By Nick Pernokas 

Lessons come in all shapes and sizes. Some of us remember when they came from places other than YouTube. Sometimes, they were wrapped in stories that we could pass on to keep the knowledge going. A case in point is a young boy looking for something to do in rainy weather; weather too wet to ride his dad’s colts. His dad sends him to Fort Worth, to check out the saddle shops and do something productive. 

The kid strikes out in the stockyards. Everybody knows his dad. Nobody has time for a kid underfoot. Someone sends him up North Main towards Saginaw to pester Price McLauchlin. Probably thought they’d never see him again. The kid’s dad has a Price saddle, so he knows that they’re good saddles. 

Price, being the nice guy he was, gives the kid the time of day. When the boy gets to the part about not wanting to get paid, that he just wants something to do, Price is sold. The next morning, Price shows the kid a mountain of leather scraps by the back door and shows him how to run a clicker. By noon, the good stuff is boxed up, the bad stuff is swept out and the kid has some cash in his pocket. The afternoon is spent quietly sweeping around the saddle makers, watching one braid a horn and another skive a ground seat. For Mark Hurley, the lessons had begun. 

Mark was raised on a small horse operation in Denton, Texas. His parents, Cecil and Ann Hurley, were Quarter Horse trainers. They were well known on the show circuit, both showing halter and pleasure horses and for Cecil’s judging.  

Cecil taught Mark a lot about the horse-training business. Cecil also taught him which people to stay away from. Ann started Mark riding English when he was three years old. It would prove to be a benefit later in his roping career. The Denton area was a hotbed of the Quarter Horse industry and many cowboys of the day stopped in to visit. Ropers like Tommy Houston and Tooter Waites became an inspiration for Mark. Cecil had a couple of horses for sale for a customer, Gary Luskey. Gary’s family owned eight western stores in Texas. One day, Walt Garrison was looking for a steer wrestling horse prospect. He stopped at the Hurley’s to see his friend Gary’s horses. Walt was on crutches from a knee injury, and he hobbled around as Cecil showed him the horses. Walt was a good guy, and he took time to visit with Mark. Walt handed Mark a jersey and a can of Skoal as he was leaving. 

“Don’t tell your dad,” said Walt. 

The meeting that day was to prove fortuitous for 14-year-old Mark.  

Walt wasn’t supposed to be steer wrestling when he played for the Dallas Cowboys, so he hid out at legendary horseman and roper Dr. T.K.Hardy’s place in Denton when he was practicing bulldogging. Doc Hardy was also the Hurley’s neighbor and vet.  Mark would ride a horse over to Doc Hardy’s when his chores were done and rope the dummy with him. Dr. Hardy knew that Mark wanted to rope for a living and encouraged him to have a side job. Dr. Hardy also kept a slot open with Bill and Duff Severe in Pendleton, so he could order custom saddle trees to fit his steer roping horses. He took time to show Mark how each tree was made to fit and how it should sit on the horse’s back. He emphasized bar spread over gullet width when fitting a tree and showed Mark how the horse’s anatomy worked. 

When Mark was a kid, he started out doing the lower rung jobs for Cecil. Cecil had him ride colts with a lot of different trophy saddles and explained why he put one saddle on one horse and a different saddle on another.  

One time, Cecil left town with Anne to go to the AQHA convention. There were 60 head of horses on the place and 15-year-old Mark had a few that he was supposed to ride. His parents each had a custom saddle that was made by Price McLauchlin. Mark wasn’t supposed to use them, but he decided to put Cecil’s saddle on a really broke horse that he was riding. Mark couldn’t believe how much better the saddle felt to him than the old trophy saddles that he’d been riding. When Cecil returned, he realized that Mark had used his saddle and he explained that the saddle felt so good because it was custom made by a good saddle maker. He told Mark that he could make his work saddles feel better, if he took off the conchos and screws holding the seat jockey, lift it up and whittle any places that were hurting him with his pocket knife. Mark followed his advice. Mark was amazed at how much of a difference he could make with a knife, and how important the hidden things in a saddle were. 

Although Cecil didn’t rope, plenty of the neighbors did and Mark started roping. He soon found how expensive the sport could be. Mark began to make tack to support his roping. He stripped out harness leather reins on a pool table and made headstalls. He carried them over his shoulder through the barns at horse shows. 

“I got entry fees and money to buy more leather,” says Mark. 

Mark was hooked on the leatherwork, and the income it created. He set his sights a little higher. As soon as he graduated from high school in 1975, 17-year-old Mark headed straight to Texas State Technical Institute in Amarillo, to learn to make saddles. 

“It was a great trade school.” 

Mark built a rough out roping saddle in the three months he was at TSTI. He credits the personal attention from the instructor, Larry Duggan, for helping him get through the course. While he was there, Mark worked as a box boy at Luskey’s western store in Amarillo, but he also continued working on his roping. Wiley Hicks, from neighboring Canyon, Texas, took Mark under his wing and really helped him with his roping. Wiley had a great facility and Mark roped a lot of horns.  

