I’d never been on a cattle drive, so when I was invited to move 300 head of cattle from central Nevada to the mountains in May, I needed to outfit myself with the proper attire.

My trip began with at stop at a Reno Western-wear store. At the shop, a white-haired codger peered through his spectacles.

“How can I help you, ma’am?”

“I’ve been invited to go on a cattle drive,” I said.

The codger burst out laughing. So did another man standing behind a rack of cowboy boots.

“That’s no invitation, missy, that’s a job,” the codger said.

“I need a hat,” I continued.

“Oh, a cowgirl, huh?” he replied, thumbs hooked in his suspenders.

“No, I need it for the sun, and I want it to stay on my head.”

He laughed again.

“Then you need a stampede string.”

Stampede?

If you’re wondering what a stampede string is, as I certainly was, it’s the slider cord attached to the hat that snugs up under the chin. The codger led me to the cheapest hats in the shop, no doubt convinced that my first cattle drive would be my last. He threw one on my head.

“There, how’s that feel?”

He demonstrated how the brim could be shaped for any look. I left the shop armed with my new hat and the assurance that now I was well-equipped to drive cattle, flaps up or flaps down.

Ranch life

Jim and Karen Stahl have a ranch in the Big Smoky Valley, a sparsely-settled expanse of sagebrush in central Nevada that runs 140 miles northeast to southwest. On either side of the valley rise steep mountains riddled with deep canyons and ravines, the Toiyabe range to the west and the Toquima Mountains to the east. Getting to the Big Smoky Valley is a two-pack-of-chewin’-gum drive, 200 miles east of Reno along U.S. 50, America’s Loneliest Highway. That’s where the chewing gum comes in.

Jim, a transplant from the Great Lakes region and retired from Round Mountain Gold Mine, runs Mustang Outfitters, a guiding business. Last fall, I experienced Jim’s luxurious camp of walled, carpeted tents — some with wood-burning stoves — set high in the Arc Dome Wilderness of the Toiyabe range. A few days later, Jim led the way through a snowstorm to the top of Mount Jefferson (11,949 feet) in Nevada to watch the annual mating ritual of desert bighorn sheep. Rams butting their heads sounded like rifle fire even from a distance. Jim is a master guide for pack and hunting trips, photo safaris, mustang viewing and Toiyabe Crest trail rides. He’s also a gourmet campfire cook.

His wife, Karen, still works at Round Mountain Gold Mine, where she drives a 290-ton haul truck.

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“Someday the mine will close,” Karen said. “Round Mountain Gold employs nearly 650 people in this valley. Most of us want to stay here on our ranches, so we’re looking to the future. Next year, we plan to open the cattle drive to the public.”

For more than 100 years, Smoky Valley residents, like many rural Nevadans, have endured ups and downs in the mining industry. Increasingly, they have found it difficult to hang on to their way of life.

I’m assigned a horse

“We’ll spend the next three days pushin’ 300 head of cattle up to their summer pasture in the mountains,” said Karen. “Danny (Berg) is the cattle boss, they’re his cows, so he’ll be in charge. Be sure to ask Danny about the one-horned steer that gored him in the leg.”

If that wasn’t enough to worry about, there was the worrisome history of the horse I would ride, the ominously named Showdown.

Once a wild horse, Showdown had been caught in northwestern Nevada, on the Black Rock Desert, near the tiny town of Gerlach. He’d been held at the Bureau of Land Management Wild Horse and Donkey Facility in the Palomino Valley, from which Jim adopts mustangs.

“Horses that have grown up in rocky, mountainous terrain are the most sure-footed and dependable out here,” he said.

Showdown, the first and wildest mustang he ever adopted, was a light sorrel stallion that stood more than 15 hands high, large for a mustang.

“I named him Showdown because I figured that’s what breakin’ him would be.”

When the handler at the Wild Horse Facility haltered Showdown to load him into Jim’s trailer, Jim said, “How’d you do that?”

The handler slipped the halter from Showdown’s head.

“Just like that,” he said, and walked off.

“ ‘Great,’ I thought,” Jim said. “They git ’em into the trailer, then leave you to figure out how to git ’em out.”

