In my upstairs office above our riding arena, on a wooden coat rack carved to depict a rider leading pack horses, next to a pair of hobbles purchased for me by a friend (they're too pretty to use) hangs a very special bit.
By "special" I don't mean "rare." Thousands of United States Cavalry bits were made and used. The brass U.S. medallion identifies this particular bit as an officer's model; enlisted versions were the same shape but everything, including the medallion, was black iron.
I once used this bit regularly, but because of wear from a century's worth of chewing by spirited horses, I retired it to a place on my wall where it can remind me of a horseman named Magnus, my wife's grandfather. A Danish immigrant who hit our shores in the mid 1880s, Magnus traveled to Montana, bought a saddle that we still own, opened a small dairy to supply milk to miners, and broke horses through the winter.
Magnus' trips to the Crow Reservation to buy horses, training one in a couple of days, then herding the rest back to central Montana riding the still-wild recruit, imply a level of horsemanship few of us will ever attain.
I often wonder just what stories this bit could tell: wide open prairies before fences, fords over flooding rivers, tenuous dealings with Plains tribes only a decade after the Custer battle.
I cringe when I see an old saddle nailed to a gate post there to deteriorate with the weather. Old tack has stories to tell, stories of the day when all good horses in the West were trail horses, built to cover miles. It's better to keep such treasures, use them if their condition allows, and research out their histories as best we can.
Dan Aadland raises mountain-bred Tennessee Walking Horses on his ranch in Montana. His most recent books include Sketches from the Ranch, The Complete Trail Horse, 101 Trail Riding Tips, and The Best of All Seasons. For information on his horses, clinics, and books, visit http://my.montana.net/draa.
(For Dan Aadland's feature article on his favorite things, pick up the July/August '09 issue of The Trail Rider.)
