THEY DON'T MAKE 'EM LIKE THEY USED TO

They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used TO! The Story Of The Oldtime Bucking Horses

The oldtime range and rodeo horse had a style of bucking that is no more.

A friend of mine who remembers when horses, not autos, dominated a less hectic way of life, told me: “I haven't seen a bucking horse in over forty years. What you see in rodeos today are kickers not buckers.” He'll get an argument from present-day rodeo riders who feel the differences in the horses are less in bucking ability and more in a change in bucking tactics.

But rodeo styles have changed and so have the horses. Just as surely as the bronc buster who rode circuit from ranch to ranch “green breaking” raw broncs off the range is a bygone, so is a class of horse that could twist, snap and shake with more convulsions in a ten-foot diameter than a modernday rodeo horse could conceive in an entire arena. This historical bronc could hump his back and swallow his tail like a compressed spring and then pop loose with wicked gyrations.

They were tough, those old rodeo horses and even today's riders will admit the oldtime broncs had something special in their performances.

Consider Steamboat. His cyclone energy made him the first horse to gain an international reputation as a bucking horse and immortality in rodeo annals. One can only speculate on how many hundreds of contestants mounted Steamboat. But one can count on one hand those that rode him to a finish. Steamboat fits to a pattern which Curly Fletcher cowboy, mustanger, writer wrote about in his song about the Strawberry Roan: And he makes one more jump He is headed up high, Leaves me sittin' on air Way up in the sky, Guess I turned over twice And comes back to earth, And I starts in to cussin' The day of his birth.

Steamboat was bad medicine. Clayton Danks was one man, however, who did ride Steamboat to a finish. He said that Steamboat's peculiar ability for hard kicking, hard twisting and end swapping (going up heading in one direction then twisting in the air and landing facing the opposite direction) was due to his strength.

“He was dynamite had a twisting motion all his own.” Joe Cahill, another rider, was more succinct in his appraisal of Steamboat: “When his feet hit the ground, the saddle was usually empty.” Riders that Steamboat didn't dump with a few vicious twists he buffaloed by practically up-ending himself. He flipped the bottoms of his hooves skyward and then recovered just before he reached the ground. This particular threat is called sunfishing, and Steamboat sunfished to the ground with fantastic timing, just missing landing either on his back or his side. For most riders that was cutting too close to disaster, and many went sprawling out of the saddle.

Steamboat's reign as a champion bucker was auspicious even as a young horse. He was born in Wyoming about 1899. When Steamboat was a three-year-old he was run in from the range, gelded and branded. During a fight to get him down, he threw his head and slammed it into the ground, breaking a cartilage in his nose. Afterwards he made a weird wheezing noise. Jimmy Danks, a brother of Clayton, said, "He sounds like a Steamboat." The name stuck and his loud wheezing during bucking performances became a trademark in his career. Except for a white star and white feet, he was all black. Mustang and Morgan blood mixture gave him "muscles of a plow horse and speed of a greyhound," and when fully matured he weighed 1100 pounds and stood 15 hands.

PHOTOGRAPHS OF OLDTIME RODEO BRONCS AND RIDERS NOT CREDITED TO MAX KEGLEY WERE FURNISHED BY THE AUTHOR

He was born in Wyoming about 1899. When Steamboat was a three-year-old he was run in from the range, gelded and branded. During a fight to get him down, he threw his head and slammed it into the ground, breaking a cartilage in his nose. Afterwards he made a weird wheezing noise. Jimmy Danks, a brother of Clayton, said, "He sounds like a Steamboat." The name stuck and his loud wheezing during bucking performances became a trademark in his career. Except for a white star and white feet, he was all black. Mustang and Morgan blood mixture gave him "muscles of a plow horse and speed of a greyhound," and when fully matured he weighed 1100 pounds and stood 15 hands.

Jimmy was the first to mount Steamboat. He admitted later he never rode anything like him. He asked the foreman to turn the horse out, for he was too much to handle.

In those infant days of Wild West shows and local ranch rodeos a horse "tough to ride" was a drawing card for contestants. They traveled far to match their prowess against a horse with a reputation. Communication was slower then, but a horse that shed riders pell-mell became a conversation piece among ranch and itinerant cowboys. Sooner or later a promoter of Wild West shows would hear of the horse cowboys were talking about.

Steamboat was no disappointment to producers Charlie and Frank Erwin. They bought the horse and promoted him. For nearly fifteen years Steamboat was the greatest challenge to cowboy contestants and the best reputation builder for a cowboy who could stay with the horse.

