Cowgirl Up! (12 page)

She subscribed to
Hoofs & Horns
magazine and imagined herself in each picture of the glamorous girls in fringed leather skirts.

Jane had a difficult home life, with her parents prone to go off for days to drinking and gambling parties. But they were adamantly opposed to Jane's rodeo aspirations. For a while she thought perhaps she should consider an alternate profession, but “pool playing offered little future for women except as a hobby. I did think there might be a future in some form of show business, but when I mentioned ballet, Mother objected, saying that toe-dancing would make my legs too muscular! The very fact that I was almost as light on my feet as a buffalo cow was not included in this protest. . . .

“Mother was sweet and gentle, but she never understood me,” Jane later related.

Jane did find solace in music, and every winter during school she would acquire some type of used musical instrument, from a harmonica to an accordion, a guitar, or a cornet. But in the spring, when she heard about a rodeo somewhere, the instrument was soon in the pawn shop.

In 1933 Jane graduated high school at age fourteen and that fall was the youngest freshman ever to enroll at Montana State University. “I'm afraid the sororities and college parties did not bring about the desired magical change my mother hoped for,” Jane wrote. “I could have worked my way through school had it seemed important enough at the time,” but after half a semester, she returned to the ranch.

In the spring of 1934, Jane boarded a bus to Wyoming to help a woman ex–bronc rider break colts, but her dad caught wind of her desertion and sent the sheriff to take her off the bus a few miles out of town. Jane was “banished” to the ranch, but once the calves were branded and the herd moved to summer pasture, there was a short lull before haying season started. The family drove to Billings for a Western celebration, but it was rained out.

As the family ate breakfast at the Stockman's Café before heading home, Jane saw a poster for a rodeo in Red Lodge in two days. “I deliberately kept Clint's [her dad's] head turned away.” Later she won a coin toss with him to “hang around for one more day.”

Jane caught a ride with a couple of cowboys to Red Lodge, where she met the Greenoughs. She wrote, “When Alice and Margie finished riding their broncs, they stood in front of the chutes, arms crossed, looking extremely regal and aloof as they peered out from under their ten-acre hats (as opposed to ten-gallons such as the one worn by us peons).” Jane said Margie was a “sweet gal,” but she was not as complimentary about Alice, saying the champion bronc rider “didn't want any other women to compete with her.”

The would-be cowgirl was “as awed by the famous family as everyone else was, so I just trailed around behind them, staring.”

The Burnett family moved into Lewistown that winter, and the next summer Jane invented the excuse of going to visit her grandfather on the ranch, but she instead headed for a rodeo in Wolf Point with a girlfriend, a “Romeo-magnet.”

“At the rodeo headquarters I began to question my decision to travel this far with no assurance of a job, and . . . the extra responsibility of another mouth to feed (to say nothing of her taste for expensive Scotch whiskey).”

The promoters suggested that Jane might be able to earn a few dollars in their “mount money” bareback riding event. A cowboy explained that there was no actual competition offered, but each saddle bronc rider was required to ride at least one bareback bronc every day for one dollar each. This had been designed to fill out their list of events, but none of them really wanted to participate.

“You oughta find a least one bronc rider, maybe more, who'd be glad to turn his bareback over to you and let you have the money,” the cowboy told Jane.

The transactions turned out to be surprisingly easy, and by the time Jane finished talking to the riders, she'd agreed to ride a total of eight broncs during the two-day show. “I leaned against the fence, still somewhat dazed at what I had done as I watched some cowboys shooting craps on a saddle-blanket behind the bucking chutes.”

Then she overheard, “Can you imagine them birds thinkin' we'd be stupid enough to ride them chute-fightin' barebacks fer a buck apiece?”

No wonder it had been so easy. She then learned that the promoters had searched the open country for green broncs that had never been inside a corral, much less a bucking chute. Jane began to wonder what she was in for.

“The one-woman rodeo I put on . . . was pretty wild,” Jane wrote. “I came out of the chute, bucked off, stumbled back, and prepared to mount another bronc.” She stayed until the end of the day and collected her four-dollar pay.