“I won my first roping up there roping Holsteins with plastic horns that winter.” 

Gary Luskey had introduced Mark to Wiley, so he was pretty understanding when Mark quit the store after winning a large paycheck at the roping. Wiley continued to help Mark and mount him at the roping for a percentage. He also managed the winnings and entries for Mark. 

After three months, Mark had gained a lot of experience in both saddle making and roping. He found that he was addicted to both. Cecil had just bought 80 acres in Marietta, Oklahoma, though, and he needed some help. For the next two years, Mark welded and did construction on the family ranch in return for an arena and a shop there. When the place was finished, Mark was ready to start his second saddle. 

“When I went to build my next saddle, I didn’t have a clue.” 

Mark realized that he needed a refresher course to get him back on track with the saddle making. He enrolled at Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, under a rodeo scholarship. Mark steer wrestled and rode saddle broncs for the school and received an opportunity to continue his saddle making education. The boot shop was across the hall from the saddle shop, and Mark took advantage of both. Mark made a pair of boots, in addition to a saddle. The curriculum was broad and instructor, Earl Bain, also made sure that his students knew how to fix sewing machines. 

After six months, Mark returned to Marietta to hang out his shingle. 

“We had a ranch and I had all the customers in the world in Marietta,” says Mark. 

Mark continued to rope. His younger brother, Gary Wells, was starting to rope with him and eventually would have a career as a top horse trainer. In 1981, Mark won the Reserve World Championship in the amateur heading in the American Quarter Horse Association. In 1982, Mark won the Reserve World Championship in amateur heeling on the same horse. By 1983, Mark was building saddles for Del Varney in Aubrey, Texas. It was a big year for Mark; he won the World Championship in amateur calf roping in the AQHA and he was married for the first time. 

As the reality of maintaining a household set in, Mark realized he needed a job that paid more than saddle making. He went to 62 job interviews without success. One day, Mark pulled into a café that he liked in Lewisville. Lewisville was also home for Western Sports Marketing that promoted Copenhagen / Skoal sales for the U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company. Walt Garrison and Randy Vaughn both worked for them and were going in to eat lunch at the same time that Mark was. When Walt saw Mark, he invited him to eat with them. When Walt heard about Mark’s difficulties in finding a job, he nudged Randy. 

“I think we have a spot for him, don’t you Randy?” said Walt. 

At six the next morning, with a little money that Walt had fronted him, Mark began servicing the 362 stores in the Fort Worth area that carried snuff. Soon, he was calling on twice the number of stores a day that some of the other employees were covering. 

Nine months went by, and Walt called Mark. 

“Meet me in town for lunch,” said Walt. 

They met at the Mexican restaurant that was next to Ryon’s Saddle Shop. As they sat down, Gary Luskey walked in. Gary was best friends with Walt, and he remembered Mark. The men exchanged pleasantries. 

“Walt, did you tell Mark anything about what we’re here for?” said Gary. 

“No, I didn’t say nothing to him, Gary,” said Walt. 

“Mark, I want you to build saddles for me,” said Gary. 

The Luskey family had added Ryon’s to their western store roster recently, but Gary was the only one who was really interested in restoring the now defunct saddle shop. He offered to put Mark in charge of the empty upstairs saddlery, buy all the materials that Mark needed and split the profits with him. 

Walt told Mark that he was about to retire from the tobacco business, and he thought that Ryon’s was where Mark belonged now. 

Mark became the sole saddle maker and manager of the reboot of Luskey’s / Ryon’s Saddle Shop. The upstairs shop still had the original 13 work benches for saddle makers; each had a tooling table. A cutting table remained along with a broken clicker. Cobwebs covered everything. A few Coke bottles and a bottle of whiskey were tucked into some old rolls of leather. Original templates and patterns remained where they’d been stacked. A room in the back that had been used to cover stirrups still had a few pair hanging on the two-by-fours. Chicken wire held the insulation up on the ceiling. Dextrose paste had been poured down the drain of the saddle wash rack and it was completely blocked. Whistle Ryon had sold the store to Tandy five years earlier and the shop had been abandoned. 

“It was like a ghost town,” remembers Mark. 

Mark gave Gary a list of the things that needed to be fixed. The wash rack could not be replumbed, so a jack hammer was used to cut a drain hole in the outside wall. A winch was used to bring leather and materials up the narrow staircase. 

Orders and repair work began to flow in again. Gary loved the shop and made plans to update it. He would spend as much time as he could up in the shop. He planned to eventually have four saddle makers upstairs. 

“Gary held court in the boot shop downstairs. You never knew who would be down there,” says Mark. “He would always introduce me to everybody. He was a great, great man.” 

