August Crow and the Origin of the Splatter Western

     

 

Aren’t the origins of terms and phrases fascinating? For instance, according to Grammarly, the phrase Cat got your tongue? originated from the silence that would befall punished sailors in the English Navy who’d recently received a good flogging from the cat-o’-nine-tails. And, interestingly, the term “zombie” originates from the West African words for god and fetish. Who knew etymology could be so kinky?

Perhaps you’re wondering how the genre term “splatter western” came about. You know what I’m talking about—the Splatter Western series of books that are taking over indie horror in this year of viruses and murder hornets and nutso elections. Brought to you by Death’s Head Press, by the way (the Splatter Westerns, not the other stuff).

Well, as you might expect, the “splatter western” origin is messy.

I live in the little North Texas town of Wolfe City, where you’ll find one gas station, one restaurant, and more farm animals than residents. It’s a quiet town most of the time, with the monthly antique car show (which is really just a handful of elderly gentlemen getting together to showcase their prized automobiles) being the only regular event. There’s high school football in the fall and winter, of course—every Texas town has that. And then once a year (typically in late March, as the soil is sufficiently thawed and the heat of late spring has yet to arrive), there’s the rodeo—The Wolfe City Western Rodeo.

The rodeo is the one thing that literally brings the entire community out of their homes, sitting them in the evening glow beneath the high-wattage outdoor lights of the Wolfe City Rodeo Arena, where the typical five-hundred-person capacity is stretched to over three times that. The events of the Wolfe City Western Rodeo are much like that of other rodeos, with calf roping and barrel racing and steer wrestling. There’ll be a kind of halftime show where the rodeo queen is announced and several youngsters try their hands at goat wrestling and a local country band plays a tune or two. And, as with most rodeos, the main event—bull riding—closes out the night.

Augustus “August” Crow was the closest thing to a celebrity Wolfe City ever had. August was a two-time Texas state bull riding champion and a three-time qualifier for the National Finals Rodeo. He’d been a competing cowboy since he was ten, and he’d been winning everywhere he went almost from the beginning. At the age of twenty-two, August was one second shy of becoming the youngest millionaire in rodeo history.

One would expect a man with so much would want to get away from his little home town and its one sad restaurant, instead settling in Vegas or Nashville or Key West. Though August toured all over the world, he never called anyplace home except Wolfe City. If he was riding bulls at the PBR Invitational in Jacksonville, Florida on a Saturday night, he’d still be pulling his dusty Ford Bronco into his Wolfe City driveway by 3pm on Sunday, usually with a case of beer for any friends that wanted to pay him a visit. So, it was no surprise to anyone that August chose to continue participating in the Wolfe City Western Rodeo long after more prominent rodeos made him a wealthy man.

On March 30, 2019, I was seated about midway up the bleachers of the Wolfe City Rodeo Arena, with a paper cup of Miller Lite (my fourth of the evening) in one hand and a half-eaten hot dog (my third of the evening) in the other, when August Crow got atop his bull for the final event of the night. You would think the roaring produced by that crowd of perhaps fifteen-hundred was from that of a much larger gathering, like a Cowboys game or rock concert. It was almost deafening. And as August settled onto the bull, securing his gloved right hand beneath the bull rope, he looked up to the crowd, smiling and waving with his left.

The bull was a young, three-year-old Brahma named Mudcat. He wasn’t a big bull by rodeo standards—barely fourteen-hundred pounds, according to the local paper, The Wolfe City Mirror­—and he’d been bucking for less than a year. But he was a feisty fella, we could see that right off. The moment August raised his hand to the hometown crowd, Mudcat went to bucking like a bull that had been tossing off cowboys for a decade. August dropped his wave and grabbed the railing in order to steady himself, and, as I think back on it now, I believe I saw a look of concern flash across his face, as if he suddenly realized he’d bitten off more than he could chew. But August quickly regained his composure, and when he looked up a second time, he nodded that he was ready to go.

As it turned out, he wasn’t as ready as he thought.

When the chute opened, Mudcat let out of there like a jackrabbit fleeing a fox. He not so much bucked as bounded, and from one end of the arena to the other he went. This clearly wasn’t what August expected, for his freehand went low to his shoulder rather than pointed at the night sky, and he was almost instantly tilted just a hair to the left. And when Mudcat came within a foot or two of the paneling at the northern end of the arena, he spun midair and bounded back the way he’d come.

I could see the grimace on August Crow’s face as he struggled to keep himself straight. And I believe he would have made it the full eight seconds had Mudcat kept what he was doing, bounding and spinning. I’m sure of it.

After spinning a second time and once more nearing the northern end of the arena (directly across from where I sat), Mudcat, as if suddenly realizing there was someone on his back, decided to deliver the mother of all bucks. It was like Mudcat mustered up every ounce of energy in him for one deathblow buck. He came almost to a stop along the railing, then kicked his hindquarters skyward like nothing I’d ever seen, like he was reaching for the stars, and the bull’s torso went nearly vertical.

As with most arenas, the Wolfe City Rodeo Arena is decorated with advertising nearly everywhere you look, especially along the railing. There was a sign for the local radio station—93.5 KIKT, The Coyote—and a sign for Dorothy’s Pecan Pies—“Homegrown and homemade since 1982!”—and three different signs for three different wild game processors in the county. Several other advertisements. But right there along the railing where August Crow endured his final buck from a bull was a sign for the rodeo itself, simply reading “Welcome to the Wolfe City Western Rodeo!”

When Mudcat gave his massive buck, August didn’t have a chance of staying on him. His body left the bull’s back, and he would have been thrown several yards—likely sustaining injuries rather than dying—but his right hand, for some reason we’ll never know, continued to clutch the bull rope. Thus, instead of being flung to the dirt, August flipped over midair, the bones in his elbow cracking as they twisted in unnatural ways, and his neck came down on Mudcat’s left horn.

August Crow’s neck was torn open like a child’s birthday gift, closed and secure one second, exposed to the world the next. The crowd had silenced by the spectacle from the start, everyone perplexed by the bull that seemingly had August beat, and when his neck was gashed, we all heard the dull, deadly snap of his spin. Collectively, we gasped in horror. And then the screams started.

August’s right hand at last let loose of the bull rope, and his limp body fell from the still bucking bull, who bounded back towards the chute where he’d been released. Nearly decapitated, August lay against railing of the arena, his heart beating its last several beats, spraying blood from his carotid arteries uselessly across the sign welcoming folks to the rodeo.

It seemed like forever before the rodeo clowns reached him, followed shortly by EMS personnel who probably knew there was nothing they could do. They tried anyway. He was Augustus Crow after all, a local hero.

I sat there in the bleachers for a long time, as his body was carried away in an ambulance and as folks cried and prayed. We were all there to drink and watch a good rodeo and make the community a few dollars, and instead we were treated to a horror show that would never be forgotten. It was surreal, like a dream. And I kept sitting there looking at that sign, wishing someone would wash the blood off.

“Welcome to the,” it read, followed by a large drying splatter of blood where our town name had been, “Western Rodeo.”

Welcome to the Splatter Western Rodeo, I thought. How fitting.

It would be a few days before the Splatter Western genre idea fully formed in my mind, and I take no pleasure in knowing that it stemmed from the gruesome death of a local legend. But, really, what do I care? This story is as much fiction as the Splatter Westerns themselves.

 

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