I know you like Ballad Of The Absent Mare and here’s briefly how he arrived at the idea for that song as told by Jennifer Warnes:
Listen here for her version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BD7CFwiIsILeonard had found some old pictures somewhere. They were called The Ten Bulls, old Japanese woodcuts symbolizing the stages of a monk's life on the road to enlightenment. These carvings pictured a boy and a bull, the boy losing the bull, the bull hiding, the boy realizing that the bull was nearby all along. There is a struggle, and finally the boy rides the bull into his little village. "I thought this would make a great cowboy song", he joked.
......I asked Leonard if he would bend the lyric in a couple of places, for a cowgirl, and he sent me this new version, now titled The Ballad of The Runaway Horse.
And a couple of appropriate visuals –
The first one on the white horse is when he rode it up on stage in 1970 at Aix-en-Provence festival in France. If I remember rightly something happened to hamper their normal mode of transport and LC and the band acquired some horses and actually rode them all the way to the festival concert and Leonard decided to make a grand entrance on stage. I think it would be fair to say mission accomplished!
The second one is in the 70's at his Tennessee farm.
“O come with me my little one, we will find that farm
and grow us grass and apples there and keep all the animals warm”.
In the late 60’s LC bought a somewhat uncontrollable ornery horse from a neighbour, Kid Marley who was a rodeo champion. I suspect this horse could have a presence in BOTAM as well. When LC wrote Chelsea Hotel #1 in one of the versions of it he mentions both Kid Marley and also another neighbour Willie York who is mentioned alone in other versions of CH#1.
“I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
Then I went to Tennessee
Sittin’ by the creek with Willie York
And Kid Marley came to visit me”
Nashville Columbia studio A was where Songs From A Room and Songs Of Love And Hate were both mainly recorded.
If you’ve read or seen all or part of this that’s OK, I thought it would be fun to post a cowboy theme answer anyway!