After two years, it was just Mark and an apprentice, but they stayed busy. The sewing machine wasn’t great, so Mark would take saddle skirts over to Jim Murray’s shop to sew them. Gary’s diabetes began to bother his legs on his daily climb to the shop, so he decided to move it down to a couple of shipping offices just off the showroom floor. A window was put in the front room where the saddle makers would work so customers could watch them. A middle room was for leather storage and the back room was for repairs. Windy Ryon had kept records on every saddle made and they were filed according to the owner’s name, so Mark could find the specs if someone came in wanting another one. 

Around 1989, John Burge and Brad Cooper became the first saddle makers to hire on in the new shop. Dave Kawamura became the tooler. Tim Canella worked in the back. Mark was able to keep four saddles going all of the time. Jim Taylor came in and ran the floor and took orders. All of the makers were allowed to include their name stamp on the saddle. 

In 1993, Mark lost a finger in a roping accident in Stratford, Oklahoma. Over the next year, he learned to rope again. A good year of horse show roping in 1995, culminated with Mark going to Italy to put on a roping school. After that, he put the roping aside to concentrate on saddle making. 

Gary Luskey’s health declined and he turned Ryon’s over to his son. When Gary passed away in 2001, his son came in to manage the store. He asked Mark what he needed to do to make the shop better. 

“I said ‘Just do like your dad‘s been doing. Take care of the cowboy,’” says Mark.  

Gary was known for his generosity and for taking easy payments if a customer was broke when his saddle was ready. He paid his saddle makers well and kept them happy. His son had only worked in the garment segment of the western stores, and now he concentrated on expanding that part of Luskey’s / Ryon’s. As the saddle shop began to take a back seat to the western wear, materials began to come in slower. Saddles had to wait to be completed and saddle makers had to wait for materials like conchos to come in before they could get paid. Customers became impatient and saddle makers began to quit. In 2010, Mark went into the manager’s office to try and turn the tide. A heated discussion followed and that led to a confrontation. Jim Taylor intervened and cooled things off. Two weeks later, after 20 years, Mark left Ryon’s for good.   

“I was the last one to leave,” says Mark. 

Jimmy Smith of Smith Brothers Roping Supplies in Denton, was a childhood friend of Mark’s. When he heard of Mark’s situation, Jimmy invited Mark up to his place. Jimmy had a demo barn on his property that was left over from a former barn construction company. He offered Mark a great deal on renting the building, which was right on Interstate 35. Mark had 16 saddle orders to build and when the deposits came in, he was back in business. 

In 2012, Mark married Leslie. Leslie is a home health nurse who had never been around the cowboy lifestyle until she met Mark. She has adapted well to living with several horses, and a multitude of miniature donkeys, chickens, dogs and cats. Leslie has even learned her way around the shop and makes things to relax. 

In 2016, Luskey’s / Ryon’s was sold to Cavenders. The saddle shop would have been 72 years old. It never reopened. 

Today Mark has a thriving business, especially with single steer ropers. His customer list reads like a “who’s who” of National Finals Rodeo cowboys. Mark says that the biggest thing that aspiring saddle makers can do to improve is to spend some time riding their own saddles. Most of the things that he incorporates into his saddles come from his experience gained in roping arenas in the Southwest. Mark likes a roping saddle to have a flatter seat, so a roper can stand and stay in the front of the saddle as long as he needs to rope. He also likes a leg cut in the base of the swell to allow a roper to ride a shorter seat. The security for the rider as he runs to the steer is important, but Mark wants the roper to be comfortable just riding his saddle as well. 

“I build them for competition. If they’re pretty, fine. But mainly, I want them to fit the horse and the cowboy. They can ride them all day and then go rodeo that night.” 

Customers have added to his style, with their requests for inskirt back riggings and cantle binding points that won’t snag a rope. But Mark credits most of his design to the saddle makers that came before. Like Howard Council, who impressed Mark with his humility as much as his saddle work. Joey Jemison, who showed Mark how to pop stitch a seat many years ago. Don Butler, who Mark met at the Wichita Falls saddle makers convention. The two became friends and Don gave Mark a lot of good advice. Even current makers, like Troy West have shared their techniques with Mark. Mark does most of his new work himself, but he has an apprentice, Salty Rishel, who helps him with the repair work. Salty won the 2022 Beginner’s Class at the Saddle Maker’s Round Up in Wichita Falls. Eli Ganzer does the tooling on Mark’s saddles  

Mark is well known at the Boot and Saddle Maker’s Round Up. He has spoken there for the last five years about saddles. Eli and Mark won the Open Floral Category saddle in 2018. Mark has won Reserve awards at Wichita Falls twice. After all of these years, Mark is still addicted to making saddles. 

“It’s like having a child, when they leave you after 200 hours, and you see them at a roping, and the horse is working and the saddle is fitting, that’s where it gets me.” 

Kind of like a child that got sent to see Price McLauchlin on a rainy day. 

To find out more about Hurley’s Saddlery, call Mark at 817-819-8218, or check out his Facebook page.