Growing up as a rancher's daughter and as a horsewoman was not recreation. It was work. She married Douglas Dear in 1947, and continued to do ranch work on their place near the Birdtail out of Simms, while raising two daughters, washing a lot of dirty clothes and cooking a lot of meals. "I wouldn't want any other kind of life," she says.

Besides riding saddle horses, Dear drove the team raking hay before she was out of grade school. In high school she stayed on the Beaver Ranch alone while her dad took care of his new place near Simms. One year he bought a bunch of heifers to summer in this high country. Several of these "drys" surprised the new owners by deciding to calve-- and most of them needed help. The undaunted teenager with her grey horse, Dewey, would rope the heifer, snub it to a fence post, to a tree, or to Dewey, and would pull the calf. A few times she called on someone from the neighboring Watson ranch for help, and a few times, the proud young rancher now admits, "I wished I had."

Trailing the cattle over 50 miles between the places took several days and meant sleeping in a bedroll under the stars and eating from the back of the chuck wagon. Although the school of hard knocks gave her a good education for her life work, both of Nancy's parents saw the need for higher education. She is amazed at her dad's foresight into the evolution of taxation and the ensuing paperwork. "Learn how to keep a good set of books and sandwich in some economics and law," he told her. "You're going to need it."

"I've not forgotten his words and have treasured my years at Montana State University every day of my life," Nancy says. Dear remembers sneaking out to the corral to break a horse when she was 8 or 9 years old - and succeeding. She was past 70 when she broke her last one. That doesn't mean she spent her life clinging to the back of a wild, gyrating bronco. "I broke tons of horses, but I never bucked them out," she says.

The Dears, who have raised hundreds of registered quarter horses, breed toward a gentle horse. "Bucking's hereditary," Nancy says. Rodeo stock, on the other hand, are bred to buck, and they love it. The sensitive way in which this blue-eyed grandmother has always dealt with livestock may be why she's had few serious injuries in spite of being an active part of her family's ranching operation for over half a century.

One of the most serious happened about three years ago. She was following a bunch of cows along a trail near the Birdtail when a rattlesnake buzzed right under her mare's nose. It jumped straight up, dumping Nancy onto the hard slope. There was nothing to do but struggle back up to her mount and crawl back on - with 4 broken ribs. When she topped the hill, Doug could tell something was amiss. She was all bent over on the horse and she didn't have the cows. He drove up to meet her but ,before he could take her to the emergency room in Great Falls, they loaded the horse and dropped it off at the ranch. Nancy spent 4 days in the hospital and the rest of the summer getting well. Her other broken bone was not a riding accident, Nancy and Doug were doctoring a colt when it reared up and tumbled over backwards, right on to Nancy's left ankle.

Nancy likes to remember the beginning of their horse-raising venture, an inter-generational business passed on to their children and grandchildren. In 1943, she and her dad traveled to Eastern Montana and bought a dun colt from Marcus Snyder, an old Texan. Her dad registered him Charlie Russell 8189 - the first registered Quarter Horse brought into North Central Montana.

She's cut back on her involvement in over a dozen organizations ranging from Angus Associations to the Zonta Club. However, this spring she was invited to a conference at the headquarters of The American Quarter Horse Association in Amarillo, Texas. Besides the "very good" meetings, she saw old friends, toured the new center of the American Quarter Horse, and made all her airline connections.

In 1995, Nancy Dear received the Heritage Award from the Montana Cowgirls Association and was inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City. The day long celebration in Great Falls included dancing, square dancing, and all of her favorite old time songs sung by a girl who had been in her 4-H club. Besides the friends who came, she was delighted with the many letters she received, including one signed by six classmates from White Sulphur Springs High School. Nancy continues to ride beneath the bluffs along the Sun River, checking livestock and rangeland, on the ranches operated mainly by their children's families. This fall she will be back in the Big Belts for another solitary ride across the grassy mountains of her childhood.

"I'll keep riding as long as I am able to get on a horse," she says. "It's the best therapy in the world."