It's 4:30 a.m., and a wet, sleety snow falls through the frigid darkness. It's been coming down for the last few hours, so the three young men saddling up their horses, soon to head out and gather the rest of the saddle horse herd, are wading in ankle-deep mud holes filled with water. They move in and out of the tack room, obscuring with each pass the warm light that glows out the door and casts glimmers on the sodden earth.

They don't say much-a polite "g'morning" to a writer who is there to observe them. But their movements create a medley of sounds-the squeak of leather, the duet of spurs clanging and boot heels striking the pine floor, the tap of sleet against dusters, the sucking of the mud as a hoof lifts. They mount up and disappear into the darkness.

Still asleep, perhaps dreaming of the day to come, are the men and women who have come to participate in one of the largest horse drives that takes place in the country each year. They've come from as far away as Florida, Texas, and Canada for close to a week of living the life of a cowboy. Some will beat the six-o'clock breakfast time and have their horse saddled, grained, and ready to go before sitting down to eat. Others will gratefully watch one of the young hands tack their horse up and, if necessary, ride it out for a bit to take out the buck.

Eventually there are about 30 riders standing around in the cold, waiting for direction. Some unspoken form of communication begins to operate; those who know the language move with purpose toward one of the several trailers that stand ready to haul the horses to the site of the gather. Those of us who don't-we who would be cowboys-wait for a clear directive as to where we're to go. Mill, mill, shuffle, and then all at once the horses are stepping onto the trailers, everyone's making sure they have a place in one of the pickups, the doors slam, and we're off.

Moses Sidhu adjusts a cinch before bucking out a fresh horse.

Today we'll chase horses. Today we'll live our dream. Today we will be cowboys. A peek behind the curtain "It's what Sombrero does," says Kevin Smith, manager of the Brown's Park Ranch. "It's in the business of making people's cowboy fantasies come true." The company does it on a varying scale, from the Great American Horse Drive each spring to its many riding stables where a person can rent a horse for an hour, a day, or the entire summer. It's a market that seems to know no limit, even as the lifestyle the clientele revere has all but disappeared.

We're sitting at the kitchen table in the house Smith shares with his wife, Mary, and their 3-year-old daughter Kallie Rae. I'm doing my best to get him to talk of his life here, year in year out, when the paying clients who participate in the drive have all gone home.

On the wall across the room hangs a map of the ranch-54,000 acres of it, including some Bureau of Land Management lease land, all situated in the northwest corner of Colorado. I've put it to him that I think he's a cowboy- that I'm trying to get a picture of what "real" cowboy life is like in this day and age, and he laughs.

"I'm no cowboy." His eyes twinkle. "Hell, there's no possible way anyone can be anymore." It seems that since he has electricity and indoor plumbing, can go to the store to get groceries and such, he has no right to consider himself a cowboy. The men back-in-the-day, when there were no fences, when you could take your herd from here to there with no interference, when you didn't "pamper yourself"-those men were cowboys. They only really existed for about 20 years in the late 1800s, he says. Still, I tell him, he's about the best I can do so would he kindly tell me what it's like living in the middle of nowhere, what he does every day, why he chose such a life?

"Cowboying... it's not horses anymore. It's fixing fence and feeding hay," he says. "People romanticize terribly. I got to tell you, once a lot of them get out here and face it in reality they don't want to be cowboys. They want to go back to town and get a job and dress up like cowboys on the weekends."

With an hour's work already under his belt, Josh Tyan sits mounted and ready to go before sunrise.

To live in the remoteness, the openness of the land, amid a peace and quiet doing often thankless work-it requires a certain type of rare personality. In Mary, Smith found a kindred spirit. Neither has much esteem for town living or feels the need for society. "People who live like we do have to be pretty comfortable with themselves," Mary explains. "You spend a lot of time with yourself and if you don't like what you see, you're not going to make it out here."

As they describe the cowboy way of life it becomes clear that it has more to do with a strong work ethic and a sense of independence than with whether or not you're handy with a horse. That strength of character is what Smith is on the lookout for when he oversees the young people who come to work at the ranch. "They send some out here in the spring," he says. "The boys who work hard, I try to get them horseback. The ones that avoid everything and don't do a job with a sincere interest in getting it done proper, then I don't care if they ever get horseback."

Same job, different worries

Brown's Park is where the Sombrero horses spend their winters, and it's Kevin Smith's job to see them through. Last winter there were just he, Mary, and one hand-and the snow was such that they had to feed every day for 10 weeks. "The last time we did that was the winter of '92-'93," Smith says. "Some years I feed for two or three weeks and the country takes care of the rest. Some winters I don't feed any-when the country's wide open and they can get all they need. At the same time if there's not enough snow-if it snows so little that they can get their own feed-then generally there's a water problem. I'd rather feed than haul water, but you do what you got to."

Regardless of the type of year, each spring the herd needs to be gathered and driven from Brown's Park to the ranch near Craig, where they're vaccinated, shod, and sorted to be sent off for the season. It's real work that's been going on for over 40 years, and the herd passing through the tiny town of Maybell, Colo., has become a rite of spring. And yet it's changed.

"Years ago nobody from the east slope, no guests, no one could come here because this week was the week everybody worked for," Smith says. "That's what you made the fence for, that's what you fed the hay for, that's what you wallered around in the snow for, because this week was the week you actually got to do it-to cowboy." Around six years ago Sombrero began taking on paying guests and it's proved to be extremely popular. At the 2007 drive, as the 370 head of horses made their way through open range, there were more than 50 people riding herd. Only a few were ranch hands and experienced neighbors and friends.

While some of the herd takes the opportunity to eat during a rest break, these two engage in a bit of horse play.

"It's changed things," Smith says. "The job used to be the horses. Now my job is to see that you all feel useful and stay safe."

For folks who would rather eat dirt than make small talk, the arrival of the guests means taking on a role that is contrary to their natures. They do it amazingly well and with a graciousness that has the guests returning year after year. "When the guests are trying really hard to be helpful, I try really hard to be friendly," Smith says. "At the same time, they can make our work a lot tougher. Without knowing the country they can only be so useful and sometimes they just make problems."

Some have been back often enough that they do know the land and are becoming decent hands. But the work they do is the fun stuff-the riding- not the fencing and feeding and clearing roads of deep snow. Their place on the drive, like my own, is earned with a check, not a year's worth of hard work. Not real cowboying.

An ironic truth

As much as Smith and the other cowboys look longingly back at the days of the drive before it became public, they recognize that the work Sombrero does-fulfilling cowboy fantasies-is what makes their way of life possible in the 21st century. The same enterprise that undermines the authenticity of the ranch's work is the very thing that makes the work possible and even necessary. "It's the only way to get this lifestyle," says Smith. "We can't afford to buy a 3- million-dollar ranch. Where are the cowboys, you wanted to know? They're out working for outfits like Sombrero."

From the young hands who aspire to earn the name "cowboy" and who hope to find themselves managers of ranches someday to the less committed, like myself, who want only to glimpse the life and come close to living it for a short while-outfits such as Sombrero keep it alive and there to be experienced. I'm grateful they're around. I'm glad cowboys such as Smith (and despite what he says, he is a cowboy) have a means to keep that Western icon alive and walking in the flesh.