BILLINGS -- For a 66-year-old Montana cowboy who converted to English saddles four years ago to learn dressage, death found him in the oddest way.

Horse pals assumed Tom Malmstrom was training his inexperienced 3-year-old Friesian colt out in his Worden pasture, or riding Pablo Picasso, his wild Andalusian, or riding his high-octane mule, Bannack.

Instead, he was atop his wife's 22-year-old geriatric palomino Paint, Pal, on a classic fall afternoon Monday.

Norma Buchanan, who spent last weekend schooling horses and munching chocolate truffles with Malmstrom at a horse clinic in Boyd, described her friend's end.

"I think he was sitting on Pal, blissing out on having this great ride and finding his seat when Pal crow-hopped or something," Buchanan said. "Tom flew over Pal's shoulder; broke his neck and all his arteries were severed."

The Billings-born Malmstrom, who owned Lockwood Auto & Truck Salvage, rode through multiple worlds. Racing wreckers against his car friends was a favorite pastime.

In high school he ran with the wild horse contest crowd.

"Tom was the mugger to hold the horse still while someone else slapped on a saddle and tried to ride off," Sue Malmstrom said. She called her brother's death "a freak deal."

As a drill team rider at the Billings Saddle Club, he picked the fresh horses.

"He always liked it when they bucked a little, until they got good at bucking," she said.

After high school, he raced cars, hunted and fished and taught himself computers when they were still new so he could buy parts over the Internet. Then he took up digital photography.

"He mastered whatever he set out to master," Sue Malmstrom said. "He definitely believed in having a good time."

He returned to the equine life two decades ago after meeting Billings artist, Liza Dada, in a bar and asking her to dance.

"I was feeling ornery, so I looked this big cowboy up and down and said, 'I don't think you can dance,' " Dada said. "He drew himself up tall, scowled and asked for a chance, and then he danced my socks off."

Dada said Malmstrom, now her husband of 22 years, was the first cowboy she'd met who displayed original art in his home.

The strong-willed artist met her match in Malmstrom, whom she called stubborn in spades.

"Sometime just to get him to do something, I'd tell him to do the opposite," she said.

His favorite sayings were: "Hard work keeps me young," "Wet blankets make for good horses" and "Get 'er done."

Mules were always playing games with him and Malmstrom loved it.

"Bannack would let himself out of the gate and run down the road and Tom thought it was hysterical," I'd be screaming, 'Go get the mule!' while Tom was dying laughing," Dada said.

For a dozen years, Malmstrom took Western lessons from Tammy Yost-Wildin at the Heart T Ranch in Boyd. She and Dada dared Malmstrom to try dressage while he was teasing them about "pancake saddles."

Last August after only four years riding dressage, he won a regional competition in Colorado on his 3-year-old Friesian, Reo.

"That was a huge highlight for Tom to take this hugely talented young horse and win against lots of older, more experienced horses," Yost-Wildin said. "Our whole barn is going to be empty without him."

Enduring endless ribbing about his funny riding pants and trading fried venison and potatoes for veggies to lose weight in order to ride better, Malmstrom took it all in stride. His goal wasn't just riding dressage in his 60s. He wanted to ride at the Olympic level.

"Cowboying up" to pain gave way to acupuncture. Allergy meds that allowed him to bale 140 tons of hay gave way to naturopathic powders.

And when his tight chest and shoulder muscles held back his dressage progress, he embraced another New Age cure: Rolfing, a deep muscle massage.

"It hurt so bad, I cried like a baby," Malmstrom said last summer while guzzling coffee with friends at the 5 Corners Sinclair. "But, when she was through, I could move freely and my leg wasn't shorter than the other."

At schooling shows at the Creekside Ranch, he won high points. He won years of ribbons in almost every event at the Billings Saddle Club and took top awards at the Drummond Mule Days, one of the two top mules contests in the nation.

"He was an action figure: dancing, riding, working or fighting when he was younger," Liza Dada said.

For her birthday Sept. 11, Tom Malmstrom bought his wife a cart and harness to use with the Haflinger horses that she and Buchanan bought last month.

"We've had such a good year," she said. "Bannack is the mule of a lifetime. What am I going to do with Bannack?"

Best of all, his friends say Tom didn't end up crippled.

"He was gone before they got him in the helicopter," his wife said.

Longtime friends, Keith Wolff and Bev Kudrna, who own the Pryor Creek Bar & Caf0x233 and are horse crazy, too, said that Malmstrom achieved so many goals.

"He was even accomplished, I swear, at making the most friends. So we think he was done on this earth," Kurdna said.

"Talk about a giant of a man. Talk about a giant of a horse. Black Reo is so huge, happy and relaxed and so is Tom," said Norma Buchanan. "They were made for each other."

For Dada, a newspaper article on her self-effacing husband is only fitting.

"He'd be really embarrassed, so this is a joke on him," she said. "He didn't want anyone to know what he did."