Cowgirl Up! (7 page)

An estimated eighty thousand people attended the first Stampede parade, an astonishing number, considering Calgary's population at the time was just over sixty thousand people. The
Calgary Herald
reported that one hundred thousand attended the six-day event: the first large-purse (twenty thousand dollars) rodeo and a milestone in rodeo history.

As Fannie and her mother arrived, they were horrified to learn that a wild bronc, Red Wing, had just thrown and stomped a cowboy to death. Leaden skies and relentless rain reflected the mood of the gathering. On Fannie's first day her bronc seemed immediately defeated by the muddy quagmire; he merely crowhopped a bit and then came to a standstill.

The next day Fannie drew a wild bronc who gave her the opportunity to show off her skills, but Goldie St. Clair had made a spectacular ride that day and was favored to win. Fannie needed an edge.

Then, on the last day of the rodeo, Fannie drew a slip of paper with the name of her bronc: Red Wing. Chills surely must have raced up her spine as she read that.

Despite the bronc's recent history, Fannie felt her draw was lucky—such a notorious horse could add points to her score. The crowd gasped as her ride was announced.

Fannie positioned herself in the saddle, all the while talking to the horse and trying to stroke his mane. “Okay, Red Wing, let's make a name for both of us,” she said. “Let 'er buck!”

Red Wing came out of the chute on his hind legs, bucking, sidestepping, and twisting. Fannie's signature black braids bounced to the rhythm of the horse.

Fannie's ride stunned the crowd, and they whistled and clapped and stomped their boots on the wood bleachers. She had surpassed Goldie's earlier ride, and this would go down in rodeo history as one of the best rides ever made by a man or a woman. She was crowned Lady Bucking Horse Champion of the World, winning one thousand dollars in cash, a three-hundred-dollar gold belt buckle, and a hand-tooled saddle.

Fannie swept off her hat and bowed. Then she searched the stands for her mother, Rachel, and spotted her sitting in the royal box with the Duke of Connaught (the governor-general of Canada).

Later a reporter asked Fannie if she was scared when she came out of the chute atop that killer bronc. She replied, “You just forget about being scared when you ride horses.”

When asked by the Stampede officials what she planned to spend her winnings on, she told them, “I'm going to buy a piece of railroad land for my father.” Her new friends at the Stampede passed the hat and presented her with another eight hundred dollars to put toward the land.

Following her success at Calgary, Fannie became an even bigger celebrity in Montana and was much in demand at fairs and horse shows. Her fame and striking looks attracted many would-be suitors, but as “Kid” Young, a Blackfoot Valley rancher remembered, “Beaus stood in line like kids at a Saturday matinee to get a chance to dance with Fannie. You were lucky if you ever got a turn. But none of the young fellows turned Fannie's head. She was too interested in broncs and arena excitement to care about dates.”

But at the Deer Lodge Fair in 1912, she met Bill Steele, a man ten years her senior, who worked as a rodeo clown and was as interested in rodeo as Fannie. He was also the first man who'd captured Fannie's interest. They were married April 16, 1913.

The
Helena Herald
reported the event:

Miss Fannie Sperry Wedded to Horseman

World's Champion Woman Bronco Buster Married to W. S. Steele
Miss Fannie E. Sperry of Beartooth was married here yesterday afternoon to Wallace S. Steele, a horseman of Deer Lodge. The wedding took place in the apartments of relatives in the Diamond Block. Mr. and Mrs. Steele will reside on Mr. Steele's large ranch near Deer Lodge.

Although Fannie normally preferred to wear well-worn divided leather skirts, on her wedding day she wore a deep-blue gabardine gown with a high lace collar, a flounce that concealed a plunging neckline, and a red rose corsage Bill had presented her.

When Fannie was asked later in life if it was love at first sight, she laughed. “I don't remember! [But] thank God the man who did love me . . . was a horseman, or our marriage would have been doomed before we started.”

Fannie and Bill spent their honeymoon at a roundup at the Elliott Ranch near Deer Lodge and then continued rodeoing with C. B. Irwin's Wild West Show.

At a rodeo in Sioux City, Iowa, Fannie drew the saddle bronc Hot Shot. As she rode him to a standstill, he stumbled, fell, and pinned her. The crowd gasped, but Fannie rose, stood uncertainly for a moment, then fainted in Bill's arms.

Despite a badly sprained hip and back from that event, Fannie won her second Woman's Champion Bronco Buster title at Winnepeg later that summer, winning one thousand dollars and elevating her status back home as Montana's most popular athlete. She also easily won Montana State Lady Bucking Horse Champion again in Miles City in 1914 and came in second to Bertha Blancett at the Pendleton Roundup.

Fannie said later, “I never turned down a horse in my life, but I never disproved the saying, ‘'Tain't a rider never been throwed, nor a horse that can't be rode.'”

The next year Bill and Fannie organized their own Wild West show and stock company. With her prize money from the Miles City Roundup in 1914, Fannie ordered a split riding skirt of brown-and-white calfskin from Al Furstnow, a well-known Miles City saddle maker. Wearing her fine new skirt and mounted on Silvertail in her prize saddle, Fannie was ready to headline in the Powder River Wild West Show. (This riding skirt is still in excellent shape and on display at the family museum near Helena.)

