Cowgirl Up! (6 page)

But most of the English people were supportive of the performers and sent Marie letters, some addressed “To the Lame Cowgirl,” congratulating her on her rides and her spunk. Others swarmed around her asking for autographs, and some offered to pay her bus or train fare while the troupe traveled.

Marie received a letter from a Dr. Gibson of Aldershot, who said he had relatives in America and wondered if Marie might be a relative of his brother John in Alberta. “I was,” she wrote. “I had married his son.”

Dr. Gibson came to meet her and they “had a wonderful time” getting acquainted. He told Marie he didn't want anyone with the name Gibson to be alone and without care for her injuries.

The performers were nearly mobbed when they went out onto the streets of London. Eager crowds followed them, asking for autographs. One boy, about age ten, walked twenty-five miles to see the performance. He approached one of the men. “Please, Cowboy, I would love to see the rodeo and I got no money.” The rider got a burlap sack, put the boy in it, and carried him inside the arena over his shoulder.

During their stay in London, the cowgirls and cowboys were invited to several parties put on by English royalty—lords and ladies, princes and princesses. “They showed us the time of our life,” Marie wrote.

One party's theme was “Bucking Horse Palace.” Marie again met the Prince of Wales and danced with him. “We spent a lot of time talking,” Marie wrote, and she was able to meet the queen, who asked her to tell about the prince riding after the rodeo ceremonies in Saskatchewan in 1919. “It was a lovely afternoon,” Marie added.

Parties, dances, and sightseeing kept them all busy and in awe when they weren't riding. “Everything imaginable was to be seen,” she said. Marie also went to Paris to visit friends. “There was something new to see every day. Never too old to learn.”

Marie is said to have spoken five languages: French, Belgian, Cree, and Russian, as well as English, and was described as having a French accent.

The riders took several of the royals on a tour of the arena and chutes, showed them the horses and steers, and answered their many questions.

The troupe was pleased with the “wonderful crowd of people attending the shows,” the smallest of which was around thirty-five thousand and largest up to one hundred thousand. Wembley Stadium was “the best stadium I've ever worked,” Marie wrote.

After three weeks the show closed at Wembley, and Bea and Tommy Kirnan organized a show at the London Coliseum, then on to Dublin, Paris, and Brussels.

The troupe set sail for home around the seventh of July, and according to a news story of the departure, “there were boisterous scenes when the large party of cowboys and cowgirls embarked at the Royal Albert dock. The cowboys took with them many souvenirs, including several pigs, 12 dogs, two turtles and a rooster.” Marie had also been given the gift of a horse by the Prince of Wales. She wrote she was happy to head “for the good old U.S.A. I was sure glad to come home once more.”

As soon as Marie returned to the States, she and several others from the troupe set off for Cheyenne Frontier Days in Wyoming. She arrived one day late, and instead of riding one horse, she rode two. Crippled as she was from her London adventure, she nevertheless rode to the finish in a sensational battle on her broncs and won the Women's World Bronc Riding Championship award.

In quick succession the usual round of summer rodeos and stampedes followed. In Omaha a cowgirl was injured in the chute as she mounted the notorious horse Blue Dog, who reared and crushed her against the fence. Many men and women had attempted to ride Blue Dog and failed. Marie volunteered to ride the outlaw bronc. She mounted and rode him across the arena, proving once again that she could conquer the worst. Keyed up over the accident, the crowd went wild over Marie's ride.

In Great Falls in the summer of 1925, Marie was injured again. She had ridden a tall, rangy horse that gave her no challenge. She demanded to ride a “real horse” and made a bid for Scar Face after he'd hurled a rider to the dust.

Catching her foot in the fence as the horse came out of the chute, Marie's boot was torn half off. Off-balance now, she was thrown to the ground. The horse then whirled half around and lashed out at Marie lying on the ground, hitting her just above the eye and on her arm. A fraction of an inch closer, and her career would've ended.

