Engelman felt guilty about having lost one of the spurs because he knew the spurs were a keepsake of the barber. The spurs held sentimental value, having been passed down through generations, and Engelman felt he had breached the trust placed in him by the barber when he lost one of them.
A Cowboy's Honor
Vince Engelman ambled into the barbershop in Beaver, Okla., for a haircut. The young man had always liked this place. Tonic clean, it rang with laughter-and the sharp cadence of snipping scissors.
Today Engelman would sit in the elevated chair and tell of his job
'working cattle at the T Bar T Ranch near Beaver. As he listened to Engelman's stories, the old barber thought about the spurs he'd once worn during his days working on a ranch. Antiques even then, they'd remained task worthy and proud with their steel shanks and silver inlays, hide-polished rowels and oiled leather straps.
The spurs were once owned by a civilian scout in the U.S. cavalry who was assigned to help patrol the lawless territory known as No Man's Land. In the early 1900s the scout retired and handed down his spurs to a grateful son who'd found work as a cowhand.
Years later, with his father's spurs still fixed to his heels, the young cowboy was thrown from a spooked horse and permanently injured his leg and hip. Penniless, with nowhere to turn, he had hobbled into town hoping to make his way as a barber.
He kept the spurs in his house behind the barbershop, and he'd take them out from time to time and hold them: tarnished reminders of a scout and cowboy a generation apart, their days riding across the same billowing ranges, their nights beneath the same broad and starry skies. For decades the spurs remained neglected, except for an occasional touch from the barber.
Now, with sentiments from the past swirling like dust on the dirt streets of Beaver, the barber offered the old spurs to the young cowboy. "I can't give you these, but I'll loan 'em to you," he said. "I'd be proud for you to put 'em back to good use."
Engelman felt honored by the old man's generosity. That spring day in 1950, he tried on the storied set of spurs. His hand-me-down boots looked even more scuffed next to the gleaming metal shanks, but his steps seemed smarter, more assertive.
A few months later, in light rain, Engelman herded steers into a corral nor far from the banks of the Beaver River. He happened to look down and noticed that one spur was gone.
Panicked, he scoured the corral, but the cattle had stomped the area into ankle-deep mud. He searched until dark. As steady as the rain dripping off his hat, his mind played and replayed the image of a young man shuffling across creaky barbershop floor planks, shoulders weighted with shame, to confess he had been unworthy of the old man's trust - for he had separated the matching set of heirloom spurs.
It was an image that became reality a few days later. Engelman returned the remaining spur along with an apology that would never seem adequate. Never enough to erase the guilt or fix the thoughts of a sun-tanned cavalry scout placing his silver spurs in the hands of his son, who, in turn, would one day place them in the hands of yet another young cowboy. In a time and place where a man's word was a covenant from his heart, there could have been no greater breach of contract. He vowed to find the missing spur, and his own sense of honor.
A week rolled past. Then a month. Winter came and went, and a busy summer seemed only a blur. Soon it was fall again. And still no spur.
Sometimes humiliation would send Engelman back to the corral. But he knew the chances for redemption grew more remote with each passing season, each gust of Panhandle wind.
In time, the old barber was laid in the ground, and the T Bar T was divided and sold. In 1986 some of the ranch was deeded to the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, and its name was changed to Beaver River Wildlife Management Area.
Engelman still clung to his longtime wish, still hoping. He had married, raised a family and moved to another state, but he came home to Beaver from time to time.
"Can I go search for that spur?" he'd as Wade Free, a land manager and wildlife biologist who was born ten years after the spur was lost. Free always enjoyed the old man's story, but shook his head at the odds Engelman faced, even with a metal detector. "It's like looking for a needle in a 17,000-acre haystack," he'd say.
In whimsical fashion, the undying winds sank some objects into the sandy oblivion which bringing others back to the surface. Only a mile from the old corral site, the ghostly footings of an entire 19th-century town - Rothwell, once known for its lavish hotel - had disappeared. And yet, also nearby, Free happened upon a 3000-year-old Indian artifact likely buried for centuries and suddenly exhumed by the random gusts. Still, the old spur seemed determined to elude Engelman forever.
The constant blow didn't stop work near Beaver River, however. One morning in February 1991, Free and an assistant, Danny Watson, were near the old corral site building a fence. Suddenly, Watson's posthole digger clanked against a solid object near 2.5 feet below the surface. "I hit a piece of metal," Watson said.
"We shouldn't be hitting anything hard in this sand," replied Free. All he could think of was that spur. Common sense told him it was hard to believe, but he ran to get a flashlight. Aiming the dim beam into the eight-inch-wide hole, he gasped at the sight: a rust-frozen rowel and steel shank protruding from the earth.
Free telephoned Engelman and left word that a spur had been found near the old corral. A few days later Free gingerly placed it in the old man's trembling, open palms.
The once-sharp points and edges were now rounded off with corrosion. The leather straps had long ago decayed, and most of the metal parts were discolored. But the mystery and the wait - and, most important, the yearning for atonement - were finally over.
Forty-one years later Engelman had the barber's spur. "He just stood there, staring at it, unable to find any words," said Free. "In his mind, I'm sure he went back to that old barbershop and returned what he'd borrowed a long time ago. I'll never forget it."
Nor will Engelman.
And somewhere in the shifting short-grass ocean of the Panhandle, where endless winds push sparse sand hills along the prairie landscape, an old cavalry scout and his cowboy son must be smiling too.
Why did Engelman feel so guilty about having lost one of the spurs?
Question 77 options:
Engelman knew the spurs were a keepsake of the barber
Engelman knew he would see the barber each time he got a haircut
Engelman knew he was careless in taking care of the barber's spurs
Engelman knew the spurs were essential to the barber's work
1 answer