Baxter Black Painting shows dangers of being a bronc rider

by Baxter Black

“Bronc to Breakfast” is my favorite Charlie Russell painting. The scene represents the typical roundup out west. In the foreground is a campfire with cooking pots and pans on the fire or hanging from the cross bar. A cowboy is sitting with his plate of beans, Cookie’s in an apron standing by the chuck wagon, and in the background are some cowboys by the horses on a picket line.

The focal point is a bal-faced horse in an arcing trajectory, hind feet in the fire, front legs off the ground and reachin’, doin’ a nose dive, with his mouth open squallin’. Astride this beast is a cowboy. He’s lost one stirrup, his hat and his grip. Chaps and shirttail flappin’, he’s comin’ off the left side, lookin’ down as if there was a way out.

In his wake the campfire cooking area is an explosion of smoke, fire and kitchen utensils. The cowboy with the plate of beans is flying backward like he has been shot. In the background, every horse and every cowboy, cook and all, are watching this buckin’ horse tornado tear through camp.

Horse people are familiar with the term “feelin’ frisky.” The condition is common, but not limited to mornings after the horse has been fed, the weather has turned coolish, and the cowboy is absentmindedly saddlin’ his horse and jumpin’ on like it was any other day.

Last fall, I had my own version of a “Bronc to Breakfast.” In my painting, it might show my horse buckin’ under a mesquite tree. It would be hard to see the rider because of the limbs. Or me lookin’ like Charlie Russell’s cowboy bursting out of the tree, 8 feet off the ground with branches in my mouth. Or the final ejection, me resembling an Olympic diver in some kind of horizontal half-gainer with a rein still in one hand tight enough to hang clothes on!

Now, in the cowboy world, if you survive one of these bucking horse displays, you can earn a little cowboy cred. That’s regardless of whether you get bucked off. Matter of fact, getting bucked off is a better story. My friend Jim’s story would put him in that elevated status.

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