Cowboy poet Red Steagall sits down with Western auteur and 6666 Ranch owner Taylor Sheridan for a quick chat.
As May rolls around and spring kicks into full gear, we’re looking back at the cowboy poet’s conversation with Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan. Plus, Red Steagall shares one of his beloved poems with us.
Red Steagall: Taylor Sheridan, I’m so glad you invited us to your house.
Taylor Sheridan: I’m glad you’re here.
Red: I have fond memories of the “Four Sixes.” It’s quite iconic.
Taylor: It’s a special place. It was where [Samuel Burk] Burnett built it. It was completed in 1917. His friend Quanah Parker ... as he built this fireplace behind us, you can see that there are antlers embedded into it. Those antlers are from a deer that Quanah killed, cut in half, and had embedded in there. And then his war lance lived there for many, many years. Now I believe the original is at the Ranching Heritage Center. ... My family lived around Waco and Stanford, which is about 30 miles from here. So, I grew up in the shadow of this ranch. And to be the person responsible for shepherding it into its next generation [is] a tremendous honor and responsibility, too.
Red: I grew up about 13 miles from the Borger Ranch at Dixon Creek, and my goal in life was to ride with the 6666 cowboys. That’s all I wanted to do my whole life. Then I got to do it on this ranch. Started in 1976, coming out for the spring works, and didn’t miss a year for 29 years. And I owe a lot to this ranch. It gave me a chance to understand what cowboys really do, what they’re all about, what their sense of values is, their customs, and their manners. Gosh, what great manners cowboys have.
Taylor: It’s interesting because you, like me, are a storyteller and a cowboy, and those two worlds, they collide a lot out here. ... The place is dadgum near a museum. And yet, all this art on these walls is from cowboys that have stayed out here — you being one of them — who camped out here and painted our cowboys from Boots O’Neal to Joe Leathers to Mike Gibson. ... It’s a piece of history.
Red: How did you get into the position of being a master storyteller?
Taylor: I was a terrible student, and I was a dreamer. Our ranch, outside of Cranfills Gap ... at the time I struggled a bit with it because we would go back and forth between being in school in Fort Worth. And yet we’d spend all our time out on this ranch near nobody. So, I didn’t have the experience that a lot of kids had where they’re going to go to this dance or this thing and all these play friends. I was just the guy that was stuck in school in town and then disappeared, or didn’t go to school for a week. So, I spent a whole lot of time by myself entertaining myself, just imagining stories in my head. I watched old westerns at a time when you’re a boy, or about to come into adolescence, and your mind’s real fertile. I hated the ranch until really that point. Then I watched the romance of it, and I got curious about the life that I was actually living. And I embraced it.
Find the full episode of Red Steagall Is Somewhere West of Wall Street, featuring the conversation with Taylor Sheridan, at watchrfdtv.com.
The Last Buffalo
The yearly migration of
millions of beasts,
Made it look like the land was alive.
The wolves took the weak ones,
the winter took some,
And the Indian took enough to survive.
The Indian believed the buffalo
was his brother,
Like the coyote, the eagle, the wind.
He revered him in story, in song,
and in dance,
Was his larder, his shelter, his friend.
His brown hide was used for
the teepee and robes,
A shoulder blade made a good hoe.
A paunch held the food for
the winter supply,
And a sinew a string for a bow.
Then the Sharp’s Big 50 roared
over the land,
Till only a few head remained.
The ones that were left
either died of old age
Or were captured when they
fenced off the plain.
TV And Radio Schedule
Episodes of Red’s travel show, Red Steagall Is Somewhere West of Wall Street, air Mondays at 8:30 p.m. Central on RFD-TV. Find out more about the TV program at watchrfdtv.com and keep up with Red’s radio show, Cowboy Corner, at redsteagall.com/cowboy-corner. And be sure to visit Red’s new YouTube channel.
From our February/March 2024 issue.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Emerson Miller