Not only cowboys but paying customers, in a horse-oriented age, came from hundreds of miles to witness the great Steamboat. His drawing power has been conservatively estimated to have been worth $500,000. His appearance was the highlight of the show. A hush would come upon the crowds when the time for his entrance arrived, the sort of reverence that is recorded to champions. There were no chutes then. A horse was literally dragged, while bellowing and plunging, to the center of the arena by a snubber on horseback. The snubber took the halter rope of the bronc and dallied it around his saddle horn until the bronc's head was practically in his lap. It was important that a snubber have a tight, close hold on the bronc's head, because otherwise the bronc would pull back, rear up and come down on the snubber and his horse. Many snubbers, not unlike picadores at a bullfight, were injured.

The horse was then blindfolded and saddled. When the rider mounted, the snubber pulled the blindfold loose, and the rider was on his own. From that moment there was no whistle to tell a bronc rider that ten seconds had passed and that he had qualified. There was no time limit then. A rider rode until the judges were convinced of the contestant's ability, or the horse had bucked out. A rider might take his pounding up to twenty-five seconds on a stout horse in order to qualify.

A cowboy on Steamboat knew the odds were against him. Steamboat was the champ and, as already said, the crowds would breathlessly watch as another contender tackled the great Steamboat. Side bets were taken on just how long a rider might stay aboard.

No doubt the realization lurked in the minds of those who followed Steamboat's career that someday he would be ridden.

A champion always attracts the best contenders, and a top-notch rider named Guy Holt qualified on Steamboat at the Albany County Fair, Wyoming in 1903. Another was Clayton Danks who gets the credit for the most spectacular ride on Steamboat in 1907 at Cheyenne. It made Danks champion cowboy that year.

Frank Bath and Frank Stone rode Steamboat too, but both on the same afternoon, and that was considered unfair to the horse. Another contestant, William Carver, made a ride but didn't use spurs and Steamboat, it was felt, did not buck his best. Dick Stanley took a ride in deep mud, and some voiced foul because Steamboat's bucking was questionable in the mire, but most of the others never stuck to the "hurricane deck" that Steamboat generated.

Steamboat helped make rodeos known, just as Joe Louis attracted thousands of fans to boxing. Like Joe Louis, Steamboat was admired as an honest, hard fighter and never made a foul by kicking or stomping his rider after he was thrown.

Ironically, for all the adulation and respect accorded to Steamboat, he ended his life unglamorously. A myth that shielded the truth for decades said that he slipped in a box stall (some say a corral of rough hewn poles) at Salt Lake City during a thunderstorm. A hind leg was severely hurt and Steamboat had to be shot, and was buried back of the grandstand in Cheyenne's Frontier Park. However, Clayton Danks - and others have proved his version reported that Steamboat suffered a deep, severe wire cut on his right hind leg in 1914. This was in Fargo, North Dakota, while the Cheyenne Frontier Days outfit was on tour there. By the time the C. B. Irwin bucking string was returned to Cheyenne, blood poisoning had infected Steamboat's body and he had to be shot. The body was dragged by a team of horses to the city dump southwest of Cheyenne. There it rotted away and was picked apart by coyotes and carrion birds.

"It's a pity, but it's true." says Danks.

Fay E. Ward, a serious writer of the West, has verified the story from Arnold Rick, the man who shot Steamboat and who had charge of Irwin's horses at the time.

Hopefully, a better tribute to Steamboat may someday be initiated at the sight of his greatest performances, Cheyenne's Frontier Park.

ooo about cowboys and broncos

No other event seems to represent rodeo as bronc riding. Saddle-bronc riding is an exciting skill. The things that would seem to help the bronc rider the stirrups, the saddle, and the rein denied to bareback riders may make the business of sticking on a horse a little easier. But they also make it considerably more complicated, and certainly more spectacular.

The stirrups, too, are only half help and half hazard. They give the rider more balance and help absorb the shock of the jumps, but if the cowboy loses even one of them, he goose-eggs (is disqualified) as quickly as if he were bucked off.

Even the saddle can be a liability when the breaks are bad. The rise of the swell and the cantle can crush the ribs of a cowboy caught under a rolling bronc. That's why most bronc riders saw the horns off their regular saddles.

If the bronc rider pairs off with a horse he doesn't know he'll ask another cowboy where to take the rein. The information is never refused and is always as accurate as possible even though it may help a rival beat the man who gives it. In any other sport this kind of sportsmanship would probably win a trophy. In rodeo it's taken for granted.

Like the bareback rider, the saddle-bronc man must spur his horse over the shoulders on the first jump out of the chute. And the scoring is the same, with the horse marked from 65 to 85 points according to how well he bucks, and the cowboy scored from 1 to 20 on how well he keeps spurring and in general control of the situation.

The ride is longer, lasting ten seconds as compared to the eight-second limit in bareback riding, since saddle broncs, as a rule, are bigger and trickier than the bareback horses.

The saddle-bronc rider can't touch the horse with his free hand, can't change hands on the rein or wrap it around his riding hand, can't touch the saddle or the horn. And if he expects to win anything, he has to spur the horse every jump of the way, raking his rowels in full half circles from shoulder to flank.

