The Herd Tee

South of the Crazies

Livingston sits in the crook of the Yellowstone, and if you look north from town you see the Crazy Mountains — an island range that rises straight out of the grass with nothing gradual about it. The country underneath them has been horse country for as long as anyone has been keeping track. It is big, open, hard-wintered ground, and the outfits that run it have always measured a season by how many head came through it.

That’s the herd this one is named for. Three horses at a dead run under the state’s name, printed on a garment-dyed khaki. It’s the view out the truck window on the way north out of town — horses strung out across a hayfield with a range behind them that never looks the same two days running. Built plain, worn in fast, made for the kind of day that starts before the coffee does.