Entertainment

07:52 AM CDT on Monday, May 1, 2006

By ROY HAMRIC / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

ALPINE, Texas – The cowboy looked over at a group of city people he'd just put through a two-week "cowboy boot camp" for Texas Ranch House, the new PBS experiential-history series.

"When rumors started about this series, some local people said, 'Somebody is going to die,' " said Craig Carter of Marathon.

On some days, the tenderfoot cowboys did 30 miles on horseback. "Not a whole lot of people go that distance nowadays," Mr. Carter said.

Cowboys who observed the making of the series on the O2 Ranch in the Big Bend say the series, debuting tonight on KERA-TV (Channel 13), will leave other reality series in the dust.

Shot south of Alpine on the third largest ranch in the state, the 15-person cast experienced authentic 18th-century cowboy life, right down to the bunkhouse, the food, the rattlesnakes and the starry nights.

That was exactly what Jared Ficklin of Austin wanted. A descendant of Benjamin Ficklin, one of the founders of the Pony Express in 1860, Mr. Ficklin wanted to test his true grit. An accomplished guitar player who plays punk rock in Austin with his twin brother, Mr. Ficklin had already completed four songs about ranch life.

"As cowboys, we all get along real well, but the farther I get away from the ranch house the better I feel," he said in true cowboy fashion. "I think I could have made it back in the Old West."

The eight-part series follows the pattern set by PBS' Frontier House and Colonial House. The cast includes a California family, students, computer programmers, a hospital administrator and an elementary school teacher.

The family and the cowboys have three months to survive and manage the ranch in blazing 110-degree desert heat before completing a 35-mile trail drive in the unmarked desert, a stone's throw north of the Rio Grande where everything sticks, stings or bites and is seldom seen by human eyes.

As the series unfolded, tensions and dramas similar to those experienced in settling the West resurfaced, pitting the owner and his family against the cowboys, historically an independent and unruly lot.

Cowboys Rob Wright, 22, of Arvada, Colo., and Anders Heintz, 25, of Bolivar, Mo., were cleaning the skin of a four-foot rattler outside the bunkhouse the day we toured the set. The snake was part of a recent bunkhouse meal.

"It tasted kinda like chicken with a fish texture," Mr. Wright said. "Not bad."

Meanwhile, back at the ranch house, Maura Finkelstein, 25, of Washington, D.C., a highly educated, well-traveled graduate student at Stanford University, pondered her role, which began as a housekeeper and switched to cowgirl. She worried about how she would ride and rope on the upcoming 35-mile trail drive through the stark desert country.

She was determined to show her grit. "There's a job to be done, and I had a chance to do it."

Roy Hamric is a freelance writer and former editor of an Alpine weekly newspaper.

E-mail hamric@airmail.net

Texas Ranch House

7 tonight through Thursday, PBS (Channel 13). 8 hrs. (2 episodes per night)