Black Cowboys of the Old West by Tricia Martineau Wagner

Author:Tricia Martineau Wagner
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780762767427
Publisher: TwoDot

BULLDOGGER EXTRAORDINAIRE

Bill Pickett

The chase was on. Bill Pickett gave the steer a head start before kicking his spurs into Spradley’s flank. Then it was fair game as he and his horse pursued the beast around the rodeo’s arena. As soon as Pickett came up alongside the steer, he leapt off his horse and catapulted through the air. As he somersaulted over the length of the steer’s back, he grabbed its horns with his hands and mustered every ounce of strength he had to hold on. Next, he dug his heels into the ground and twisted the horns so hard that the animal’s head jerked toward him. Pickett’s face was directly in front of the steer’s snout. A bewildered audience watched in disbelief as Bill Pickett sunk his teeth into the snotty upper lip of the bull. He bit down hard on the steer’s sensitive upper lip, holding it in a vise-like grip while simultaneously throwing his arms in the air.

The fight was not over. Pickett used his strong jaw and neck muscles to pull the steer closer and he fell over backward. The motion unbalanced the steer, which was still lip-locked to Pickett. The bull flipped over and came crashing down to the ground with a sudden thud. Completely subdued, the steer was frozen in place with all four legs pointing skyward. PickettBill Pickett held his lip-grip and continued to triumphantly raise his arms in the air to prove the act was performed hands free and to demonstrate he had total control. Stunned by the fall, the ferocious animal looked at its conqueror eye to eye, desperately wanting to fling Pickett through the air, but realizing he was going nowhere.

The crowd that had been silenced gasped in disbelief. Then the arena erupted with the roar of applause and cheers. The spellbound audience had come to the rodeo doubting the tall tale that a cowboy could throw a steer with his teeth, yet they had just witnessed the great Bill Pickett in action, performing his version of steer wrestling. After a cowhand roped the steer, Pickett rose, wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his shirt, dusted off his chaps, and took a bow. His rodeo act of lip-locking a steer was called “bulldogging,” and he was the master.

William M. Pickett was born on December 5, 1870, in the Jenks-Branch community on the Travis County line, thirty miles northwest of Austin, Texas. His skin was black, but he was of African, Native American, and Caucasian descent. Bill never knew slavery as his parents had when they belonged to the Bartons of South Carolina. His parents, Virginia Elizabeth Gilbert and Thomas Jefferson Pickett, had thirteen children: five boys and eight girls. Bill, the second eldest, loved growing up on a ranch around horses. His schooling went through the fifth grade, and then his education continued, cowboy style.

At the age of fifteen, Bill worked as a cowhand on area ranches and mastered the skills all cowboys needed: how to rope, lasso, and work cattle.

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