A Matter Of Honor [Reader Post]

In this life we are often given the opportunity to make choices with honor or to compromise ourselves, our families, and our country with a choice that is dishonorable. Being a tax cheat like Tim Geitner is a choice that brings dishonor to your life, to your name, and to your family. Of course being saved by the dubious personage of Barack Obama and proclaimed as the only man capable of salvaging the economy and that America should overlook his past criminal transgressions is a big help in avoiding prison. This is a man who has lost his honor or who has no honor.

Al Gore standing in front of America and the world while lying about global warming and pontificating with sanctimonious piety on insignificance of leaked emails that utterly destroy any validity connected with the so-called science of global warming, while he stands to make hundreds of millions if the Hoax is allowed to continue is an example of a man without honor.

But this article is about a man whom no one remembers, who made a small gesture of honor that has never been mentioned until now. Some of you readers who were with us in the first half of November may remember the colorful character Barb Wire Johnny.

He had an embarrassing moment in front of me and a couple of paying hunters that I wrote about to illustrate what happens when we let fear and our imaginations get out of control.

Johnny was my friend, oh sure, he was an alcoholic and his hygiene wasn’t up to standards, he couldn’t read or write; but he had a magic with horses that has made everyone else, I’ve met, seem lacking in comparison. Horses and dogs loved him and yet he made no visible effort to win their affection. People always point out the fact that horses and dogs like me and I always follow-up with the remark, “Yes, I am lucky horses, dogs, and children like me,” to end the discussion. But as sure as I am typing these words, animals loved Johnny, they only like me.

Over the years, I helped Johnny with horses’ hooves and their teeth and various other wounds and health problems. If they needed shoes I nailed some on and Johnny was very appreciative, for I was the only one he ever shared his mystical world with. You see Johnny believed in getting into a horse’s mind and heart to capture the essence of the horse and then to dominate it with sheer presence.

Does it sound impossible? I spent forty years using his system, built a fortune and lost it twice and I still use it many times a week and have been accused of using drugs and witchcraft on the horses. But there have been many an unbeliever, who has been brutalizing a horse and has ridden by me long enough, for a split second or more, for me to capture that horse’s mind and visualizing him sticking his toes in the dirt, ducking his head, and sucking backwards at thirty miles an hour, leaving the rider on their face in the dirt. That is the power of Johnny’s lessons.

I was a regular visitor to Johnny’s cabin, I brought in hunters, horses to be trained, supplies, and whiskey. Whiskey and “High” venison were Johnny’s only vices, other wise he was happy to live out his life out in the mountains where he was born, as a matter of fact, Johnny had never been over a hundred miles from the cabin he was born in, and he usually went once a year to the Fort St John Rodeo, he was one of the few people to still ride to the rodeo. At one time he was quite a bronc rider, but he would never follow the circuit, he didn’t want to go over a hundred miles away from home and as he said “What good is fame and fortune if you have to leave home?” Many’s the night I spent in a lonely motel room or a deserted air port when Johnny’s words would come back to haunt me.

The last time I rode into Johnny’s yard, I was perplexed. He wasn’t home, but there were six horses in the meadow. He only owned six horses at the time and Johnny was so bowlegged from spending his life on a horse, it was difficult for him to walk very far. His cabin was cold and the wood stove had not had a fire for at least 24 hours. Things were looking grim.

Johnny was over 60 and not likely to stay out on the trail. There had been a light dusting of snow, so the sign or tracks in the snow were in excellent shape for tracking. There was a fresh trail leading down one of Johnny’s trap line trails. I caught one of his horses, in case Johnny was injured down the trail.

The trap line went for five or ten miles and all of a sudden the horses became scared and were balking at continuing down the trail. These were not animals that acted afraid over nothing, I tied them to trees and carried my rifle to see what the problem was up ahead.

About seventy yards up the trail, a group of ravens were picking at a deer hide and carcass that had been left about ten foot up in the air by a cougar. There was another small group of ravens up ahead and my heart sunk.

The story unfolded like reading a book, Johnny and his saddle horse rode up the trail and surprised the big cat. The cat probably screamed or stood up causing Johnny’s horse to bolt away from the cat.

Horses have a natural fear of mountain lions, especially when they are in trees. They seem to often kill horses by waiting for them to walk down a trail and jumping on them from above. All horses have a fear of the animals that can kill them for food, these are the Timber Wolf, the Grizzly, and the Mountain Lion or Cougar; but I think the mountain lion commands the most fear from horses.

The horse bolted and on the second stride, about the time you would hope to regain control, the horse brushed a tree and broke Johnny’s leg above the knee. There was a sickening spray of blood across the snow to the right of the horse, the fracture must have been a compound fracture. It was not hard to imagine the break, Johnny was tiny, he had never made it over a hundred pounds. He fought through the pain in a desperate battle to regain control of his horse. The horse spinning and wanting to run off in stark terror. Johnny got him under control about a hundred yards away. He slid off in what must have been unspeakable pain. He sat down and rested against a tree while holding his horse and tried unsuccessfully to stop the bleeding. Finally, upon realizing it was the end of the trail, he cut through the cinch and slipped the bridle off the horse’s head; thus the horse was given his freedom rather than having the reins wrapped around a dead man’s hand and starving to death or dieing from saddle sores because of a saddle that was left on its back. The horse was given the gift of life and that was a noble gesture. Because on the off chance that someone were to see the horse, they would come to investigate and perhaps be able to save Johnny’s life.

Once the cold had become unendurable, Johnny fired the little 30-30 he carried, one more time through his own heart and it was over.

It was impossible to carry Johnny back on the pack horse in the position he had died in and now was frozen in, so I built a large fire on each side of Johnny and boiled some coffee. It took hours, but eventually Johnny was thawed enough to drape him over the pack horse and lace him well enough to make it back to his cabin. On the trip back, I considered my options. If I took him to town, he would be laid out in the morgue and be put to rest in a pauper’s grave in the city graveyard.

I decided against that course of action, I would bury him on a nice Southern exposed hill side on the North Bank of the Peace River. He’d have the sun to warm him through eternity and he would be where he spent his whole life and not in town with a bunch of people he didn’t know and who looked down upon him.

It took all day to dig a grave deep enough that the animals would leave it alone. I wrapped Johnny in a blanket and put his rifle, his knife, some cooking gear, with matches and the bottle of whiskey I’d brought with me. You see Johnny was mostly native or perhaps Metis, many like him aren’t real sure of their heritage, he knew about G-d through his mother who was a devout woman who, I am sure fretted over Johnny’s immortal soul most of her life.

I said a fairly good prayer over Johnny and asked G-d to overlook the fact that he had ended his own life, for he had been in unimaginable pain and suffering from the cold. I told G-d that his weakness for whiskey was partially due to his heritage and that he was the warmest kindest human being I knew and to please have mercy on his immortal soul. I also told G-d that what I was doing was illegal, but I was burying Johnny the way he would have wanted and that should not be taken into consideration.

I took his horses home with me, I’m sure that Johnny would have wanted it that was also.

Now almost fifty years later, I think about the dignity that Johnny displayed while he was facing death and I look upon the petty and pathetic lives of Al Gore, Timothy Geitner, and Barack Obama. I think of how they can’t admit the truth and must carry on a lie while compromising the economic survival of this country for wealth and control. I realize Barb Wire Johnny had more class and honor in his little finger than those three could muster all together.

If the RCMP wants to prosecute for burying Johnny illegally and they feel they found enough evidence in the two hours they spent investigating his disappearance, I will quote George Bush, “Bring it on.”