- [Narrator] In this edition of Nebraska Stories, it's time to cowboy up.

Up next, life on a ranch during calving season, a visit with second generation saddlemaker, Lyle Henderson, a Sandhills sculpture garden like no other, inside the rodeo ring with a young bullfighter, and the life and times of the notorious outlaw, Doc Middleton.

(steady rock music) (steady rock music) (soft bright music) (cattle mooing) - [Narrator] Bad weather, disease and the everyday events in the life of a ranch cause as much grief today as they ever did.

But what a cattleman can't control, he and his cattle can at least survive by following a simple rule.

It's a lesson early cattleman learned the hard way.

- [Moni] Cattle have to come first.

Everything they do on the ranch revolves around the cattle.

That's your profit and that's your loss.

Those cattle, they can't go over and start the windmill if it's turned off when it's a hundred degrees.

And they're going to stand around that windmill and die if you don't water them.

Absolutely the cattle came first.

- That old cow is very important to me.

I want to be pretty important to her.

I don't know any other way to say it, except she comes first.

You take care of those cows, you're just born and raised that way.

There's a few things come before that cow, but not many.

If your wife or your family is in where it's warm and they're not being hurt, that cow's first.

(gentle guitar music) - [Moni] As far as my dad goes, he was totally dedicated to the cattle on the ranch.

They weren't his, but he felt sole responsibility for them.

- [Melvin] There ain't no eight to four.

There just ain't such a thing.

I don't know when they're going to tell these cows to quit having calves at four o'clock in the afternoon and wait until eight in the morning.

I'm for that.

I'd like to see it happen.

I could sleep a lot more.

It's just like this morning, I'm sitting here two hours behind myself and I've been up all night.

I'm about half brain dead.

And one little ol' calf was born, just like a little baby.

There's a fine line between life and death.

They depend on a human, more or less, to take care of them.

- [Moni] Come on, there you go.

There you go.

- [Melvin] They just do.

And so you do what you can do to make them better.

- [Moni] You're all right.

- This backwards calf that I lost, I can't think of one thing you could do to save them.

- This is part of it.

You don't like no part of it.

This is part of it.

You save some of them, you lose some of them.

I never count the dead.

- I love to see them a little ol' calves hit the ground and run and play and buck.

I like young life and it's a beautiful sight.

- Come on, baby, come on.

(upbeat music) (Hammering) - All I wanted to do is be a cowboy.

♪ MUSIC ♪ Part of it by making saddles.

(Hammering) My folks started this business in 1942 here in Kearney, and I was born in '47 and they kept me in a saddle box when I was a baby.

So I grew up in the shop.

When I was 12 years old I built my first saddle with the help of my Dad.

I tried to count up and keep track of what my Dad and I have made.

Up to date, as close as I can come with him and I combined, we've made right at 3,000.

And I've probably made at least 1,800 of those.

But as far as the tooling, he would always use one flower all the time, and Mom did everything different, every project she worked on, and that's what I do.

Actually, my Mom was way better than my Dad and she's the one that taught me how to do that.

The idea of tooling, like a saddle, is it'll last longer, because the leather is compressed, and it will last longer than a plain saddle will.

If you're gonna be on a horse a lot, say if you wanna be a cowboy, and you need a saddle, and preferably one that's not gonna hurt your horse's back, and not gonna hurt you, and my Dad pretty well taught me that.

He said, "If you're not happy with the job, "don't show it to the customer.

"Throw it under the bench and start over."

My wife is a great quality control person.

She really looks at every stitch and makes sure 'cause she always says, "We're professionals.

"We can't turn out stuff that looks half-done."

- We have sent saddles to Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Brazil, Japan, England.

We were surprised when we first started getting orders from foreign countries.

People are absolutely in love with anything to do Western in the United States.

With an actual saddle I do all of the finish work, that means rubbing down the edges, because after he cuts them, they're kind of rough, and I cut them down, make them nice and smooth.

- She is probably one of the best finish people in the business.

