BOOMTOWN BLUES.

The annual Rendezvous Rodeo, held over the second weekend in July, is the largest of the season in Sublette County, Wyoming. Behind the chutes, cowboys were preparing to ride, wrapping old injuries, taping newer ones, stretching their backs, arms, and legs. Redneck scents prevailed: weak beer, dust, manure, diesel, horse sweat, tobacco. The talk was pre-battle jittery and punctuated with barks of laughter. Older cowboys looked on, all of them crooked in the lower back, as if everything south of the rib cage had calcified. Cowgirls waited for the barrel-racing and roping, clutching babies or horses or both, and sporting tight jeans and wind-fire-and-flood-proof hair. A small girl in a cowboy hat galloped into the arena carrying a Stars and Stripes that was larger than the body of her pony. In a high, clear voice, she belted out the national anthem, and everyone who had a hat used it to cover his or her heart.

Then the real business of the rodeo began. I took a seat in the bleachers with the rest of the crowd, most of them family and friends of the participants. The first cowboy up was thrown down hard about three bucks into a very quick ride. Even from across the arena, you could hear the air leave his lungs, the insult of flesh connecting with the earth. The animal continued to buck, spitting sand up against the rails, until the strap around its belly was released by a pickup man, then it flattened its neck and spun around the arena a couple of times until it found the gate.

Since the unhorsed cowboy didn't look as though he'd be getting up anytime soon, the couple behind me began necking, and the commentator started up with a stash of "my wife" jokes. An ambulance edged between the rows of jeans and plaid shirts that lined the fence, but the commentator sent it back. "I don't think we need the meat wagon," he said. "He's still alive--I saw his toe twitch."

More of nothing happened. The sun was setting. A fire pumped smoke out of the Wind River Mountains, and a brownish bath-rim stain crossed the horizon, a result of natural-gas drilling activity on the high plains. "Look at that, folks," the commentator said, by way of diversion. "A real Wyoming sunset!" At last the cowboy stirred, sat up, was helped to his feet, and hobbled out, waving. A second later, the next chute opened, and a fresh horse broke into the arena, its body already arched in a mean cat jump.

By the time the team ropers were set to ride, midsummer night had descended and the arena was flooded with electric light. Roping is an exquisite art form, but the crowds had already trickled out, and the ropers performed for only a handful of die-hard spectators. Saul Bencomo was on the fourteenth team to ride. A steer bolted into the arena, and Bencomo and his horse spilled after it, his rope moving like a wave of silver water above his head. After twelve beats of the horse's hooves, the loop flowed around the steer's neck. With a quick flick, the loose end of the lariat was around the saddle horn, and Bencomo's horse sat on its haunches. The steer jerked up short, and the picture stalled in a cloud of dust. Next to me, Bencomo's wife, Holly Davis, smiled. "He got it," she said.

Davis is a third-generation cowgirl. Bencomo is a Mexican-Italian vaquero from California. The two work for local ranchers, "letting cows out in the spring, moving them all summer, digging them out of the willows in the fall, irrigating, cutting hay, vetting animals, fixing fences--working like a dog to stay one step ahead of the next surprise," as Davis puts it. In between ranch duties, she works as a brand inspector, Bencomo brings in a little prize money from the local rodeos, and both train horses.

"It's not glamorous," Davis told me. "It's a hard life. You've got to love it. If you don't, there's so much more opportunity in the oil patch or wherever else." (This part of Wyoming is experiencing a boom in natural-gas exploitation, but locals still refer to the various drilling fields, which spread across the country in patchwork style, as "the oil patch.") Davis is "one of the greatest cowgirls this county has ever produced," one resident told me. She is legendary in the area for her toughness; there's a photograph of her in the rest room of the museum in Big Piney ("Ice Box of the Nation," population 455). When she told me the story of how she ended up where she is (not far from her parents' ranch, where she still works), and of how, by contrast, most of the relatives and friends she had as a girl have all ended up where they are (out on the oil patch, out of state, or in Rawlins State Penitentiary), she did so almost in one matter-of-fact breath. In the end, the important difference between Holly and those who gave up ranching for town life or prison life is that most people lack the patience for her line of work. It takes a special passion for solitude and a special tolerance for slowness to survive here. "Two, three hours, you're going to move five miles," Davis said of a cattle drive. "You can't be out here for long if you don't know how to be still."