Text and illustrations for these two pages are excerpts from RODEO cowboys, bulls, and broncos; by SAM SAVITT. For rodeo enthusiasts and for everyone who harbors a hankering for the West and for horses, author illustrator horseman, Savitt's books published by Doubleday & Co. Inc., are treasures of authenticated information and visual treats presented by a master illustrator.

Humane societies are ever present so the animals seldom get hurt. But there is no A.S.P.C.A. for cowboys. They are participants in a lottery that frequently pays off in fractures, pain, and sometimes death. Seldom do you see a cowboy who isn't wearing wrist braces, tape on a separated shoulder, or some other evidence of the beating he takes.

Nothing serious, though. If I ever get hurt I might quit." But they almost never do quit. You've heard the saying about old soldiers-they never die but just fade away. The same might hold true for the contesting cowboy competing today. A bronc rider in Tucumcari, New Mexico, told me he made a different rodeo every weekend throughout the whole year except for the month of February. He is sort of a journeyman athlete who covers a lot of ground in the saddle and out of it. Many times there are little or no returns except a slew of broken bones and a career that usually winds up when a man is in his thirties. But he loves his life. The sounds and smells of rodeo are in his blood and the thunder of it all surges through his veins like the mighty Colorado after the spring thaw. The action in the arena, the camaraderie of the brave, the feminine adoration that goes with heroism, and the element of gambling for big stakes all these keep him hooked. But no matter how desperate the contest, it never gets cutthroat. "In rodeo," bronc rider Bill Linderman explains, "if a competitor is broke we'll not only loan him transportation and entry fee, we'll throw in a saddle. Besides we'll tell him how the horse he draws bucksdope that might even help him edge us out of the money. Where else can you find sportsmanship like that?"

Midnight died at the age of thirty-six. Meanwhile, Five Minutes to Midnight, good in his own right, stayed much in the shadow of Midnight's meteoric career. When Midnight was retired, Five came into the limelight explosively.

Men in the know say Five was a better horse. Johnny Mullins watched both horses perform when they were starting their careers in Canada. "I always thought," he said, "that Five Minutes was, by far, the tougher of the two horses to ride. I saw him, through the years, buck off more good men and, generally, in less time than it would take old Midnight to get the job done." The late King Merritt, just about Mr. Rodeo himself, when interviewed in Cheyenne in 1943 said: "Five Minutes to Midnight is the greatest bucking horse that ever lived."

Five was a small horse and weighed much less than the big, raw-boned broncs of his timejust 900 pounds. He was run in from the range up in Canada in 1920 with a wild bunch that was destined for a pet food can. But a contractor (they followed the philosophy that you never know where a good bucker will come from) saw something about the little black horse and bought him from oblivion into a career that spanned twenty years. Five made all the important shows in Canada and the United States from coast to coast. Only fourteen riders ever managed to stay aboard the redoubtable Five in those two decades. It is this sort of record that brings out superlatives by those who know him.

In 1945 Five was to make his final blast from the chutes at the Pendleton Round Up. Afterwards, he was to be officially retired in public ceremony. Roy Calloway was chosen to take Five on his last ride. When the chute opened, "Five busted out and Calloway, to quote an old movie title, "went thata way."

The year following retirement Five died on the Elliot Ranch and was buried next to Midnight. Said Elliot, "They tore up the pattern none of the present-day buckers belong in the same league with Five Minutes to Midnight."

Both horses were later exhumed and buried on a slope just south of the National Rodeo Hall of Fame at Oklahoma City.

These horses, and others like them, drew enormous crowds. They came to cheer and watch a horse with a reputation throw his riders. Unless the horse put on a good show and the rider spurred and got every ounce of fight from his horse even though a ride was made the crowds and those behind the chutes would defend the horse and his reputation. A good ride a cowboy on a horse that bawled and bucked with all he had was something else. Even when a champion horse was finally ridden, if the if the ride was a good one, the rider received due credit and no feeling was ever lost for the horse. Clayton Dank's great ride on Steamboat, Bob Askins on No Name, Earl Thode on Five Minutes to Midnight, Breezy Cox on Wildfire, Fritz Truan on Hell's Angel were the coming together of acclaimed champs. These riders are vivid memories for those who nostalgically remember what has often been called the golden days of rodeo.

All who saw them agree that the horses were different then. There was more acrobatic, contortional bucking than is seen in today's rodeo stock. It's curious, too, and apropos that bucking, or pitching (the former a term of the northwest buckeroo; the later the prevalent expression of the southwest cowboy) seems to be a habit indigenous to horses on the American continent.

From the Argentine Pampas to the Canadian West, with gaucho or cowboy, bucking horses are characteristic of this hemisphere.

