STANLEY — Tawny fields, dotted with black Angus and white Charolais cattle, unfold into the distance on either side of the gravel road as the Chevy Silverado rumbles into a mostly sunny New Mexico morning.

Bruce King — former New Mexico governor, state political icon, life-long rancher — is riding shotgun. He's the first to see the white momma cow standing at the cattle guard just beyond the crossroads ahead.

"That's one the cowboys missed," he says. "She went back looking for her calf."

This is the King Brothers Ranch, 80,000 acres spread out around the small community of Stanley, just north of Moriarty and 40 miles south of Santa Fe. Bruce King, 83, owns the ranch with his brothers Sam, 85, and Don, 77.

Bruce King, a Democrat, served 12 years as governor, a record, and he was, in his day, the state's most recognized public figure. He rubbed elbows and slapped backs with the likes of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and thousands of others who were less famous.

That, as much as anything, was part of his charm: King was as welcoming to the common folk of New Mexico as he was with celebs of the nation.

At the heart of it all, perhaps, was the certainty he would never lose touch with his roots, never relinquish his love for the land.

"When I went into the Army, I didn't realize I'd miss it," he says. "But I did. I love the wide-open spaces, riding a horse or driving across it. I love the wildlife, the sandhill cranes we have around here now. I like seeing life start out and grow."

Politics might have gotten into his blood, but it was agriculture that got him into politics.

"I was very involved with the Farm Bureau and the Cattle Growers, and we'd push these measures, and they'd come back and say, 'Well, the Legislature killed it,' " King says. "I decided I'd go up there and see why they were killing it."

King found there were similarities between working the land and working the halls of government. Both, he says, are risky enterprises seeded with uncertainties and unforeseen failures.

"If anything would prepare you to be governor, it's agriculture," King says. "That's because a lot of things never come out the way you think they should.

"You think you got a good crop, and then hail comes along — or snow and you lose some livestock."

Or maybe an election.

Making tracks

There was a time when the hardscrabble farm and ranch life Bruce King was born into was commonplace in New Mexico. But by 1970, when he was elected governor the first time, the state had started to slick up and button down. Making a living off the land was something a lot of folks had only read about in books.

Alice King, Bruce's wife of 60 years, recalls that some people were apprehensive about rural folks such as she and Bruce moving into the Governor's Mansion in Santa Fe.

She said people wondered if Bruce would track cow manure into the mansion on his cowboy boots or if she would keep chickens on the mansion grounds.

"It was not always fun," she says. "They didn't know what to expect from agricultural people, and I had a lot to learn on the other side."

They learned, they adapted when needed, but they stayed themselves.

During their public life, Bruce and Alice, devout Christians and longtime members of the Stanley Union Church, never served alcohol at functions they hosted.

"I used to worry about that," Alice says. "But Bruce just said this is our home, and we'll do what we want here."

The Governor's Mansion has not been the Kings' home since 1994 when King lost his bid for a fourth term in a three-way tussle with Republican Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Roberto Mondragon, a race won by Johnson.

Home for full time now is their ranch-style Stanley house, which they have lived in since 1975 and which, aptly enough, is on King Road.

It's filled with art and mementos, Western paintings and sculpture, Indian pottery and kachinas

There's also dozens of family pictures. Bruce and Alice have two sons, six grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

Son Bill, 56, took to the country life. He's a farmer, rancher and former president of the New Mexico Cattle Growers.

Bill's younger brother, Gary, 53, chose a life in politics. He served 12 years in the Legislature and is now New Mexico's attorney general.

It's a close-knit clan that has stayed close to its Estancia Valley origins.

Alice, 77, was born Alice Martin and grew up on her father's small dairy farm near Moriarty.

Bruce's parents, Bill and Molly King, drove a Ford Model T from the small central Texas town of Robert Lee to Stanley in 1918. They traded the car for 160 acres of homestead land four miles west of Stanley.

Bruce was born on the homestead, which would eventually grow into the King Brothers Ranch. Some of Bruce's earliest memories are of milking cows with his older brother, Sam, on mornings before they went to school.

A sister, Leota, got married and moved up to Montana, but the King brothers — even Bruce during three terms as governor — never strayed far for long from the old homeplace or from each other. Bruce can look out his kitchen window today and see Sam's and Don's houses.

Settled down into favorite chairs in their den recently, Bruce and Alice talked about how things were and how they've changed.

Take the cost of political campaigns, for example. Alice says she and Bruce spent $200 on his first campaign, a run for the Santa Fe County Commission in 1954.

"That was for cards and bumper stickers and gasoline," she says.

Gasoline was important because instead of doing radio and TV commercials, candidates went to where the voters were and talked to them.

"There were 31 precincts in Santa Fe County, and you'd have a potluck in a different one every night for a month," Bruce says. "Now, you have to spend quite a lot of money."

"And you have to start a year earlier," Alice says.

Alice was very much a partner in her husband's political career, especially during his three terms as governor — 1970-'74, 1978-'82 and 1990-'94.

"I always told the voters, 'You get two for the price of one — Alice and me,' " Bruce says.

Alice concentrated her efforts on education and children's issues, and played a hefty role in the creation of the Cabinet-level Children, Youth and Families Department. She still stays as active as she is able, is a member of more boards than she can keep track of and recently gave the opening prayer at a convention of Democratic women in Albuquerque.

She says she'd probably do more if she could still drive a car, but macular degeneration has diminished her eyesight to a degree where that's not possible.

Bruce doesn't drive after dark anymore.

He still gives the impression of being larger than life, although he's no longer the strapping 6-1, 195-pounder who played tackle one year for University of New Mexico football coach Willis Barnes. Getting drafted into the Army during World War II ended his college gridiron prospects.

