A Horsey Holiday for Her Majesty

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Around rugged Big Horn, Wyo. (pop. 217), where the Queen went next, commoners professed not to care much about the visitor out at Canyon Ranch. The principal of Big Horn Elementary School, Ken Welch, even refused the Secret Service request to keep his students off Canyon Road on their way home Friday afternoon. Said Welch: "No way we're gonna reroute a school bus just because the Queen of England is here." Wealthy Rancher William Schroeder, 71, was more jovially grumpy. "What's the fuss?" said Schroeder with a smile. "There's been limeys infecting this valley for 100 years now. It's too late to get all worked up over another one."

Indeed, the area is something of a Wild West refuge for British aristocracy. In the late 19th century, romantic, well-to-do immigrants from Britain poured in: of the 311 Wyoming "ranchmen" the census tallied in 1880, 52 were British. Oliver Wallop, the future Earl of Portsmouth, established Canyon Ranch. The 4,000-acre ranch is still in the family, and the Earl's grandchildren are Anglo-American somebodies: Malcolm Wallop is a Republican Senator from Wyoming, and the Senator's sister Jean is Lady Porchester, wife of the Queen's racing manager.

The just-folks meals at the big stone-and-clapboard ranchhouse were rich. Lady Porchester said that she served "chicken pie as well as apple pie-but not at the same meal-rainbow trout, American ice cream and lots of cookies." Saturday night the Queen was host at a cozy banquet, featuring steak and cheesecake for her companions and a dozen Wallop friends at the rustic Maverick Supper Club, a onetime gambling joint.

The clash of cultures was quaint. But the visiting Britons did nearly prompt one international incident. The two-week elk-hunting season begins in western Sheridan County just as the Queen is to leave for London this week. A security-conscious retainer asked local authorities if the season might be postponed a few days. Not bloody likely. "They didn't know what they were asking," Sheriff William Johnson suggested indulgently. Bruce King of King's Saddlery was thrilled that the Queen visited his shop-but come on, he said, "you don't mess with hunting season."

-By Kurt Andersen. Reported by J. Madeleine Nash/Lexington and Robert C. Wurmstedt/Sheridan