In the stout outdoor pens of the Latigo Trails Equestrian Center east of Colorado Springs, nearly 120 Texas longhorn cattle stand in stately calm, one or two or three to a pen, awaiting the start of the Rocky Mountain Select Sale auction. The heat of an August mid-day bakes their loamy scent into a sweet-earth aroma as dozens of longhorn breeders and their families stroll the aisles surrounding the pens, eyeing the cows. Like devotees of fantasy football, they’re mulling their dream picks for their home herds.
There’s something about these animals that makes the heart beat faster. A herd of Angus is just a bunch of squatty black cows, identical as Harleys lined up in front of a bar. But Texas longhorns—high of haunch, long-legged, uniquely colored, with horns like ceremonial sabers and a regal air --- they seem fully aware of their pedigree as the alpha survivors of 500 years in the Texas wasteland. In their every sinew they carry the ghost memory of the glory days when they rumbled across the vast prairie in a living floodwater.
