Ernest Joseph "Ern" Pedler was a writer whose work was based on his experiences as a distance-riding horseman and wild horse-chasing cowboy. He published one book, The Big Lonely Horse, and two serialized novellas, Trail to Freedom and Dust of the Home Corral. His many short stories and articles are listed below.
Biography
Ern Pedler was born on May 31, 1914, in Prospect, South Australia. The following year his parents emigrated with their children to the American state of Utah. There, he grew up in the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon. A neighbor who was a hard riding "mountain man" taught him horsemanship and mountain riding on mustangs. When Pedler was sixteen years old, he quit school and spent the winter alone in the mountains. By the time he was in his mid-thirties, he had established a reputation on the trail and as a fearless mustanger. George B. Russell’s classic Hoofprints in Time, includes a lengthy segment about Pedler and his Morgan stallion Flying Jubilee. In 1951, Amos Mosher described some of Pedler's exploits to magazine editor Sumner Kean who then asked Pedler to send descriptions of what he was doing. For many years thereafter, the magazine published Pedler’s articles and short stories. Despite his lack of extensive formal education, he was a literate and engaging writer. Like the work of Will James and Ben K. Green, his stories read as if they were written from the saddle. They exude gritty authenticity and good humor. The plots tend to focus on long rides, mustanging, and cattle work in the vast expanses of the Mountain West. His writing is not as well known as that of James and Green because almost all of his stories and articles were published in a national magazine with a readership of only a few thousand, The Morgan Horse,. Through his personal example and his writing, Pedler influenced others. Because of him, some people chose Morgan horses, became trail riders, or attempted to write. Pedler died on November 17, 1989. His obituary’s only words regarding what he did in life are: “He was a horseman, and he rode good horses.”
Quotations
“He could find his way over a knoll pocked with badger holes and scarcely miss a stride, and he could jump a double wash on a run, lighting on the fin between like a cat on a fence.” “Nothing takes the eagerness out of a mustanging horse like a few hard runs without a catch.” “The buckskin stayed behind those ponies all the way, forcing their lead, outguessing them, and outrunning them in their own land.” “I wonder how people jammed into the big cities find any real happiness or solitude where they can’t see a mountain, or hear a clear stream, or feel the comfort of a good saddle, and I suppose they think people like me are a little cracked.” “Flying Jubilee is dead, and some of me went with him.”
