The Territorial

I worked with a guy at the KR, a good hand named Blake. Like me, he’d been in the Marines before he traded boots for boots, combat ones for the kind with spurs. You could tell from the way he moved, steady, patient, scanning the horizon for something the rest of us hadn’t seen yet.

Things didn’t rattle Blake much. Fences down, cattle out, water pump busted, it didn’t matter.

He’d nod once, squint at the problem as it had personally inconvenienced him, and then go about fixing it. No hurry, no panic, just quiet motion and a faint grin that made you wonder if he knew something the rest of us didn’t.

One afternoon, we were running a small herd down from the north pasture when the gate chain snapped. The younger steer, spooked by the noise, bolted toward the creek, and the rest followed like they’d been planning an escape for weeks.

Everyone was shouting, “Get the gate!” “Turn ‘em!” “Watch the ditch!” while Blake just sat there on his horse, reins loose, watching the dust settle.

Someone rode up beside him, mad as a hornet.

“You ain’t worried about this?” they barked.

He turned his head slowly, and he asked, “Why would it help?”

That stopped the guy cold. It wouldn’t fix the gate, bring the cattle back, or keep the boss from cussing us to high heaven.

Worrying only causes the heart to race and increases blood pressure. Blake didn’t say anything else, and instead nudged his horse forward and started rounding them up, one calm move at a time.

By the time the sun dropped low, we had them all penned again. The boss showed up ready to explode, but cooled off fast when he saw everything handled.

He walked away mumbling something about “good Marines,” and that was the end of it.

Later that night, Blake and I sat by the bunkhouse, watching the stars come out over the cottonwoods. I told him I liked that line, “Would it help?”

He chuckled and said he’d picked it up in the Corps. He didn’t remember who said it first, only that it stuck.

“We’d be knee-deep in mud or under fire, someone’d start to panic, and the sergeant would ask that. Would it help? Kinda puts things in perspective.”

I’ve thought about that ever since. Life keeps throwing gates that won’t hold, horses that spook, and people who make things worse than they need to be.

But when it starts to pile up, and I feel that old anxiety creeping in, I hear Blake’s voice again. “Why would it help?”

No, it wouldn’t. So take a breath, steady yourself, and get to work.