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New West Book Review

Margot Kahn’s “Horses That Buck”

By Jenny Shank, 5-26-08

Horses That Buck: the Story of Champion Bronc Rider Bill Smith
By Margot Kahn
University of Oklahoma Press
194 pages, $24.95

I grew up going to the National Western Stock Show in Denver and Cheyenne’s Frontier Days, but I never knew much about the rodeo cowboys that I saw—where they came from, what they did when they weren’t riding broncos or bulls at these big showcases.  Margot Kahn’s Horses That Buck fills in the gaps for me through the life story of one cowboy, Bill Smith, who grew up in Bearcreek, Montana in 1941, moved to Cody, Wyoming as a teenager, and after many years of failure, broken bones, and living out of his car, rose to become a three-time World Champion Saddle Bronc rider. 

Kahn’s subject is compelling both because of his skill and because of the way he distinguished himself from other cowboys: Smith wasn’t prone to drunken carousing after a win, he wasn’t a particularly stylish rider--he just got the job done, and he carefully studied horses, keeping track of their moves in a notebook, sort of the Moneyball approach to rodeo, something no one else at the time did.

As she explains in the preface, Kahn met Smith when he was giving a horse training clinic at a Colorado ranch where her family was vacationing.  She was struck by the laconic cowboy and almost on a whim, it seems, she decided to write a book about him, and spent seven years researching Horses That Buck.  She admits she was pretty green starting out, having never seen a rodeo, but she studied her subject exhaustively, and provides a clear, detailed portrayal of the rodeo world and Bill Smith’s place in it.

Bill Smith was destined to love horses: he grew up in a horsey place in very horsey times.  Kahn writes that in Bearcreek, Montana, when Smith was a boy, “the town had no fences, and a boy could ride any horse he could catch…Bill perfected his horse-catching skills in grade school,” when he’d grab a horse to make the mile-and-a-half trip home from school.  There was a summer rodeo in nearby Red Lodge, and in 1951 when Smith was ten, he snuck in and watched hometown world champion Bill Linderman compete.  Kahn notes that after World War II, “cowboys appeared everywhere on television and the silver screen.” Even thought the days of open-range cowboys had long since passed, the cowboy mystique was thriving.

Kahn explains how rodeos developed when open-range cowboys in the 1800’s gathered to put on contests of skills that they used in their work.  This gradually evolved into “competitions hosted by local communities,” and by the time Bill Smith started riding broncs, there was an elaborate network of such small town rodeos, and cowboys crisscrossed the country trying to make their names and move up to the larger, big money rodeos.

Smith moved to Clark, Wyoming (north of Cody) when he was a teenager, and began to compete in the local rodeo that the home of Buffalo Bill hosted every night of the week.  Smith didn’t look promising at first, but he gradually improved, in part because of his careful records:

“Instead of always asking the other guys what one horse or another was like, Bill bought a small brown notebook to keep in his shirt pocket.  After every ride he recorded the name of the horse he rode, the score he received (if any), and the animal’s characteristics—not the color or conformation, but its pattern and style of bucking.”

In this way, Smith began to learn more than could be recorded through simple recollection and story-swapping.

In 1961, Smith was good enough that he bought a membership in the Rodeo Cowboys Association, allowing him to enter sanctioned contests around the country.  He determined to try to make his living at rodeo.  As tough as the odds were, it doesn’t seem such a terrible gamble to take, with the only employment readily available for high-school-educated men in the area either to toil in the coal mines (which had destroyed Smith’s father’s lungs) or in the equally dangerous oil fields.  Smith’s career got off to an auspicious start at the Cheyenne Frontier Days, known as the “Daddy of Them All,” where he took first place in saddle bronc riding and won the Rookie of the Year title.

Smith had ups and downs for the next several years, winning just enough to keep him in gas money and usually food, gradually improving his skills and rising in the national standings until he won his first Saddle Bronc World Champion title in 1961.  Meanwhile, Smith married and the marriage faltered, something that is easy to understand because he was home only a few weeks a year as he pursued his dream.  Kahn follows him through the rest of his career, his two subsequent world championships, a divorce and a new love, his gradual realization that it was time to quit riding broncos, and his establishment of a new career as a horse trainer and breeder.

Kahn brings the reader into the rodeo world with her descriptions, such as this one of what a photograph of a winning bronc rider in action looks like:

“When the pictures capture it right, man and horse look like a tilted Y: the man’s legs almost blending into the horse’s shoulders, as if they would continue down into the forefeet, as if he is becoming a centaur.”

I was struck by how much in common the life of a rodeo cowboy has with that of an aspiring artist or performer.  The people that pursue these fields are gripped with passion for them, and feel that they have no other choice, that it’s something they must do, and most of them live near the poverty line, traveling like vagabonds, going wherever they need to chase their dream.  Kahn’s Horses That Buck capably illuminates the rodeo world through the life of one dedicated bronc rider.

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By Jenny Shank, 5-26-08 | comments (5) | email story | print story

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