A Belle of Old Fort Sumner

A Belle of Old Fort Sumner

Walter Noble Burns was onto something. A 56-year-old Chicago journalist, Burns had become intrigued by a long-dead and largely forgotten outlaw named Billy the Kid. He suspected the Kid’s bloody career might make a good story. So, in the summer of 1923, Burns traveled...
Reality Cowboy Stars

Reality Cowboy Stars

This April 26, Chris “Booger” Brown, Cody Harris and Bubba Thompson saddle up for their third season of INSP’s The Cowboy Way—Alabama, the most entertaining and least contrived of “reality shows,” which follows three hard working cowboy ranchers and their families, an...
The Cup Spinning Sequence

The Cup Spinning Sequence

When then-Director Kevin Jarre first spoke to Val Kilmer about the gun-twirling, cup-spinning scene in 1993’s Tombstone, the actor who played John H. “Doc” Holliday was a bit apprehensive. “I was very concerned that the whole movie would be in trouble if I didn’t beat...
Shine Smith

Shine Smith

Hugh Dickson “Shine” Smith was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1912 and assigned to a church in Coleman, Texas where he became a “cowboy preacher for four years. He also became savvy in the cattle business. By 1917 he was ministering to the Navajo in northern...
Suckers on the Strip

Suckers on the Strip

Louis Mueller always said both Sooners and Suckers participated in the 1893 Cherokee Strip Land Run, and my impression was that he put himself in the latter category. Louis, a German immigrant, was my mother’s father. He had just turned 21 at the time of the land run....