Burnishing an Image at the USA Corral

But is it really a ranch?

Here's a clue: The Secret Service agents now outnumber the cows.

Bush's summer vacation at the 1,583-acre spread, which ends Friday after close to five weeks, allows him not only to relax, but to remind the nation that he's a Cowboy President. It's a tradition started by Teddy Roosevelt, and followed by Lyndon B. Johnson and Ronald Reagan, that casts the chief executive as a plain-talking, outdoors-loving leader.

The president's supporters say that's the real Bush, and they say he would be spending time at the property he bought in 1999 even if he had not run for president a year later. Still, they acknowledge that Bush's image benefits from his time in Crawford.

But with a handful of cattle now on the property, some Texans suggest that calling the place a ranch could be considered a stretch.

"There are some guys that are all hat and no cattle. The president's not that way; he's hat and five cattle," joked Austin lawyer and former U.S. Rep. Kent R. Hance, who as a Democrat beat Bush in a 1978 congressional race by portraying him as an Ivy League interloper.

The White House declined to let a reporter look at the grounds or interview ranch hands while the president and First Lady Laura Bush finished their vacation.

Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino confirmed that the bovine population had fallen sharply since former ranch foreman Kenneth Engelbrecht got rid of his cattle and vacated the property a few months ago. Engelbrecht, a member of the family that sold the ranch to Bush in 1999, had been leasing back pasture and tending a herd that numbered about 200.

Perino initially said the president still kept "a few" cattle on the ranch. Pressed for a more precise head count, she said "four or five." (They are believed to include Ophelia and Eltonia, two longhorns given to Bush by his gubernatorial staff in 1999, and perhaps some of their progeny.)

One neighbor said he had heard that the Bushes shut down Engelbrecht's grazing operation because they wanted "to give the land a rest." Mrs. Bush has been planting prairie grasses and wildflowers in the sun-baked ranch soil. Bill Ferguson, the broker who handled the original sale, said he thought the Bushes wanted to devote the land to wildlife and native vegetation.