HOME | DD

Description
Lets take a trip back into the American West where cattle were as good as the gold standard to a savvy rancher. In the beginning there was no way to fence the vast stretches of land so all cattle were turned out to pasture together during the warmer months and split back up later when run back to winter pasture. But with the invention of cheap barbwire public grazing land was a thing of the past. This growing division of land led to the Fence-Cutter and Range Wars waged between free-grazing and land owning ranchers.

It wasn't unusual for free ranging cattle to become mixed in with the fenced herds. This led to conflict on both sides as one rancher would go to claim his wandering cattle and the owner of the herd they were with would refuse to give them back as they were on their land. Disputes over the ownership of cattle could be brutal leading to many instances of violence both against the men working them and the herd itself.

In the end of one such tale a rancher who stampeded a herd over a cliff in retaliation was tied to his horse and run over the cliff himself. It was said that from then on you could sometimes see a blindfolded man tied to a horse chasing the ghostly herd he had stampeded across the sky. From this comes the legend of the Ghost Riders, a host of cowboys said to be cursed to ride forever across the skies chasing the devil's herd.

________________________________

This was made for the URA's Legends Contest and features Tonguin Cheek as a ghost rider's mount. As I was going through possible ideas for this I considered the wild hunt as a theme, but then I saw a version of it I knew that was a little closer to home. Since the horses of the legend are essentially normal looking other than that they run above the ground I paid a bit of an homage to Georgia O'Keeffe with the horse skull to show the otherworldly nature of the ride.

Results: 3rd out of 6

Sources:
[link]
[link]
[link]

Description
Lets take a trip back into the American West where cattle were as good as the gold standard to a savvy rancher. In the beginning there was no way to fence the vast stretches of land so all cattle were turned out to pasture together during the warmer months and split back up later when run back to winter pasture. But with the invention of cheap barbwire public grazing land was a thing of the past. This growing division of land led to the Fence-Cutter and Range Wars waged between free-grazing and land owning ranchers.

It wasn't unusual for free ranging cattle to become mixed in with the fenced herds. This led to conflict on both sides as one rancher would go to claim his wandering cattle and the owner of the herd they were with would refuse to give them back as they were on their land. Disputes over the ownership of cattle could be brutal leading to many instances of violence both against the men working them and the herd itself.

In the end of one such tale a rancher who stampeded a herd over a cliff in retaliation was tied to his horse and run over the cliff himself. It was said that from then on you could sometimes see a blindfolded man tied to a horse chasing the ghostly herd he had stampeded across the sky. From this comes the legend of the Ghost Riders, a host of cowboys said to be cursed to ride forever across the skies chasing the devil's herd.

________________________________

This was made for the URA's Legends Contest and features Tonguin Cheek as a ghost rider's mount. As I was going through possible ideas for this I considered the wild hunt as a theme, but then I saw a version of it I knew that was a little closer to home. Since the horses of the legend are essentially normal looking other than that they run above the ground I paid a bit of an homage to Georgia O'Keeffe with the horse skull to show the otherworldly nature of the ride.

Results: 3rd out of 6

Sources:
[link]
[link]
[link]