I've never seen anybody match her.

So she's a lot of help.

- I make 'em shiny and pretty, maybe that's the way that I should say it.

- There's times at night I'll wake up and get to thinking about something 2:00 in the morning I'll come out here and at least draw it out, so I don't forget it.

- Yeah, he is an artist, even if he is humble about it.

♪ music ♪ He's an artist in other mediums if he had time to pursue it.

- They're the people that go out in the morning when it's still dark, take a halter with them, or a catch rope, and catch their horse that's snortin' at 'em, and saddle 'im up and take off, just as the sun's coming up.

Those are celebrities to me.

I like to build stuff for working cowboys.

(upbeat music) (gentle music) NARRATOR: Off a quiet stretch of highway along the eastern edge of the Nebraska Sandhills is a small ranching community that draws visitors from all over.

BOB NICHOLS: This is a rather plain bronze, but the more you look at it, the more detailed it is.

Look at the details in his shirt hanging down and shirt cuffs.

NARRATOR: With a population of 117, the tiny village of Bartlett has one important distinction.

NICHOLS: We got the most bronzes per capita of any town in the world, one for ever three people about.

I don't think anybody can top that.

NARRATOR: Bartlett is home to a sculpture garden with 32 bronze works on display and another six on the way.

NICHOLS: It has put Bartlett on the map.

We've had people there from all over the United States, from California to New York.

We've had people there this summer from Ecuador.

Here about a month ago, we had a bus load from Canada.

NARRATOR: Bob Nichols is retired and oversees the installations.

NICHOLS: Did I get to tell you about the one that won the show in Calgary?

NARRATOR: And gives impromptu tours of the garden.

NICHOLS: I tell people it's the largest bronze sculpture garden in the United States and we're gonna say that until somebody proves us wrong.

And these bronzes are all made and donated by the Nations Number One western bronze artist.

NARRATOR: The artist who donated the works is Nichols' long-time friend and Bartlett native Herb Mignery.

HERB MIGNERY: There's a lot of time every cowboy kind of pauses and just sits there.

NARRATOR: Mignery is giving his third tour of the morning.

MIGNERY: And that's the reason for the silent leather.

NARRATOR: Word's gotten out that he's back in town to dedicate six new sculptures.

NICHOLS: Okay, this was taken at your house out east?

MIGNERY: Yeah, the back door.

NICHOLS: Okay.

MIGNERY: You remember where that was taken I think, don't you?

NICHOLS: I don't.

MIGNERY: It was at a fair or something.

Right here's a shot of my in my younger years.

The horse I'm on there I think is named Boots, was a real good horse.

NARRATOR: Mignery was the first male to leave the family ranch in more than a century.

Some 60 years later, the landscape still has a hold on him.

MIGNERY: This was all a little grove of trees right east where you see that metal gate.

And those were the kind of things that inspire me.

I would sit under those and draw and say this is the way life should be.

I love the ranch life, roping steers, roping cattle, and horsemanship.

I loved that part of it, but it was the loneliness, I don't know, it was just not the life for me and I knew it wasn't.

NARRATOR: But it was the road right outside his home that may have planted those first seeds of a different kind of life.

MIGNERY: On the way home from school, that was my dreamland and that was where I conquered the world and that was where I was alone.

It was called the road to nowhere because it didn't go anyplace.

It actually literally ended after about a mile.

NARRATOR: The dreams that began on Mignery's road to nowhere have taken him all over the world.

After years working as an illustrator in Hastings, his boss gave him some clay and a wheel for his birthday.

Mignery began sculpting and never looked back.

MIGNERY: I realized then that sculpting was probably my best medium.

We all have to express ourself in some way and it's something that has to come out.

NARRATOR: With no formal training in fine art, Mignery became a master sculptor, primarily known for his work in Western Americana.

MIGNERY: I look back at my early sculptures.

They were mostly action pieces.

As I grew a little older and matured a little bit, I saw the humility and the courage and the beauty in the character of the people rather than what they did.