He has battled health problems the past 10 years.

In 1997, he had a pacemaker implanted during emergency heart surgery. In 1998, he fell and broke his right hip while trying to get out of the way of a rattlesnake. He was hospitalized with a bad case of bronchitis in 2004. Just this past February, he slipped on ice, fell and broke his left hip.

The cowboy governor has been using a walker to get around recently. He has not worn cowboy boots (concerns about circulation and swelling in his legs) or ridden a horse (concerns about accidents) since his heart surgery.

He's philosophical about the cycle of life the way perhaps only a man connected to the land can be. He accepts, rather than resents, the limitations of age.

"I really miss riding a horse, but I can forgo riding just to be alive," he says. "When you get older, you don't mind resting as much as you minded it when you were younger. I enjoy life. I enjoy being around the house and working around here.

"But we do things. We go riding around; we go to church every Sunday. And I'm about done using that walker."

Some things haven't changed. He's still got a full head of wavy hair, although it's gray now. He's got the same distinctive high-pitched drawl and glad-to-see-you manner voters from one end of the state to the other came to know well during his many years of public office.

After serving two terms with the Santa Fe County Commission, King ran for state representative in 1958 because he was dead set on getting on the House Agriculture Committee and doing some good for people with the same kinds of concerns he had.

He won that election, the first of five times he would be elected to the House. He was the House speaker the last three terms.

Then came his election to the governor's office in 1970.

He doesn't like to dwell on his accomplishments or on what he wished would have been different.

Pressed, he'll tick off achievements he's pleased about, things such as reforming state liquor laws, doubling funding for public schools, creating the Children, Youth and Families Department, establishing a port of entry at Santa Teresa and working out a strong and fair state personnel system.

He doesn't hesitate a blink's worth when asked about his darkest moment in state government. That, he says, was the 1980 Penitentiary of New Mexico riot, in which 33 inmates were killed — some in unthinkably brutal fashion.

"It was a very difficult time for him," Alice says.

As horrible as the riot was, Bruce says, some good came out of it in a series of prison system improvements.

"I did the best I could," he says, summing up his years in state government. "I could see so many things we needed to do to get into the next century."

Bruce and Alice laugh, more in surprise than in amusement, when they're told that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a candidate for president, is the subject of an interview in the December issue of Playboy magazine.

Before Bruce can respond to a question as to whether he had ever been interviewed by Playboy, Alice cuts him off.

"His wife would have had his scalp if he ever had been," she says.

Bruce King, politician, always preferred shaking hands to doing interviews and taking surveys.

"People would ask me if I was going to take a poll, and I'd say, 'Yeah, I'm going to take a poll on Election Day,' " he says. "I could walk down the street and shake hands, and could tell who was going to vote for me and who wasn't.

"Sometimes, I'd run into someone who thought I'd done him wrong, and he'd say, 'I wouldn't vote for you if you were the last person on Earth.' Then I'd say to whomever was with me, 'You'd better put him down as doubtful.' "

He's fond of recounting the tale of a campaign stop he made in Pep, a tiny farming community about 24 miles south of Portales, during his first run for governor in 1970. He was driving his car, a load of campaign materials in the trunk.

King said he went into Pep's combination store, post office and gas station, and told the old gentleman who operated the place that he was running for governor.

"He said, 'Ah, we don't need any politicians around here,' " he recalls. "So I bought a soda and a candy bar, and just started talking to him. I told him I was from Stanley, a town not much different than Pep, and that I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the situation of people in the rural areas."

When King got ready to leave, the man asked him if he had any campaign literature.

"I said I did and brought in a few campaign cards, buttons and bumper stickers," he says. "He said: 'Is that all you got? We got 99 voters here. I don't need any of them stickers, but I need some of them cards for every voter and some buttons, too.' "

King left him a stack of stuff.

"On election night I watched the returns in Pep, and we got every single vote. I knew then you did some good visiting people.

"Now, you get a phone call with a recorded message telling you who to vote for."

At home on the range

True to their country raising, the Kings start each day early, before daylight.

Bruce gets up at 5, eats his breakfast and then goes outside to feed the family cats. That's what he was doing in February when he slipped on the ice and broke his hip.

Most mornings, Sam and Don swing by to pick him up, and by 8:30 they're at El Comedor restaurant in Moriarty to drink coffee with friends and other members of the King clan.

There, for an hour or so, they'll talk about politics, sports, cattle, grass and rain — or the lack of it.

Then the three brothers climb into the Silverado for the ritual drive across their property, looking with practiced eyes for what's up, what's right, what isn't.

On this morning, Sam is at the wheel. He usually is.

Don, himself a former member of both the state House and state Senate, is hunkered down in the back seat of the extended cab truck.

This is where the King brothers are most comfortable, on their land, with each other.

"I could always manage to stay in politics and work the ranch, too," Bruce says from the front, passenger-side seat.

For him, that's the way it had to be. Often encouraged to run for national office, such as U.S. Senate, he always declined, because he knew he couldn't be in Washington, D.C., and tending to things at home, too.

He didn't want to dump it all on Sam and Don and the rest of the family.

"We'd worked hard to get where we were, and it takes everybody pulling together," he says. "Even when I was governor, I'd try to spend every Saturday on the ranch."

Up ahead, the lone figure of the white cow emerges from the harsh backlight of late morning.

The Silverado rumbles through the crossroads and over the cattle guard where she's standing. Twenty yards down the fence line, Bruce King, rancher, sees her calf.

"We'll have to tell them cowboys to come back and get them," he says.