Bill rode ahead around the state, promoting the shows, and because Fannie was a hero in Montana, people flocked from miles around to see her ride. Fannie showcased her skills on fast horses and bronc riding, and Bill offered twenty-five dollars to anyone in the audience who could ride the same bucking horses his wife did. Seldom did he have to pay.

Also putting on shooting exhibitions, Fannie would shoot the ashes off Bill's cigar and break china eggs he held between his fingers.

In 1915 the Steeles performed at the Rocky Mountain Stampede at Banff, Alberta, and the next year traveled with the Passing of the West show, which included rodeo stars Ben “PackSaddle” Greenough (Alice and Margie's father), Lucille Mulhall, and Vera McGinnis.

After this show ended, Guy Weadick invited the Steeles to New York City at the Sheepshead Bay Speedway Stampede. Fannie competed in bronc riding against seven of the best cowgirls in the country and ran relay races against the nation's top women racers. She also rode Brahma bulls and was one of the few riders who successfully rode the outlaw bronc Midnight.

Honored guest Theodore Roosevelt told the
New York Times
he was impressed with the female riders, but he was not keen on women riding bucking horses; he was afraid they would seriously injure themselves.

On the way home they performed in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Kansas City. In Chicago they met and performed with Lucille Mulhall, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Bill Pickett, the famous black cowboy who introduced “bulldogging” to rodeo. Then, at a Milwaukee fair, Fannie wowed the audience by riding six consecutive broncs.

In 1917 Fannie and Bill performed in the Great Northern Montana Stampede in Havre, where Fannie met with tough competition but won the bucking horse contest. Then they went on to Cheyenne's Frontier Days rodeo and the Calgary Stampede. It was the last year Fannie and Bill participated in large-scale rodeos. In 1919 they bought a ranch at Jackson Creek southeast of Helena and for the next few years just traveled Montana with their own small show.

Fannie continued to compete until she was thirty-eight, but after twenty years of being a rodeo performer, dreams of future championships had lost their appeal and the applause of the crowds wasn't enough anymore.

After meeting Dick Randall, who owned the OTO Guest Ranch near Gardiner, Bill came up with the idea to start a dude ranch. “He and his wife take in city folks and show them how to ride, hunt, and fish,” Bill told Fannie. “Lots of ranchers are making money packing dudes into the backcountry. The way I see it, no reason we can't do the same.”

Fannie jumped at the idea. “I think we could. We have all the qualifications.”

In 1925 they sold their Jackson Creek property and bought a ranch on Arrastra Creek near Helmville, in Bill's favorite valley. Deer and elk tracks welcomed them to a hunters' retreat nestled among giant pine, fir, and tamarack in the mountain wilderness.

After the Bozeman Roundup in September, Fannie hung up her spurs, although she continued giving exhibitions into her fifties. A former neighbor in the Beartooths lamented, “The cowgirls' bucking won't amount to much without you.”

“Not many women in bronc riding these days anyway. Most of the stampedes have quit the cowgirls' bucking-horse event,” Fannie told him. “They say the sport is too dangerous for women.”

The Steeles opened their guest ranch that fall, and Fannie became the first licensed female outfitter in Montana. To supplement their income while they built up their business, Bill got a job with the Montana Fish and Game Department to stock area streams and lakes with fish.

That left Fannie to guide their visitors into the Rocky Mountain wilderness, which she continued until well into her seventies. She loved teaching inexperienced riders to feel the partnership between them and their horses, to show them the contentment in this way of life and the beauty of the wild country.

The couple remained childless, except for Bill's son from an earlier marriage. Later, one of Fannie's nieces told
Montana
magazine writer Beth Judy she was “glad that Fannie married Bill, because she could keep on riding whenever she wanted. She wasn't going to go for raising kids and farming.”

Inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1975 and the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1978, Fannie said, “Sometimes it takes a lot of grit to do what you want to do, but I can't see how people can stand the monotony of doing work at which they are not happy.”

The 1920s continued to allow Montana's cowgirls to find fame and excitement in the arena, showing the world they could ride as well as the men.

A hardscrabble life, backbreaking work, and a sense of perseverance trained the Montana cowgirls for the danger and risk, as well as opportunity and excitement, of rodeo competition. Each one had her own difficulties to overcome to reach the pinnacle of her career.

“Anything a cowboy can do, we can do and better.”

—T
HE
B
RANDER
S
ISTERS

T
he hot sun beat down on the teenage girl's back and sweat beaded on her forehead. She gripped the handles of the plow with blistered hands as it bit and bucked through the rocky earth on the steep hillside and then tipped over. Violet Brander tucked wisps of her reddish blond hair under her hat, wiped the perspiration from her face, set her legs wide, and tried to right the two-way plow. Although she stood an impressive five foot, eleven inches, she was of slender build. She groaned and struggled, but the plow wouldn't budge.