It was a tough life.

You could tell it on their face.

You could see it in their body.

You could see it in the carriage of their shoulders.

NARRATOR: Mignery and his wife Sherry moved to Colorado a few decades ago to be closer to their bronze foundry, but they remain strongly tethered to this pocket of Nebraska.

And even on a cold, rainy day, it's clear the people here have never forgotten him.

MIGNERY: And I everybody that does anything at all in their life probably a lot of it affected by the childhood, you know.

NARRATOR: A couple hundred people travel from the area and beyond to welcome the Mignerys as they donate several new pieces to the ever growing bronze garden.

ATTENDEE: Thank you much.

MIGNERY: Well, you're more than welcome.

PAT: Herb, Pat, how are you doing?

MIGNERY: Doing good.

PAT: Good to see you.

MIGNERY: Well, I think I'm doing okay.

Hi, Janice.

How are you doing?

ATTENDEE: Can I get a picture real quick?

MIGNERY: Sure, you bet.

That's alright, still works.

ATTENDEE: Thank you much.

MIGNERY: Thank you.

NARRATOR: At the age of 82, Mignery's work is still in demand.

While he spent a career sculpting the faces of everyday people of the American West, he tackles other subject matter with ease.

Back home in his Loveland, Colorado studio, Mignery is shaping the clay on a 12-foot sculpture of Saint Michael for a nearby church.

MIGNERY: It's amazing what can stop action or what can change the feel of a piece, I mean, even right down to the ends of the fingers.

When your sculpting or painting, every line of that thing has to pertain to the movement that you want to portray.

Even on a face larger than life, 1/8 of an inch or 1/16 of an inch of clay in a certain area, especially around the eyes, it just, it's amazing the difference it makes.

It can affect the total expression and feeling of the whole piece.

Emotion is probably the most important part of the art for me and if I can get the emotion in the face, the emotion that I want, I don't have to have every little line.

What's important to me is how that viewer, what it does to their eye and heart when they look at it.

NARRATOR: He's donating his time on this piece and says this one will be his last.

MIGNERY: I will probably continue to do smaller sculptures maybe here and there, but I know it'll be my last monumental piece.

To create this piece in monumental form and have it for an eternity, this is my mark on earth I guess.

This is what it's meant to be.

It occurred to me that probably all of the pieces I've done, the 60, 70, 75 plus monuments that I've done over the years have essentially been meant as a practice, just a practice run for me, building up and culminating in this piece.

So I thought for that reason, it's very appropriate that this be my last monument.

NARRATOR: If a looming Saint Michael is the capstone on a chance career as a sculptor, the legacy for this cowboy artist may be a little closer to where his dreams began.

In a tiny town on the edge of the Sandhills.

MIGNERY: If I ever have a place in history, it will be probably because of not the shows that we've been in from New York, L.A., all over the country and masses of international crowds over the years.

It's probably ironic that that will never be my legacy.

My legacy will probably be a sculpture garden in a little town in the middle of Nebraska and I'm more than satisfied with that too.

(upbeat music) (country music) ROWDY MOON: My job is to keep riders safe.

I gotta keep moving or else I'm gonna get stuck.

I'm Rowdy Moon, I'm from Sargent, Nebraska.

I'm 18.

Don't call me a clown, call me bullfighter.

Everybody that goes to a rodeo thinks the bullfighters are clowns.

We're not rodeo clowns, we're not to make the crowd get all wild or anything.

We're just to do our jobs and keep fighting bulls and keep everyone safe.

82 now be ready to hustle.

(announcer talking) People think we're kind of crazy or whatever, but you know, as long as you're smooth on your feet we all stay pretty safe.

ANNOUNCER: See the way our bullfighter moved in there to keep the bu ll away from the cowboy?

That's what he's all about.

Way to be, Rowdy.

Nice job.

MOON: Whenever a bull rider gets bucked off or something you know, laying there sometimes, you never know if they're concussed or you know, it can be anything.

