"CHEWED UP, SPIT OUT...STILL WALKING":

PINE RIDGE RESERVATION, S.D. -- A legendary Lakota horseman lives near Wounded Knee. He has a poorly healed rib poking out against the skin of his torso and a long scar curving from the left corner of his mouth toward his right eye, a reminder of 62 stitches. His left knee is slightly bigger than his right; the ligaments inside are shot. Knotty bumps along his collarbone convey all the times it has broken and healed, and broken and healed.

His name is Fred Ecoffey, and the 85-year-old former jockey was declared winner at horse racing tracks 2,683 times, most often in Nebraska and more often than anyone else in that state's history. The South Dakota native first barreled out of the gates in 1957 on a horse named Baby Sweeper. He kept doing so astride other thoroughbreds 17,521 more times over his 26-year career, despite being laid up for years-long stretches recovering from injuries.

Ecoffey does not volunteer these statistics. They need to be pried out of him, one story, one race, one horse at a time. He embodies the Lakota virtue of humility -- or unsiiciyapi -- and prefers to discuss his horses, his family, his late wife of 53 years, Phyllis, and his love for this beastly, beautiful land that he's never been able to shake.

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