The next day, Jane was back for four more rides. “I crawled down on a big black chute-fighting bronc that had his ears laid back, waiting for me. His powerful muscles were quivering so much it was almost impossible for me to grip the surcingle. Or maybe it was not the horse that was shaking. After all, why in hell would he be afraid?”

The gate flew open and “it was immediately evident the black horse was not scared, even one little bit. He tossed me what felt like eighty-two feet, six and three-eighths inches into the air. The ground jumped up and caught me with a loud thud. I did not care much whether I got up or not.”

Seventeen-year-old Jane lay there, aching all over, “wishing bronc riders were allowed to cry.”

Despite the pain and bruises and humiliation, she continued to travel to rodeos, looking for bronc-riding jobs.

Traveling to Sheridan, Wyoming, Jane met a major obstacle. The rodeo promoter, a thin-faced man with high cheekbones and bright blue eyes, told her, “Sorry, little lady. We don't hire no women bronc riders.”

Jane was taken aback, but before she could protest, he added, “But I've got a job fer you if you can ride relay.”

“You bet,” Jane replied. “Just so I can try out the horses first.” Meanwhile she was hoping he would give a clue what was expected in a relay race. She'd never done it and had paid little attention to those events at other rodeos, being more concerned with the steer and bronc riding.

“Come with me, little lady,” the promoter, Barney, said. “We'll bring the horses out on the track right away. You won't need to change saddles, like they do in the men's relay—but then you know all that.”

“Yeah.” Jane nodded weakly. She was just about to admit she would never be able to get on those tall horses in a hurry, when Barney came to her rescue.

“C'mon, I'll give you a leg up, then when you've gone around once, I'll holler to let you know when it's time to start gettin' off. The horse'll pull into the next station by hisself and I'll be there to catch him and give you a leg up on the next one. Okay?”

Jane nodded again. Her mouth was too dry to speak. Up she went, Barney shouted, “Go!” and the horse took off.

“The wind and fear made my eyes water. My hair was streaming behind me,” Jane wrote. “I kept praying the horse knew what we were doing because I was numb. In what seemed like a fraction of a second, we had completed our first lap and I heard Barney shouting, ‘Start gettin' down!'”

Jane looked over the point of the big bay's shoulder and saw the ground flying past. No way was she getting off at that speed. While Barney kept yelling, “Get down!” she made another loop of the track.

As they approached the stands the second time, Barney gave an ultimatum. “You get down off 'n that horse right now, or so help me I'll shoot you off!”

That gave Jane the incentive and courage to try. With her left foot still in the stirrup, she swung her right leg over and squatted on the horse's side. Lo and behold, the bay began to pull over. “For the first time I felt some confidence. This was what the horse was trained to do.”

Then her foot slipped out of the left stirrup, and she was dragged across the dusty track until Barney caught the reins.

She was fired.

Back in Montana a few weeks later, she heard of a small one-day rodeo in an arena in the foothills near Lewistown. Jane caught a ride into town, located the promoter in a back booth at the Montana Tavern, and asked to participate, prepared with a list of her accomplishments to counter his objections.

“Sure,” he replied without looking up from some papers. “But you'll have to ride saddle broncs. I don't like to see you little gals trying to ride barebacks and steers.”

Ecstatic, Jane looked through the bars, finding a cowboy to take her out to the rodeo grounds. “Do you have your own hobbles and reins?” he asked.

“Hobbles?” Jane was taken aback. “The only hobbles I own are the ones I put on my saddlehorse when I let him graze.”

After the cowboy stopped laughing, he took her to a saddle shop for her gear. He held the leather straps outstretched and explained, “See how there's a loop at each end when they're buckled? Have somebody fasten one end through a stirrup on the far side . . . then bring the hobbles under his belly and buckle the other end into the stirrup on your side.”

“But why? How can you spur a horse with your stirrups tied down?” Jane asked, puzzled.