Showdown was so wild that Jim’s friends asked if he was taking out life insurance before breaking the mustang. Never having broken a horse, Jim first decided to attend a seminar, “Breaking Wild Mustangs,” at the Wild Horse Facility.

One seminar wasn’t enough. He took another.

Jim described the big day: “I hooked Showdown to a hitchin’ post to throw a saddle on him, and all my friends showed up to watch me get killed.”

“You’ll be riding Showdown during the cattle drive, Ruth Anne,” Karen said. “Showdown has mellowed. He’s now one of our steadiest mounts.”

I’d soon see. I kept it to myself that I hadn’t been on a horse in 15 years.

Moving cattle

The next morning, our group of seven was up before sunrise, loading mustangs into a trailer to haul them to Blue Springs, our starting point. As the sun broke over the Toquima Mountains, we mounted up and rode through fields of wild irises and mustard by morning light, a “purdy spot,” according to cattle boss Berg, who relaxed in his saddle, elbow propped on horn and chin in hand. A playful smile flashed from beneath the shadow of his black hat and beard.

Berg brought a few friends to help. He issued quick directions, and with five cow dogs on his tail, took off to round up the herd. We scattered to search out reluctant cows and calves in the brush.

“Be sure to keep away from bogs and hazards, like downed barbed wire, that could trip up the horses,” Karen warned.

As the only “civilian” along, I’m the test case for opening up next year’s cattle drive to clients. Now that’s what I call pressure.

From the road, this valley floor may look to some like an arid wasteland of stark, relentless sun. Getting out onto it, the place comes to life. Hidden water sources feed carpets of grassland, wildflowers and stands of sage taller than I am on Showdown. Jackrabbits freeze and lizards scatter for cover as bellowing bulls, lowing cows and bleating calves thunder past, trailing long clouds of dust across the landscape. When sage gives way to sun-baked alkali flats, the herd strings out in a line that extends to the horizon. Alkali crust crumbles under Showdown’s even gait. It’s one thing to see central Nevada by car, quite another to experience it on horseback as one might have a century ago.

On the drive are Berg’s friends, Chance Kretschmer and his grandfather, Ray. Chance, a handsome 21-year-old who looks chiseled from solid rock, is the star football running back from the University of Nevada, Reno, who led the nation in rushing in 2001, his freshman year.

With huge thunderheads looming on the horizon, we bed down the herd at a neighbor’s ranch. After 10 hours in the saddle, surprisingly, I’m not sore. Showdown and I are bonding.

At daybreak the next morning, we’re already driving the cattle up the Toquima Mountains, where compression has forced rock into striated layers: auburn, yellow and blood-red. Over time, the Great Basin has seen periods of enormous pressure caused by shifting continental plates. Looking back at the valley from our mountainside perspective, the few ranches appear as mere outposts lost in vastness.

As we move the herd along, Karen occasionally spots a calf that is too tired to make it. She drops a well-placed rope loop over the animal and gently tugs it back to the truck that follows. Even with this system of looking out for the young and the weak, not all the calves are up to the trip; two die that day.

“If they can’t survive the drive, they won’t survive the summer on open range,” Berg said. “It’s sad, but true.”

That night, another calf is born.

Early the next morning, we’re up and pushing the herd across the pass into Monitor Valley. Jim rode Convict, a mustang he adopted from the BLM wild horse holding facility in Susanville, Calif. Karen’s trying to break in a colt that’s acting spooky. By now, Showdown and I are one. For another day, we chase calves, cows and bulls up and down embankments, across side hills of loose gravel and through dry creek beds that come to life only on wet years. We search out strays from under sage and along hidden streams in side canyons lined with aspen, juniper and pinion pine. From the pass, the view of snow-covered Mount Jefferson reminds me of the Tetons in Wyoming, without the crowds.

By mid-afternoon, we reach the herd’s summer grazing pasture, an alpine meadow fed by springs and mountain snow pack. Sitting tight on our mounts, we hold the herd in place until calves and mothers find each other, including our 12-hour-old, born on the drive. I’ll be back with Showdown next year to check on that calf. In the meantime, my stampede string holds my hat securely to the wall.