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It was nearing sundown in Cody, Wyoming when the short cowboy with the broken arm came moseying in my direction.

“Say Ma'am, you look lost, ” he said tipping his dusty brown hat.

Did I? It was hard to get lost on the main street that Buffalo Bill Cody had made wide enough for his West Show wagon teams of horses, cowboys, Indians, rough riders, and sharp-shooters to turn around in. I was heading back to my hotel after a poke around town chatting with bootmakers, gunsmiths and Buffalo Bill look-alikes. This cowboy found me stopping to gaze at the Absaroka Mountains bluing on the horizon.

“Your hotel must be over here,” said Mack Sizemore ambling toward the big map in front of Chamber of Commerce.

I poked along, merely to gratify this genteel cowboy’s eagerness to be helpful. Little did I imagine where it would lead me: to the Buzzard’s Roost at the Cody Night Rodeo, looking down onto a ton of fast, mean, spinning, bucking, dagger-horned, $30,000 cross-blood Brahma Bull ready to impale whatever jumped on its back. All I did was ask Mack how he’d broken his arm, and out it came, the whole Zen of Rodeo and one man’s passion for his job: Bull Riding.

“In 18 years of rodeo I’ve had 24 major operations, “ says Mack squinting from under his hat. “I’ve had two, no three, blood clots removed from my brain after bulls hooked me with their horns. This arm’s completely destroyed,” he says lifting red bandana-covered cast. “It was healing from one break - the bones’re fused together - then eight weeks ago another bull stepped on it and broke the fusion in half. I’ll never bend it again.”

“You rode with a broken arm?”

“Yeah and I’m riding again tonight. I’m on a bad drought. Haven’t gotten a paycheck in two months. Bull riders at the Cody Night Rodeo don’t get a base salary. If we don’t stay on the bulls for eight seconds, we don’t score and we don’t get paid. It’s only $234, but some would say that’s a pretty good paycheck for only eight seconds of work,” Mack laughs.

“You risk your life without getting paid for it?”

“Sound stupid? No, what it honestly is, Nancy, is a lotta heart. We push our bodies way past what we should. We push our luck. If there’s no paycheck for two months, you can’t let it break your spirits. I’ve never wondered “Why do I do what I do? I’d hate myself for not doing what I love.”

“Riding the bulls is riding on blind faith, “continues Mack with his Zen lesson. “It’s up to the judges who gets paid. They score you on how hard the bull is to ride - how it kicks, bucks, spins, jerks, and how you ride it. Tonight there’s gonna be eight bull riders. Only the three highest scores will get paid. So even if I make my eight seconds, I might not get a paycheck.”

“What’s your longest time on a bull?”

“Not more than eight seconds, Nancy. The stock contractor fines you if you stay on longer. Makes his bulls look bad.”

This beat up old rodeo star on his way back from another x-ray kept on smiling as he told me about his $14,000 medical insurance policy, being in and out of hospitals, on and off the bulls. Then giving it all up and selling his bareback rigging two years ago. Then buying it all back a year later.

In Cody, rodeo is a verb. Girls and boys grow up with the smell of saddle leather dreams. In high school they join rodeo teams like kids in Indiana sign up for marching bands. Mackk’s older brother Orland, rodeoing for 26 years, got Mack started riding the steers. From steers he went to bulls. Then in 1991 and 1992 he got invited to the prestigious Calgary Stampede. By rodeo standards, Mack is old at 33. But he’s still doing New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Virginia and North Carolina. With a broken arm.

“You just gotta come to the Rodeo tonight,” Mack says to me tipping his hat. “You’ll love it."

Cody, Wyoming, gateway to the amazing geysers of Yellowstone National Park, calls itself the Rodeo Capital of the World. This frontier town can rightly lay claim to the title because Rodeo was inspired by ranching chores like breaking horses and roping steer - and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. William F. Cody founded this town in Wyoming’s Big Horn Basin in 1897 with tourism in mind. You can’t visit the Buffalo Bill Historical Center and the Buffalo Bill Museum without being awed by the man born in LeClair, Iowa on February 26, 1846. Aged 14, as a Pony Express rider, he rode a Herculean 328 miles in 20 hours - a feat never again rivaled in Pony Express history. Aged 21 he felled 12 buffalo a day to feed construction crews for the Kansas Pacific Railroad - hence the moniker “Buffalo Bill.” Dime novelists like Ned Buntline made Cody a legend in his own time. Born with greasepaint in his blood Cody got elected to the Nebraska Senate, but resigned shortly after to give Broadway a whirl. And from indoor stages to outdoor stagings he galloped.

Between 1883-1902 Buffalo Bill Cody toured the U.S. and Europe with a preposterous entourage: 83 cowboys, 97 Indians, 38 roustabouts, 180 horses, 18 buffalo, 10 mules, 10 elk, five wild Texas steers, four donkeys, two deer, bears, mountain sheep, sundry musicians and stars like Sioux Chief Sitting Bull and trick shooter Annie Oakley. He staged entire Pony Express runs, Indian raids and shootouts. He entertained working people. He entertained royalty. Everyone loved the swaggering long-haired hero in the buckskin jacket. He was the best known American in the whole world.

You’d think Buffalo Bill Cody was still alive and running the town if you saw Ebb Tarr from Gloucester, Massachusetts. I met this “living historian” a long ways from his native New England fishing village - on the steps of the Irma, the Victorian Hotel that Cody named for his daughter. Tarr stars in many Wild West reenactments, and his uncanny resemblance to Cody doesn’t depend on make-up and period clothing. It’s a long story how winning a Chile cook-off with a dynamite recipe landed Ebb the career of a Buffalo Bill look-alike. If you go to Cody, you’ll surely hear all about it…

Jingling spurs, shiny buckles, fancy-tooled leather, white hats and sassy shirts - here I am at the Cody Night Rodeo, America’s longest running rodeo. For the last 63 years from June to August, crowds have packed the stands to see calf roping, steer riding, stick horse racing, and barrel racing. But the real crowd thrillers are the bucking bulls with names like Rampage, Lucifer, Locomotive Breath, Scarface and Predator.

From the Buzzard’s Roost it’s easy to spot Mack with his broken arm. I wave some encouragement. He distractedly waves back, sprinting between mysterious preparatory tasks. As we’d parted at sundown, I’d said I’d pray for him tonight. “A lot of us cowboys, we do pray,” he responded. “You’ll see us leaning over the chutes, touching our animals and taking off our hats.”

And what was the Bull Rider’s Prayer? Please God, no broken neck? No torn groin muscle? No broken jaw? No horn in the head?

The girl’s Barrell Racing event, the Rodeo Clown antics, the steer roping contests... It was all fun but I couldn’t wait for the bulls! One after another, each of eight riders leapt onto a horned devil, gripping the flat braided rope around the bull's chest - with one hand only - for dear life. Spinning, bucking, blurs in the dust! How can they hang on for even a nanosecond? One wears a football helmet - surely laughed at by the others who sport only white cowboy hats to save their craniums. Then comes poor one-armed Mack. Yeomph!!! Bucked off into the sweaty dust before the count of one. But tomorrow night he’ll be back in the bucking chutes again. Doing what he loves.

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