Skillful Cowboy (2025)

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03/09/2025

Alice came hollerin’ into this world back in July of 1934, out on the wide Nebraska Sandhills, where the land rolls on forever and the sky don’t quit. She weren’t born to no easy life, no sir. From the get-go she was ridin’ horses, mendin’ shirts for rodeo boys, and learnin’ that a cowgirl’s hands gotta be just as tough as her spirit.

Years down the trail she hitched her life to Sid Cotton, and together they carved out a ranchin’ life that’d test the best of ‘em. Alice wasn’t the kind to sit on the porch and watch the world go by. She cooked for hay crews ‘til the sun slid low, canned enough pickles and preserves to last a hard winter, and still found the gumption to saddle up come daybreak.

Folks say she could heel and drag calves clean into her eighties, spurs jinglin’, rope singin’, horse steady under her. Didn’t matter if the work was heavy or the weather mean, Alice Cotton never shied off. Her table was always set for one more plate, her home always open, and her smile just as ready as her rope hand.

Come September of 2024, cancer might’ve taken her breath, but it never took her grit. When she passed, more than a hundred and fifty souls gathered in a hay meadow, horses lookin’ on from the trees, to lay her to rest the cowboy way, out under the sky she loved best. No steeple, no polished pews, just the good earth of Nebraska and the people who knew her worth.

So if you ever find yourself ridin’ through the Sandhills at sundown, and you catch a glimpse of a strong hand on the reins, a steady seat in the saddle, don’t be spooked. That’s just Alice Cotton ridin’ tall, remindin’ us all what a true cowgirl looks like.

26/08/2025

Doc warn’t no real doctor, leastways not the kind tendin’ to coughs an’ fevers. He was born James M. Riley back in the mid-1800s, but out here on the frontier, nicknames stick quicker’n a burr in a horse’s tail. Folks called him “Doc,” though he was better known as a horse thief, outlaw, an’ all-around troublemaker.

He run his game mostly through Nebraska, Wyoming, an’ Colorado in the 1870s an’ 1880s. Now, horse stealin’ might not sound like much to modern ears, but back then it was as low-down a crime as rustlin’ cattle. A man’s horse was his lifeline, lose it an’ you might as well be left for dead. Doc had a whole gang helpin’ him sn**ch horses, and for a spell, they were the terror o’ the Plains.

He was slick, too, folks say he could steal a string of ponies right out from under another man’s nose, vanishin’ into the sandhills afore sunrise. Lawmen chased him far and wide, but catchin’ Doc was like tryin’ to rope the wind. He did some time behind bars, but somehow always managed to wriggle free or earn himself a pardon.

Later in life, he tried turnin’ over a new leaf, runnin’ saloons and such in Nebraska towns like Gordon. But an outlaw’s past has a way of trailin’ behind, and Doc never quite shook his reputation. He passed on in 1913, leavin’ behind tales that still get swapped ‘round campfires when the night’s dark an’ the coyotes sing.

So that’s Doc Middleton for ya: a horse thief, a gambler, a saloon man, and one o’ them frontier characters who walked the line ‘twixt legend and lawlessness.

21/08/2025

Lucille Mulhall, the “Queen of the Range,” some called her, an’ rightly so.

Born back in 1885 down Oklahoma way, she wasn’t raised for no parlor life. Nope, Lucille cut her teeth on the open prairie, her daddy bein’ Colonel Zack Mulhall, a rancher with a taste for showin’ off cowboy skills. While most young ladies were learnin’ needlepoint an’ piano, Lucille was sittin’ tall in the saddle, ropin’ calves, an’ ridin’ broncs that’d throw a man flat quicker than a greased rattler.

By the time she was barely sproutin’ into womanhood, Lucille was out-showin’ near every cowpoke that dared step in the arena. Folks claim she could drop a loop on a steer quicker ‘n you could say “whoa.” Some even say Will Rogers himself, before he was a famous humorist, rode alongside her, learnin’ tricks of the rope an’ ridin’ from that spitfire gal.

Now, the world back then didn’t rightly know what to make of a woman ridin’ roughstock an’ ropin’ wild cattle, but Lucille didn’t give two shakes o’ a coyote’s tail ‘bout what was “proper.” She blazed her own trail, struttin’ her skills in Wild West shows, drawin’ crowds from St. Louis to New York. President Theodore Roosevelt even tipped his hat to her, callin’ her the greatest girl roper alive.

Her life wasn’t just a parade of cheers, though. The road was long, rough, an’ dust-choked. Bein’ a lady in a man’s world meant she had to prove herself twice over, but prove it she did, time and again. She showed that the grit in a cowgirl’s veins runs just as deep as any cowboy’s.

Lucille Mulhall rode hard ‘til her last day in 1940 the 21st of December no less, leavin’ behind a legacy that still rides tall in the saddle. Without her, the very notion of the American cowgirl mighta never took hold the way it did.

So, when ya see a cowgirl ropin’ or ridin’ in the rodeo today, tip your hat, friend, ‘cause chances are, she’s ridin’ in the tracks Lucille Mulhall laid down near a century ago.

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