Marie would not give up, however, and the next day rode another bronc, using only one foot in the stirrup because of the injury to the other. The crowd hailed her as heroine of the day for her nerve and skill.

Then, at a rodeo in San Antonio in 1928, she rode a sorrel, Wild Fire, who after three jumps, turned a somersault on top of her. Marie was carried unconscious from the arena. The doctor at the first-aid station administered ammonia and whiskey and was going to send her to the hospital. She refused and continued with the rodeo, despite a head so swollen her hat didn't fit. Then she rode in the relay race but remembered little about the race, only the ringing in her ears, occasional surges of pain, and swaying in the saddle. Later she did go to the hospital and discovered she had a broken jaw, which had to be wired shut.

She would meet Wild Fire again, and the next time rode him to top money, even though she injured her knee coming out of the chute.

“Well, it's all in the game,” Marie wrote in her journal. “If you want to keep at it you got to take it as it comes. It's a good life, lots of sport if you don't weaken.”

Marie went on to win the Women's World Bronc Riding Championship at the Cheyenne Frontier Days in 1925 and the world championship title at Madison Square Garden in 1927 and 1931.

“A woman is like a tea bag—you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.”

—E
LEANOR
R
OOSEVELT

A
fter Fannie Sperry's first successful bronc ride at age fourteen, she was hooked. She and her best friend, Christine Synness, egged each other on and convinced their parents to let them ride at another exhibition in Wolf Creek. Each girl took her own wild horse she had captured herself, but Fannie was horrified to see Christine's brothers “hobble” or tie her stirrups together under the horse's belly. This was a common practice to make it easier for women to stay in the saddle—once she put her feet in the stirrups, it was like being tied onto the horse. But that also meant she couldn't get off the horse without help.

Having learned to ride like a man, Fannie preferred riding “slick,” stirrups not hobbled, one rein and one hand free. “It [hobbling] is too dangerous! She [Christine] could get hung up,” she protested. Fannie later wrote, “Mine is the reputation of being the only woman rodeo rider who rode her entire career unhobbled. I confess it is a record I am proud of.”

Besides, she explained, “I never have been able to consider it sporting to ride hobbled, for it isn't giving the horse a fifty-fifty chance.”

That day, Fannie rode “slick,” competing evenly with the men, and when the exhibition was over, she was declared the winner. The organizer, Dave Anson, passed his hat and gave Fannie $2.35 in “winnings.”

Although her mother declared that Fannie was not to put on such a “risky and public display” again, there was no stopping the young cowgirl. When Anson approached her the next year for the Fourth of July rodeo, she did respect her mother's wishes and turned him down for bronc riding, but she suggested he put on a pony-express race, like the ones Buffalo Bill Cody ran.

He agreed. This show differed from Cody's in that the racers rode thoroughbreds and the women had to change horses four times during the race, at times even changing their own saddles. Christine won that first race, and Anson invited them to sign up for the bucking events at the state fair.

“Why not?” Christine replied.

Fannie's mother gave her daughter a sharp look.

“Please, Ma,” Fannie pleaded. “I can't quit riding. Besides, I'm the best. Everyone says so. I can't quit now.” Her mother reluctantly agreed.

In October 1903 the Montana State Fair in Helena added two fifteen-year-old girls to the roster of bucking-horse riders. Both did well and began receiving invitations to ride in other fairs, roundups, and stampedes, sponsored by the Capital Stock and Food Company of Helena.

Some of the seasoned riders grumbled about women riding in men's events, saying things like, “It don't make us look too good when you sage hens ride our broncs,” but Fannie and Christine ignored the comments and continued to ride.

Walter Wilmot, a show promoter from Butte, offered Fannie a contract for one hundred dollars a week plus expenses. At her urging, he also signed Christine Syness and Dorothy and Margaret Getts of Cascade. For the next several years, the “Montana Girls” enjoyed traveling the country as champion relay racers.

