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Outside Magazine, August 2004
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El Último Vaquero Habla Español (The Last Cowboy Speaks Spanish)

By Nick Reding


THE LAST TIME I TALKED with René was on the telephone in May. He was in the process of divorcing Kellye, he said, and was mulling his options: Once the divorce was finalized, in July, he figured he would probably return to Patagonia and start tending the cattle his father had bought for him. I asked about Nicanor.

"Run off," said René. I could almost see him smiling into the receiver.

"Where did he go?"

"Who knows?" René said. "It's a big country."

The moment was a strange echo of the last time I'd seen both men together, back in 2002. I'd gone with René and Kellye to visit Nicanor, who was still camped in the alfalfa field with Gabriel. It was the first time in more than a year that René and Nicanor had seen each other, and they stood outside the carrocampo in the sun and talked, slipping quickly back into the amalgamated slang they had developed in Skeleton Creek. Kellye, who speaks no Spanish, kept putting her hand in René's back pocket and, at the same time, leaning away from him. Next to her, René looked small as he told Nicanor in Spanish how deeply unhappy he was.

"Then what's next, cuñado?" asked Nicanor.

"There's a cheap room for rent in Shoshone, pequeño," said René. Shoshone is a quiet town of a couple thousand people, 20 miles north of Gooding.

"If you're going to run," said Nicanor, his gold tooth catching the sun as he grinned, "then you'd better go farther than that."
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