Cowgirl Up! by Heidi Thomas Page B

hobbles under his belly and buckle the other end into the stirrup on your side.”
    â€œBut why? How can you spur a horse with your stirrups tied down?” Jane asked, puzzled.
    â€œWomen bronc riders don’t have to spur, kid. Didn’t you know that? The idea is to make it possible for you to ride a rougher bronc . . . ’cause if your stirrups stay down next to his belly, all you gotta do is keep your feet in the stirrups and you got ’er made in the shade.”
    Jane squirmed down into the saddle, and the cowboy handed her the reins (women were allowed two, while men rode with only one). “I tried to wiggle even deeper into the saddle. I shoved both feet into the stirrups and turned my toes outward. I had to get out of there fast. They waited for me to nod . . . the clue to open the gate. They waited. I froze.”
    â€œYou like rodeoin’, kid?” the cowboy asked.
    Jane nodded. That was the signal they needed. The gate swung open, and the roan lunged into the arena, bucking fast and kicking high. For the first few jumps, Jane flopped from the cantle to the swells of the saddle with no control. “Then a kind of rhythm seemed to take over, where my body was in kind of a rocking motion as he lunged and kicked. . . . I was actually riding!”
    The pickup man rode up to help her off. He grabbed for the rein, but Jane kept jerking it out of his reach. “Damn it, Tony, leave me alone,” she yelled. “I found a horse I can ride, and I’m not gonna get off.”
    Jane’s saddle bronc riding career was launched, and she traveled the country, riding for mount money or arranging a “hat collection” for her performances. She was hooked.
    Her ventures were not always successful. Once when she was sixteen, she rode to Lewistown and treated herself to a new silver satin shirt and black gabardine pants, hoping she might be chosen rodeo queen. She was not. That disappointment was topped by the promoter forbidding her to ride because she was too young. “You haven’t any business riding broncs as tough as these. Not yet, anyway.”
    Jane was too flabbergasted to tell him about all the steers and broncs—bareback and saddle—she’d already ridden since she was eleven.
    Rodeo meant finding her niche in life “where I was accepted as one of the ‘hands’ and made me feel like I finally belonged somewhere,” she said. Her rodeo career would take her all across the United States and into Mexico. “Rodeo people took such good care of me. They helped me rather than take advantage of me. I never felt like ‘the kid.’”
    But she was also to get “in and out of fights, hospitals, jails and marriages; get whipped in several different states, bucked off in a few of them and divorced in a couple of others. All because I had ‘hired out for a tough hand’ and thought I had to follow through without complaining.”
    The road was a bumpy one for rodeo riders, sometimes sleeping six to a bed, wondering where the next dollar for food was coming from. But, Jane wrote, “No matter how broke I was, or what experiences I had in or out of the arena, I held on even tighter, just hoping the next rodeo would be the good one—where I’d ride a tough bronc, make a lot of money, and finally be accepted as a ‘top hand.’”
    There was always that inner craving for excitement, despite the hardships and the danger. Danger is a matter of perspective, as Jane told of being terrified watching three women in a tight-rope act high above the arena without a net. But while she waited her turn to ride a bronc, the women approached her and asked why she did this dangerous thing—they were so frightened for her.
    â€œYou’re afraid for me?” Jane was shocked. “Ladies, I wouldn’t trade jobs with you for all the beer in Milwaukee!”
    In Hobbled Stirrups she explained her feelings about