One newspaper article from Grand Rapids, Michigan, described the five foot, seven inch, 125-pound Fannie:

The daring girl is a typical daughter of the Montana Ranches. She is of medium height, lithe, supple and graceful. Her pretty face is bronzed by the sun and winds of the west. . . . She rides ordinarily with the easy, graceful swing of the range rider, but when in a race she sits far up on her mount's withers, . . . with her head along the horse's neck, and skirts held as closely as possible to the racer's sides, that as little resistance as possible may be offered by the wind.

The possibility of spills—especially when the riders dismounted at high speed or leapt from one horse to another at full gallop—created spectator excitement at the races. Although Fannie escaped injury, at one race in the Midwest, Christine's horse charged out of the chute with its blindfold still on and crashed through the fence. She escaped with only a few bruises, however.

Their experience was not all danger and injury, however. Fannie later related a story about one race where a man dressed in a wig and women's clothing took the place of a woman rider who'd had too much to drink. All the women beat him. “He just didn't have the knack for swinging on and off. We teased him and called him ‘Miss Wigs.'”

Before Wilmot took the girls on tour, he convinced Fannie to appear in a Wild West show at Butte's Columbia Gardens amusement center. In addition to racing, he talked her into riding a bronc, an outlaw horse named Tracy.

The
Butte Miner
reported: “If there ever was an imp of his satanic majesty incarnated in the disguise of a horse, Tracy is one. Tracy bounded into the limelight, carrying Miss Sperry. Miss Sperry may be a broncho buster, and she proved she is game to the core . . . but she had about as much chance to ride Tracy as Jim Jeffries [a well-known Montana heavyweight boxer] would have of earning a decision in a bout with a circular saw.”

When the bronc came out of the chute, he suddenly stopped cold in his tracks and launched Fannie over his head. The
Miner
continued: “She made several revolutions in the air, and then struck the ground with a dull thud. Women screamed, for it seemed that the frail equestrienne had been dashed to death. But Miss Sperry arose gamely, and approached the black demon, who . . . was savagely pawing up the dirt. . . . It was a rare exhibition of grit, and two thousand voices howled their approval.”

Fannie tried to remount, but the men in the arena would not let her. Later a cowboy rode Tracy, after which the bronc broke away from the cowboys, crashed through the stockade, and sent a spectator hurling through the air and to the hospital with a broken leg.

During her travels with Wilmot and also the J. Ellison Carroll Wild West Show of Texas, Fannie began regularly exhibiting bucking broncs as well as relay riding.

The Montana Girls won many races, and Fannie set race records and won numerous awards, including a medal for riding in a twenty-four-mile relay at the Minnesota State Fair. Despite the rigors of tough competition and traveling, Fannie seemed to thrive. She was doing what she loved best—working with horses. But in 1907 their promoter decided to take another business opportunity elsewhere and get out of racing.

Then, at Helena's Lewis and Clark Anniversary Celebration in 1907, Fannie entered a bucking horse competition. Defeating other women in the contest, she won a gold medal and was declared Lady Bucking Horse Champion of Montana, spurring her on to compete nationally in bronc riding.

Fannie's next big thrill was going to the newly organized Pendleton Roundup in 1910. There she met bronc rider Bertha Kaepernick Blancett—the first woman to compete against men in Cheyenne, in 1887—and Lucille Mulhall, Fannie's idol since she'd read about her in
Wild West
magazine.

The sport of rodeo riding was still relatively new, and the number of women rough-stock riders was especially small, so Fannie's reputation spread.

In 1912 Guy Weadick, an American trick roper who participated in the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Real Wild West Show, organized the first Calgary Stampede. He invited Fannie to compete in the rodeo, along with several other top women competitors, including his wife Florence (also known as Flores) LaDue, Lucille Mulhall, Bronc-Busting Champion Goldie St. Clair of Wyoming, Bertha Blancett of Arizona, Dollie Mullins, and Hazel Walker of California. He enticed Fannie by saying she could probably win “some big money” and “entries for the Ladies is free.”