VALE – A low rumble fills the back pens of Vale’s Shamrock Arena.
The deep rhythmic tone slows and Brian Bain’s voice cuts through the air.
“Bronc,” he shouts.
The rumble quickens again, and he presses his body against a rusty green gate. Dust fills the air as a bucking horse thunders past him and into the pen with the others. Then, the gate clanks, the horses settle and silence follows.
This happens over and over again, most of the time in smooth fashion.
Sometimes, the horse gets stubborn and decides it wants to go backwards or into a different pen. That’s when the sound of Bain’s stern orders and the quick flapping of his flag stick encouraging the horse forward are heard.
Bain is a stock contractor from Powell Butte, operating in a family partnership as B Bar D. He supplies the horses to the Vale 4th of July Rodeo.
Each day before the competitors, fans and vendors show up, Bain, his crew and his animals are the only ones on the rodeo grounds.
When the horses are sorted and sweat begins to blotch his tee shirts, his hat finally comes off and he settles into the shade. It’s a rare moment of rest in what Bain describes as a rush and rest kind of job.
But, as the parking lot fills, Bain stands in the tack room doorway of his horse trailer getting ready for the event. He grabs his cowboy hat and slowly pulls his Western-style button shirt over his shoulders, covering the tattoo on his right bicep — a backwards “R,” “B,” for his great grandfather Ronald Bain — his family’s brand.
It was his family that got him into stock contracting, not by encouragement but by circumstance. The brand on Bain’s left arm is the same symbol that his great-grandfather put on his horses. His grandfather and father branded their horses with the Bain brand when they became stock contractors too.
“This is what the Bain family does,” he said.
It was his grandfather and father who taught him how to raise bucking horses on the family ranch and treat them as athletes. He learned how to understand their characteristics and behaviors. He learned how to tell if his broncs were healthy to buck.
He learned the logistics of moving the animals through pens and the art of tightening the flank strap just enough to not hurt but induce it to buck well.
He learned young, running his first rodeo without his dad’s help at just 16.
He also learned the rodeo lifestyle. “As soon as I was old enough to be put in a car seat I was on the road,” said Bain.
As a kid, he traveled the West with his family, taking stock to rodeo after rodeo. Through his teens and 20s he paused contracting when he began to compete professionally, placing 14th in the world standings in 2012 in bareback riding.
Now, 40, Bain is back on the road back as a stock contractor but also a mentor. His nephew, 17-year-old Parker Buchanan travels with him. And like Bain, Buchanan too grew up around rodeo.
In Vale, the sun begins to set as the two work in synchronicity hanging flank straps — the booming voice of the rodeo announcer filling the thick, hot air. Bain walks over periodically to check on his protégé, giving him advice.
The two break out in laughter toward the beginning of the evening but fall quiet as the sun dips under the horizon. Buchanan admires the family legacy and wants to continue it himself one day.
The Vale 4th of July Rodeo is one of 17 rodeos that Bain will service this season.
“I take a pillow and a blanket everywhere. Then you always have a little piece of home with you,” said Bain.
The exhaustion of constant travel and busy schedule are worth it to him. He says he does it because he loves it. Plus, rodeo is what is familiar to him.
“I wouldn’t know how to do anything different,” said Bain.
After four days in Vale, Bain leaves the way he came — a billowing cloud of dust erupting from behind his horse trailer in Shamrock Arena’s nearly empty parking lot, another rodeo behind him.
News tip? Contact reporter Isaac Wasserman at [email protected].
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