“Women bronc riders don't have to spur, kid. Didn't you know that? The idea is to make it possible for you to ride a rougher bronc . . . 'cause if your stirrups stay down next to his belly, all you gotta do is keep your feet in the stirrups and you got 'er made in the shade.”

Jane squirmed down into the saddle, and the cowboy handed her the reins (women were allowed two, while men rode with only one). “I tried to wiggle even deeper into the saddle. I shoved both feet into the stirrups and turned my toes outward. I had to get out of there fast. They waited for me to nod . . . the clue to open the gate. They waited. I froze.”

“You like rodeoin', kid?” the cowboy asked.

Jane nodded. That was the signal they needed. The gate swung open, and the roan lunged into the arena, bucking fast and kicking high. For the first few jumps, Jane flopped from the cantle to the swells of the saddle with no control. “Then a kind of rhythm seemed to take over, where my body was in kind of a rocking motion as he lunged and kicked. . . . I was actually riding!”

The pickup man rode up to help her off. He grabbed for the rein, but Jane kept jerking it out of his reach. “Damn it, Tony, leave me alone,” she yelled. “I found a horse I can ride, and I'm not gonna get off.”

Jane's saddle bronc riding career was launched, and she traveled the country, riding for mount money or arranging a “hat collection” for her performances. She was hooked.

Her ventures were not always successful. Once when she was sixteen, she rode to Lewistown and treated herself to a new silver satin shirt and black gabardine pants, hoping she might be chosen rodeo queen. She was not. That disappointment was topped by the promoter forbidding her to ride because she was too young. “You haven't any business riding broncs as tough as these. Not yet, anyway.”

Jane was too flabbergasted to tell him about all the steers and broncs—bareback and saddle—she'd already ridden since she was eleven.

Rodeo meant finding her niche in life “where I was accepted as one of the ‘hands' and made me feel like I finally belonged somewhere,” she said. Her rodeo career would take her all across the United States and into Mexico. “Rodeo people took such good care of me. They helped me rather than take advantage of me. I never felt like ‘the kid.'”

But she was also to get “in and out of fights, hospitals, jails and marriages; get whipped in several different states, bucked off in a few of them and divorced in a couple of others. All because I had ‘hired out for a tough hand' and thought I had to follow through without complaining.”

The road was a bumpy one for rodeo riders, sometimes sleeping six to a bed, wondering where the next dollar for food was coming from. But, Jane wrote, “No matter how broke I was, or what experiences I had in or out of the arena, I held on even tighter, just hoping the next rodeo would be the good one—where I'd ride a tough bronc, make a lot of money, and finally be accepted as a ‘top hand.'”

There was always that inner craving for excitement, despite the hardships and the danger. Danger is a matter of perspective, as Jane told of being terrified watching three women in a tight-rope act high above the arena without a net. But while she waited her turn to ride a bronc, the women approached her and asked why she did this dangerous thing—they were so frightened for her.

“You're afraid for me?” Jane was shocked. “Ladies, I wouldn't trade jobs with you for all the beer in Milwaukee!”

In
Hobbled Stirrups
she explained her feelings about riding:

On many occasions you lie awake the night before a rodeo and imagine each phase of easing down onto your bronc, taking your rein, and putting your feet into the stirrups. Your mouth gets dry and the fear is so real that the knots in your stomach muscles draw your knees right up under your chin.

And yet, oddly enough, when you get to the rodeo and your stock actually comes into the chute, you begin getting ready for your ride and feel more like you were looking through a telescope and watching someone else perform miles away from where you are.

I think most riders feel amazingly calm during this period but there is a kind of delayed reaction that does not take over until your ride is complete. Some riders' hands will shake, their lips begin to quiver, and nearly all of them want to talk, talk, talk—preferably about the ride they just completed, but any subject will do. There are others who don't want anyone to come near them until they have had a chance to return to normal. The physical strain is minor compared to the emotional stress.

I was always one of the “chatterers” both before and after a ride.