9, on his first ride he clipped a barn door with his head and was knocked unconscious.
Glover moved to Spokane from the East Coast in 1918. He sold livestock for people from across the Inland Northwest and eventually anchored radio and television shows. That gave the Gentlemen on Horseback an open right of way across many ranches. People instantly recognized his name, his reputation for being extraordinarily fair in the sale ring, and responded with like kindness.
“He had two rules,” Mebius remembers. “Respect the property you are using. Don’t get out of hand.”
Glover didn’t rule out good-natured chicanery, as much a draw as the challenge of the rides.
In the days when a motorcade hauled spare horses and grub from camp to camp, one of the drivers found a saloon. He returned to camp late, lit and raising a ruckus. Moments after the intoxicated driver went to bed, he was heaved into a nearby lake, sleeping bag and all.
Riders who snored too much took a similar dunking.
One man ended up with a piece of inner tube, instead of lunch meat, on his sandwich. He made the discovery with his mouth, much to the delight of his fellow riders.
The men who share this ride also are legendary. One is known for the fact that he has been married so many times that his ex-wives hold reunions.
Another’s reputation is marked by stories about how he was the last rider to sneak a woman into camp. When she was discovered, the perpetrator’s backside was bared and painted with an indelible, aromatic horse disinfectant known as “Blue Vitriol.”
He bristles as his fellow horsemen greet him by singing out “Oh, Blue…” every time they spot him.
There were the men who fashioned a pair of long underwear into a fishing net and caught enough in Omak Lake to feed the gang. There were the nights so cold that the cook’s false teeth froze solid in a glass of water. And a cook so greasy that “you had to have spike boots to stand up in the cook shack,” one yarn spinner recalls.
The bragging runs far beyond fish stories or tales of who had the fastest horse. Mack McLean won a place in the Gentlemen’s hall of fame by betting he could shoe all four feet of a mule in less than 10 minutes.
The hat was passed, bets were laid. Moments later McLean appeared with the mule wearing four tennis shoes.
It’s gentlemen only, a reflection of the era when it started. Fondness for staying as true as possible to Glover’s tradition keeps it that way.
There have been complaints, but most are handled with the response that there’s also a women’s-only ride.
The “no women” rule has been relaxed in recent years to allow one female in camp but not on the trails. It’s a concession to their cook.
Dan Kennedy of Rathdrum, Idaho, likes to bring his wife, Linda, to the outings. Memories of the culinary discomforts created by some of the earlier chefs, and the fact that these riders don’t like to cook for themselves, persuaded the Gentlemen to give up this bit of their male-only tradition.
The men come for a variety of reasons, from soulful good fun to the camaraderie born of shared saddle sores and marathon rides.
“At this age, you feel like you have accomplished something,” Mebius says.
The pull is so strong that “men cry when they can’t go anymore,” Glen Gower adds.
In the early days, most of the participants were ranchers or had some other direct connection to the livestock business. That soon changed to include anyone who likes to ride.
Mebius was a mail carrier for 34 years, so intoxicated by the ride that he one year appealed to the Spokane postmaster for deliverance when it didn’t appear the vacation schedule would allow him to go.
He has missed only one ride in 42 years.
“I was so nervous and upset that my wife doesn’t want me not to go,” Mebius says.
Gordon Zimmerman learned about the ride because he delivered milk to Glover. He’s gone since 1962 because, as Glover put it, “the best thing for the inside of a man is the outside of a horse,” Zimmerman says.
Dusty farmer Oscar Broeckel, now 75, has missed only three of the 50 rides and has the best store of campfire tales about past rides. His son, Brian, has been joining him off and on since he was 12.
Coeur d’Alene furniture-store owner Jack Iverson got started thanks to the late leatherworker Red Hutchings. Hutchings brought his son, Don, who has been missing since he was captured by Kashmir rebels on a trekking expedition three years ago.
Some, like Mebius, ride regularly. Others, like James Hurd of Seaside, Ore., break in their behind only once a year.
“I ride four days no problem, get sore on the fifth and go home,” Hurd explains.
Beyond blisters, Gentlemen on Horseback have had few serious mishaps. There is a rattlesnake bite on the history books that the rider survived. There’s Monty Hughes’ unfortunate collision with a gate during an impromptu race.
Last year marked the first fatality.
Delbert Marr was thrown while riding bareback to water his horse. His compadres had him airlifted to a hospital, where he died two weeks later, Mebius says.
There is a haunting twist. Marr’s father, Gomer, was thrown from a horse in the 1970s while preparing for a Gentlemen on Horseback expedition. The elder Marr died a few days later.
Both men are remembered reverently. As is Frank Newman.
Newman had a heart attack on one of the Montana rides, Jack Price recalls.
The Gentlemen scrambled, getting him to a hospital in time to save his life.
“We walked in and he cussed us,” Price says. “He said, ‘Now you guys are going to make me die the hard way. I wanted to die having fun with my friends.”’
When this group started, horse trailers were rare, and the men who rode didn’t bother with tents. Now even portable toilets dot the camp.
Beginning last year, Gentlemen on Horseback started picking a base camp and selecting a particular nearby trail for each day’s ride. Instead of riding 50 or 60 miles a day, riders log about 25.
Despite their snap, there is little question that age threatens to erase the tradition of Gentlemen on Horseback.
Mebius sadly shakes his head at the thought.
“You might be out here and it’s raining, you bend down to take another bite and the water runs off into your plate,” he says.
“If you were working for somebody under those conditions, you wouldn’t like it. Here you think you are having a good time.”
“You hope it will go on. But every year we lose somebody or they can’t ride anymore,” Mebius acknowledges.
Henderson, the 50-year-old Colfax implement dealer, believes his generation will increasing saddle up, not only for the stress-relieving change of pace but for the callouses that say they own a piece of the cowboy myth.
“Everybody,” he remarks with a wide grin, “wants to be John Wayne.”