EDITOR'S LETTER

AS SOON AS I SAW our cover photo, I knew what quote I wanted as a skyline — that's the text above the masthead. I couldn't remember the exact words, but I remembered the scene. Gus and Newt were on their horses, seeing Montana for the first time. It was one of so many memorable moments in Lonesome Dove. Although I've read the book eight or nine times, I wasn't thinking about page 744 when I saw the photo. I was picturing Robert Duvall, who played Augustus McCrae in the miniseries based on the book by Larry McMurtry.

I scribbled down a best guess for the quote, something we could use as dummy copy when designing the cover, and then I started watching the six-hour Western. Somebody had to do it. About four-and-a-half hours in, I got to the scene: Gus rides up to Newt. Newt says something about how far he can see. And Gus responds, "Ain't nuthin' better than ridin' a fine horse to a new country." Not many of us have ever had that experience, but Shoudi Mae Estes comes close.

Ms. Estes is the woman on our cover. A rancher. She was photographed with her horse, Cobalt, on the MLY Ranch near Greer. If you throw a dart at a map of Arizona, there's a good chance you'll hit a ranch somewhere. Ranching is a big part of our state's history, and it's a subject we've been covering for more than nine decades. Ross Santee, Jo Baeza, Joe Brown ... some of our most gifted writers wrote about cowboys and cattle and roundups. And there are some great photographs, too. A few years ago, we looked back at every image we've ever published — it's an archive of more than 10,000 photos — and selected the best. Of the top 100, seven were related to ranch life.

Two of them were made by Ray Manley. In one, a group of cowboys is standing around a campfire at Dave Ericsson's ranch near Wikieup. It's such a great shot. And so is J. Peter Mortimer's portrait from our November 1980 issue. He'd been working on a story about Nogales when he came upon a young man and an old cowboy, a gentleman who claimed to be more than 100 years old. "You really have to go below the surface and try to show some of the inner feelings," Pete says. Another classic is Ken Akers' photograph of a rodeo in Tucson, which was made in the days before autofocus. According to Jeff Kida, our photo editor, "Akers had a remarkable ability to manually focus his lens and stay with the action." It's an aptitude Bev Pettit can appreciate.

Like the late Ken Akers, Bev Pettit excels in the chaotic and sloppy realm of rodeo photography. And her favorite place to shoot is Williams. At a glance, the Arizona Cowpuncher's rodeo looks a lot like any other rodeo, but it's not. Instead of a choreographed interpretation of the Old West, with buckets of prize money, it's a competition based on the "working cowboy" rodeos that were popular in the 1920s. Rodeos where men, women and children competed in the real-life activities of a working ranch.

Therefore, there's no bull riding at the Williams rodeo. Also, competitors use their everyday stock saddles and ride their own horses. "It's meant to be a way for ranch families to get together outside the rigors of their daily life," Ms. Pettit explains. And rest assured, ranching is rigorous. Nothing like the 1940s, though.

"We trail-herd our critters forty miles to Alpine, because there ain't a semi-trailer cow truck made that kin get over the road that'll take 'em to the ranches right down on the Blue." That's an old quote from Herschel Downs, whose ranch was featured in our September 1951 issue. The story, which documented one of the last cattle drives in Arizona, was written by Nat McKelvey and pho-tographed by Roy Caples.

When I first read the piece, I was intrigued, because I didn't know a lot about the photographer. It's the kind of assignment that normally would have gone to Ray Manley. Yet, Roy Caples got the byline, and he's referenced several times in the story. "Bitter cold knifes over mountains and range. Caples, his hands stinging with cold and wet, can hardly trip the shutter on his cam-era. But now Alpine and the big pay-off are nearly in sight. The rigors of the drive are fast fading."

Nobody in the office knew anything about Mr. Caples, so I asked around and finally had the privilege of speaking with Nina Caples, the photographer's youngest daughter. "He came to Tucson with nothing but his car and a camera," she told me.

Later, at some point in the late 1940s, around the time he shot our story, he opened Caples Camera Co. at 2415 N. Campbell Avenue in Tucson. The lab specialized in converting old black and white photographs to oil paintings. It also sold the latest camera gear. So, when Roy Caples hit the cattle trail in 1949 with Herschel Downs, he was surely well equipped.

I asked Nina about the story, but she couldn't remember her father ever mentioning it. Nevertheless, the experience had an effect on him. About 25 years later, he bought a big ranch in Arkansas. Although it's a long way from the Sonoran Desert to the Ozark Mountains, you can understand his wanderlust. To quote a beloved cowboy poet: "Ain't nuthin' better than ridin' a fine horse to a new country."