Photo of the Day -- weekend

No. 374

Left: photo caption: 'Coaly, the boy who could ride and rope anything that had four feet and wore hair.' Greer County, TX (now OK), c. 1870. Right: Nat 'Deadwood Dick' Love, wearing 'my fighting clothes,' c. 1907.

While Texas ranchers fought in the Civil War, their cattle herds scattered and they lost their slave labor force.

After the war, these ranchers hired cowboys to round up their maverick cattle and drive herds north, to shipping points in Kansas, Colorado and Missouri, to capitalize on a surging Northern demand for beef.

Bill Pickett, whose cowboy skills led to a 30-year rodeo career around the turn of the 20th century and film roles in the 1920s.

The cowboy era ended around 1895, w…