THE LUCKY SPURS

My Grandmother Sorrells was born Maude Jane Bergier on the Salmon River in Idaho. She came to Arizona on a wagon in 1896 when she was 10. She made the last half of the trip in great pain after a wagon wheel rolled over her arm and broke it. She raised her little brothers, Bob and Pete Bergier, after her parents, sisters and youngest brother went on to California and left her in charge of their homestead at La Noria, on the Mexican border. She married Bert Sorrells when she was 15, and they had three sons and two daughters. To her great sorrow, she outlived her husband, one daughter and all three of her sons. She died in 1972. I had been ranching in Sonora, Mexico, for 15 years when Granny Sorrells died. She left her belongings and small, well-kept house in Nogales to me. Her memorabilia was a treasure that I shared with my cousins and my mother. I saved only her cedar chest for myself, the one treasure that I had coveted, but had never been allowed to touch.

In that chest I found Native American beaded buckskin moccasins and gauntlets that had been made especially for her by someone who lived and traded on the Salmon River. They still smelled smoky. I also found a complete set of Blue Willow china and, deep in a corner, I found a tiny, tarnished cowbell that Granny had worn for every meeting she attended of the Arizona Cowbelles since its founding in the early 1940s.

In the very bottom of the chest, I found a pair of Chihuahuahuan spurs that rang like silver bells when I picked them up. They looked handmade, and I couldn't find a trademark on them. I thought they might have been made by my uncle Buster Sorrells, a fourthgeneration Arizona rancher who was as good with fire, bellows, anvil and iron as he was at herding cattle, training horses, running wild and serenading his friends with mariachi music.

I took the spurs down to my ranch at Chihuahuita, Sonora, to use and to enjoy the music they made. I particularly liked their weight and balance, and their humane effect on horses and mules. I kept them in my pickup. It wasn't easy to walk anywhere with them on, because they dragged the ground and made too much noise. When I didn't want them to drag, I pulled them around so that they rode on my instep. Their six-spoke rowels were more than an inch long, a quarter-inch wide and so blunt they could never hurt a horse. To start an animal, all I had to do was touch the side of a rowel against his side, or rattle it, to make it ring.

A few years later, I came out of Mexico with steers for export at Nogales. After we shipped the cattle to filaree pasture at Gila Bend, my partner, the late Del Brooks, and I went to our favorite watering hole at the Montezuma Hotel. The lounge was dark, but a corner booth was full of old-timers I soon recognized. One was Paul Summers, my father. The others were Dink Parker, Joe Kane and Lonnie Hunt-his lifelong friends. I was overcome with a feeling of good fortune - I had not seen my flesh-and-blood father since the fall of 1952, before I joined the Marine Corps. Rancher Joe Kane was my godfather. I had seen rancher Dink Parker from time to time on my visits to Nogales, because he always watered at the Montezuma when he was in town. Dink wanted little to do with me, because I had allowed my stepfather, Vivian Brown, to adopt me and change my last name to Brown when I was 9 years old.

Del Brooks and I threw right in with them, in spite of Dink's icy looks. Lonnie Hunt and I had been friends a long time. We'd sat in the Montezuma and shared stories about Paul and my Sorrells uncles every time I was in Nogales. All four of those old-timers loved my people.That day, Paul, my father, told stories about the Rock Corral Ranch that he and my mother had owned during the Depression. That reminded me of those relic spurs in my pickup. I brought them in and laid them with all their musical accompaniment and great weight on the center of our table. Dink and Joe twirled their rowels and hefted them. Lonnie picked them up, laid them down, and smiled.

Paul had only glanced at them once since I laid them on the table, but I could see by the look in his eye that he recognized them and probably knew more about them than I did.

"They don't match," he said.

I had never noticed any real differences between them.

Paul picked up the spurs and turned their silver adornments toward me. "See, they're different. I know these spurs. They're mine."

"How don't they match?" I asked. "They look the same to me." He showed me that each spur was adorned with two silver bars, but the bars on one were thinner than the bars on the other.

"I lost track of them when your mother and I separated," he said. "I asked her for them once, but she said she didn't know anything about them. That surprised me, because they have a history that she knew as well as I did.

"Your mother and I had only been married a year and she was carrying you. We bought the Rock Corral with her inheritance from Bert Sorrells, but, as luck would have it, we didn't have to buy one single cow to stock it with. We stocked it with wild cattle that I caught in the Tumacacori Mountains on our west side.