But just how bucking started and why it is not known elsewhere is not completely understood. One northwest buckeroo's quip might be as good as any: "Bucking," he said, "started from the back door of hell on a hot day, and came out on the run."

Maybe.

Other theories suggest that bucking grew out of the defensive kicking of wild horses against attacking wolves.

However, European and Asiatic horses running wild were once plagued by wolves, but few have been known to buck as American broncs, "with a belly full of bed springs."

Another suggestion is that American horses learned to buck from pitching or bucking off panthers. Panthers, cougars, of mountain lions were fond of horsemeat and usually dropped onto the back of a horse from a tree or high rock. The horse had only a slim chance before a big cat could break his neck. The only way to free himself was to suck his head beneath his front legs and buck for all he was worth.

This idea assumes that that offspring of horses who had gone through a lion-on-the-back experience passed on the trait to their offspring. As any student of biology knows, acquired characteristics are not inheritable. But as wise Frank Dobie observed, "If an animal never acquired anything new, how could evolution ever proceed?"

Bob Robertson, of Carson City, Nevada, has been a devout scholar of the procession of men and horses in history. He feels that the bucking instinct came from the Arabic countries, where hot-blooded horses had been developed for centuries. These Arab horses and their descendants in North Africa came to the Americas via the Moors who brought them into Spain. "But neither in Arabia or Africa," he says, "did the horses run feral or far from the domesticating hand of the Bedouins. The Spanish horses that came here and later ran wild, the true hot-blooded mustangs, developed this latent insinct to buck by the circumstances of their environment: by running wild and being challenged by men and predators."

Not only in the desert lands but in Europe, too, horses rarely have been known to buck; a crop hop, maybe, but then European horses are also handled by men from birth or are closely herded.

On the western ranges and the Pampas, horses ran wild or semi-wild until they were strong, robust and suspicious three or four-year-olds. Their survival was based on their own instincts and not on reliance upon man.

"This made the difference," Bob feels, "and when the mustang blood was consistently diluted by generations of imported cold-blooded stock into the American West, the blood and the temperament of the mustang changed. He lost the ability to hump his back, leap up and practically touch nose to tail."

Whatever the reason, the bucking horse, the stories about him and the folk tales (didn't Pecos Bill's horse toss Bill's bride over the lower horn of the moon?) belong to America.

But these range-tempered bucking horses are only onehalf the image. The early-day bronc rider, whose cowboy gentility was reserved for women and rarely for horses, is the other half. It is possible that their intimidation methods, which were not unlike the shock of a lion attack, might well have been the spark that started horses into frenzied bucking with a man on top.

True, not all busters encouraged bucking. Some ranchers would not permit every horse to be violently bucked out, since it was just as likely a man would be bucked off and the horse would have learned a very defensive mechanism. This would never do for horses destined for eastern markets. Horses used for routine ranch work, particularly in the times of large horse herds, remudas, were routinely and quickly "green broke." Each was "busted" by being thrown violently from a front leg catch with a lariat while running around the corral. It was tough on the horse, but it taught him something about ropes. Then, bridled and saddled and while still in a frenzy, the buster moumed with spurs and quirt and lashed into the horse. At that moment nothing was more terrifying to the raw bronc. He bawled, bucked, twisted and careened with all sorts of snake-like contortions. They could leave the ground in a violent leap and while in the air twist ends before they landed. Others could take a leap and twist sideways sunfishing or rear back and maybe fall over. Some were "spinners." After two or three jumps out of a chute he would buck in a tight circle while spinning left or right. The combination of spinning, bucking and backward motions as he hits the ground is often violent. Vertigo begins to whirl in the rider's head and he rarely can stay with the horse. "When you went off," Will James said, "you shook your head, trying to get back among the living." Then there was the pile driver, who burst into a series of leaps interrupted with stiff-legged landings on all fours. A staccato of these jolts gave a rider an earthquaking pounding. Not infrequently blood rushed from a rider's nose or mouth from the awful pounding.

Some horses never gave in, particularly those that did throw a few riders. They became clever and cantankerous, a bit more sure of themselves and far tougher to break.

Still, not all horses bucked violently. Often, after one or two rides, the horse, somewhat broken in spirit, was turned over to a cowboy for a slower education into cow work. But those that did buck violently made a bronc man earn his cost per head contract.

Rarely, but possibly, a bronc man would be killed. An autopsy on one rider who died after a side showed his liver had been tipped from its mooring.

A horse also could buck itself to a sudden death, as did one named McArthur Special during a rodeo. He burst a blood vessel and died while still carrying the saddle.

Seemingly, therefore, many horses learned to buck in desperation because of the manner of handling and because of their mustang blood. Statistically, it has been estimated that one horse in maybe five hundred became an outlaw brute and would "buck almost in his sleep." But that was in the days when thousands of wild horses ran loose on the public range.