Faraway Horses by Buck Brannaman, William Reynolds Page A

was living in an apartment on Grand Street in Bozeman, and I was going to take her out for a bite to eat. When I pulled up, I saw Jeff’s pickup parked in front. I didn’t even bother getting out and going to the door. I just drove away.
    When I stayed away for a little while, Adrian finally phoned me to ask why she hadn’t heard from me. I told her about seeing Jeff’s truck, but she didn’t really apologize. She liked both of us and felt kind of torn. She didn’t want to hurt either one of us, which sounded like a pretty weak excuse to me.
    An old friend told me once, “Any woman who allows two men to fight over her is playing both ends against the middle, and she isn’t any good for either of them.” He was right, but Jeff and I were like a couple of young bulls. When we found out we were rivals for the same woman, it was a hell of a wreck and it destroyed our friendship for a while. In the end, it would be the thing that strengthened it.
    If the same kind of thing happened again, I’d walk away as fast as I possibly could. But at the time, I hung in there, and I guess I won the contest because Adrian broke up with Jeff and continued to date me. Jeff and I went from being best friends to being enemies.
    I moved away from Spanish Creek and leased another indoor arena across the valley. I also rented a small apartment in Belgrade, just outside Bozeman, near the new arena. The place was a glorified bunkhouse, with a hot plate, a bed, and a bathroom that I built. Pretty modest digs, you’d have to say.
    Still, Adrian moved in with me. She didn’t want her parents to know we were living together, so she kept her own apartment where she kept a few clothes. She was always worried about what her parents would think, which in some ways was certainly understandable. But as our relationship developed, I saw she wasn’t just close to her parents, she was totally manipulated and dominated by them.
    Although Adrian and I talked about marriage, she kept putting off our engagement. Normally it’s men who do that sort of thing, but not in this case. It hurt, because I really loved her and wanted to be married to her.
    One day I was riding colts when Preacher Dave Edwards came by. Preacher Dave had started a little Baptist church in Bozeman that catered to the cowboy crowd, and Adrian and I had become friends with him. He told me he needed to talk to Adrian and me about our living together. He said that because he loved us both, he thought we ought to think about going ahead and getting married because living together wasn’t right. He knew we weren’t raised that way.
    Preacher Dave must have been right because after he put us on the spot, Adrian and I started talking about marriage. Over the next few days, we talked about it a little bit more.Adrian said she didn’t want to have a regular wedding; she didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. My guess was that she was afraid her folks would be angry and wouldn’t come. She didn’t even want Preacher Dave to marry us; instead, she suggested a justice of the peace.
    I was very disappointed. I wanted our wedding to be a big deal. I was so proud of her, I wanted all my friends to come and share my happiness. On the other hand, if we were going to get married, it only would happen her way.
    We took out a marriage license, and one morning we decided we’d drive over to Broadwater County near where her parents lived and get married by the local justice of the peace.
    Adrian called her parents and said, “We’re going to do it, and we’d like you to be there.” Although the justice of the peace was just a fifteen-minute drive away, they refused to come. That really upset Adrian. We drove into town, and she cried all the way. I told her, “Adrian, if you don’t want to do this, let’s just stop and forget it. I’ll turn the truck around, and we won’t.”
    She shook her head. “No, go ahead. We need to do this. Keep driving.”
    God knows why I didn’t turn around,