"I liked to ride up high and drive downhill to my traps on the flats," Paul continued. "I had pretty much cleaned the country of young bulls, cows and calves, but a whole lot of old ladinos and maverick bulls still ran up there. The ladinos were big steers that had gone wild after they'd been branded and cut. They were wise to the ways of mankind, plenty bronco and plenty fat."

"I had seen a big steer near the top of the mountain several times. He was branded with your grandfather's 7X, so he had to be at least 12 years old. He was tall as a saddle horse, looked like he weighed about 1,500 pounds, and could run like a deer. Every time I saw him, he had the advantage on me and was able to get away over to the other side of the Tumacacoris.

"One day I made it up to the spine of the mountains about the middle of the afternoon," he said. "I surprised the big steer and started him down.

"He was too smart to try to outrun me, and I was too smart to let him lead me down into a canyon or a draw, then rim out on me. We played around awhile, until I caught a lucky break and he tried to rim out when I had the advantage. His climb to a ridge where he could get away was steeper than mine, and I beat him to the top, roped him and tied him to a tree."

"I didn't want to try to lead him down to headquarters as late as it was and as big as he was, so I tied him so the base of his horns would get sore overnight and I could lead him down the next day.

"I still had enough time to get home before full dark, but as I turned my horse off the mountain, I saw that I'd lost a spur.

"I was awful high on these spurs," Paul admitted. "I didn't even really mind dragging them across the corral, or across a porch, or patio, because when they were in the stirrup, no other spurs could match them for balance, music and gentleness to a horse. A horse soon learned to start when the music started in one or both of my spurs.

"I didn't intend to go home without that spur," Paul recalled. "I backtracked all the way to the place I first sighted the steer and then tracked back to the steer again, but didn't find it.

"By then it was too dark to make it down the trail to home. I didn't want to spend the night beside the darned old ladino, so me and my horse felt our way down the other side of the mountain to the camp of that man who now sits on the other side of this table grinning at me - Lonnie Hunt.

"I hollered hello when I rode into his yard, and it was so dark I couldn't find the ground when I stepped off my horse. Lonnie came out and helped me unsaddle and put my horse away. I cussed and complained about losing that spur every step I took as we walked up to his camp in the dark.

"I kept it up while he made me supper. I knew I was being a big crybaby, but I just couldn't stand the loss of that spur, nor could I stop yow-yowing about it.

"Lonnie didn't say a word through the whole harangue. Finally, I shut up, came up for air and said, 'What can a man do with just one spur?' "Lonnie got up from the table, walked over to his locker box, took out a spur, and dropped it in my lap.

"'There, now you have two," he said matter-of-factly.

"That's the right spur of this pair you're looking at," Paul said. "Way out where the sun had set between me and Lonnie and town, I found a darned near perfect mate for my spur the night after the same day I lost it out on the trail. That kind of good fortune wouldn't happen again in a million years."

What are the odds that I would have those spurs in my truck when I encountered the only two men in the world who knew their history, at a place that I visited just every six months from 400 miles away? Paul had not been to Nogales for 20 years, and would never visit there again. What are the odds that I would find those spurs in the bottom of my grandmother's cedar chest and bring them back to the light of day?

I didn't think to ask Paul and Lonnie to give me the name of the maker. We broke up late that night and went our separate ways, so I lost that chance to learn the origin of the spurs from them.

I didn't think to ask Paul and Lonnie to give me the name of the maker. We broke up late that night and went our separate ways, so I lost that chance to learn the origin of the spurs from them. Then, one day, a woman who was a complete "dude," who didn't know a stirrup from an elevator, but did know how to identify Western artifacts, showed me the trademark on my spurs. Faintly stamped beside the button of each spur was: "K. B. & P."

She told me that those letters meant Kelly Brothers and Partners. I won't venture to say it's true, or what the value of my spurs might be to a collector. I do know that the spurs are a lot older than I am, and that I know their value to me. I got them from my pioneer grandmother and a pair of lucky cowboys who would never have lived as long as they did if they had not been lucky. I'm at least that lucky, and that kind of luck can't be sold. As for me, I'm 80 now, and feeling very fortunate myself. And I still can't get over the music my spurs make on both sides of a horse.

I didn't want to try to lead him down to headquarters as late as it was and as big as he was, so I tied him so the base of his horns would get sore overnight and I could lead him down the next day.