CHAPTER 1

Lyle R. Lybbert ... Cowboy – Author

By Carl Lybbert

Lyle's brother, Carl, author of this article, writes: "In reading mybrothers articles in the Western Horsemen Magazine and the glowingreports submitted to the "Letters From Riders" section of themagazine, I thought your readers might be interested in learningsomething about the life of a Lyle Lybbert. I wrote for the CanadianCattlemen's magazine for three years prior to moving from Canada tothe Evergreen State in the U.S.A. Most of my work was on assignmentand biographical in nature. It suddenly occurred to me that of all thebiographies I had written, there are few more interesting than the lifeof my own brother. And if you don't think so after reading his story,then the fault will be mine."

Lyle Raymond Lybbert was born in the town of Raymond, Alberta,Canada, January II, 1918. When he was scarcely a long yearling, helost his father. When he was about eight, our family moved onto a ranch inMiddle Coulee, where my brother Mel was to earn the living for ourwidowed mother and her children. That same year, Mel decided thatLyle should be a cowboy with the rest of the outfit; so he traded for acouple of yearning colts that were to be Lyle's remuda. Lyle namedone of the colts Laddie and the other colt Two Step. He broke themto lead and ride all by himself. One day he had saddled Two Step tohelp Mel jingle the work horses. By now the gray colt was kid-gentle,and Lyle was resting his head on the colt's mane, waiting for Mel tocurry his horse. Both Lyle and Two-Step were half asleep as Mel wasconcluded his task of currying. With a sly grin Mel stuck the currycomb beneath two steps tail as he walked past, were upon the coltclamped down with his tail and Two-Step came unwound. This wasLyle's first exhibition as a bronc rider and he did it up brown.

The following year we lost our mother, but a gentle sister and anoble brother-in-law took Lyle into their home along with an olderbrother and a sister and raised them as her own. The Snow outfit wasmostly a horse ranch in those days and here Lyle learn how to handlehorses. Mel decided that Laddie and Two Step were putting on toomuch weight for riding horses so he traded for a little quitemare for Lyle to ride. The mare was a true albino, and her eyes werewhite "all over" as Lyle put it. He named her Alby. The sunlightseemed to hurt her eyes, and when Lyle turner her out in the littlepasture, where they kept the jingle ponies, she would often seek theshade of a large tree that grew in one corner of the field. She wasexceedingly hard to catch, and Lyle was hard put to catcher byhimself. One day he conceived of an idea; while Alby was dozing witheyes closed in the shade. Thus with all the stealth of the Comanche,Lyle climbed into the tree and jumped onto the mare's neck.Frightened nearly to death Alby bolted wildly, but my brother hungon for dear life. Finally Alby gave up and came to a standstill. Fromthen on this became a standard procedure until Alby decided she'drather brave the heat of the sun than the startling experience of beingjumped on from a tree.

In 1932 my younger brother signed on with the huge Knight andWeston ranching Co. Ltd. His first job was that of a mule skinner.Along with Inj Betts and Harold Lee, he drove a 12 head hitched ofhalf broke mules pulling a Rod Weeder. By mid-summer, however,Ray Knight had promoted all three boys to riding the range. At thattime the Knight and Weston outfit ran close to 1,000 horses – mostlydraft horses, but also a good number of light, well bred English Thoroughbreds.With close to 300 horses in the Remuda, Ray decided thatno one would be allowed to ride any one horse more often than oncea week, this was done in an effort to keep the whole remuda "rodedown."

Lyle claims he walked home more times than the most virtuousbell in Western Canada. By fall, he said he was getting used to comehome in camp on the same horse he went out on. Before the summerwas out, these three boys were even trying out horses for the ranch'sbucking string.

One day Knight and his foreman, Andy Newell, were watching asthe boys riding out bucking horse after bucking horse. "By gosh Andy",said Knight "we've got to think of another way to try out the buckinghorses – them boys are break in all my good bucking horses...