But I always have to go to the bull's head first, pick them up and take them away.

That way the bull rider's always out of danger.

You know, if someone gets hung up I sure try my hardest to get them out of there.

I kind of think, what about the next one?

If I'm getting hurt, how am I going to make it?

How am I going to recover?

MUSIC ANNOUNCER: Well, I'll tell you what, friends, our bulls are kind of wi nning out on this deal.

MOON: If I have to take a hook, and I have to take a hook, and it's what the job is.

ANNOUNCER: See the way Rowdy moved in there to keep the bull's attention?

That's what he's all about.

(upbeat music) (Western guitar music) (wind) (guitar music) AL BROCK: Doc was born in 1851 in Texas, and he was born James Middleton Riley.

TIM BENSON: He came from Texas as nobody.

He had four or five different names.

The story was he got his nickname, Doc, because he could doctor a brand to fit anything.

BEVERLY DeGROFF: I believe he had a gold tooth, and that's why they called him Gold Tooth Charlie.

ROBERTA KING: I found him as David C. Middleton in Sheridan County in the later years.

AL: He also was known as the Rob Roy of the Sandhills.

He was known as the King of the Horse Thieves, the Unwickedest Outlaw.

There was a very violent beginning.

Doc's at one of the local watering holes one evening and this big ol' burly soldier came over and started harassing Doc and eventually started pounding on Doc.

TIM: He was getting beat pretty bad.

And it come down to where he was taken advantage of and he had to do something, so he ended up shooting this soldier just to save his own life.

BEVERLY: Then he left for the Sandhills in the middle of the night.

AL: All along throughout the Sandhills, there are areas where Doc hung out, hid horses.

Kid Wade and the Ponyboys were his underlings, so to speak.

CAROLYN: Doc Middleton's Ponyboys were the ones that helped him move his horses from one place to another.

AL: In a two-year period, the references say that he stole anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 head of horses.

CAROLYN: Then he would take those horses down to Kansas and sell 'em, steal horses in Kansas and bring 'em back and sell 'em to the local people.

TIM: He would peddle 'em around the counties in Nebraska for not a lotta money.

If he could make a little, he was happy.

And it made the ranchers happy, so the people in that area weren't really against Doc and his group.

CAROLYN HALL: They called him the local Robin Hood because he did not steal from the local people.

One story is that a woman with a small child needed milk, and the next morning a fresh cow was found in her corral.

TIM: I think the whole story of his whole life is cool in this country, because he was like the Robin Hood.

He never become hated, except for by the law.

The guy wasn't a bad guy, he was just trying to make a living.

Back when he first started, there was basically no law.

And as time went on, they needed law.

AL: So, they cooked up this scheme to offer him a pardon.

BEVERLY: Llewellyn issued a fake pardon to Doc.

AL: That pardon was just kind of a ruse.

As this meeting was about to take place, there was a mishap.

(gun fires) Doc gets shot in the belly.

ROBERTA: He was captured and taken back to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and tried for horse rustling and convicted.

TIM: And it wasn't long after that that Kid Wade got caught and ended up hung.

CAROLYN: Which they did during the night, and the people that came on the railroad the next morning saw a frozen body hanging from the whistling post.

STEVE GREGERTSON: Most of the outlaws either died young or they transitioned to a different way of life.

CAROLYN: He lived long enough that the transition of the horse to the railroad and then the automobile, obviously, was going to put him outta business.

STEVE: The railroad was hugely responsible for the settlement of the West.

AL: With civilization, you get law, order, and faster communication.

STEVE FRIESEN: Once civilization just takes over and it's necessary to become more civilized, Doc Middleton does that.

CAROLYN: He went from being a horse thief to a saloon manager.

STEVE: A saloon person has gotta be somebody that can sit back and talk and visit with people and befriend 'em, and he was that kinda guy.

STEVE: He and his son had been running a bar, and when one patron knifed another patron out behind his bar, he got arrested, not because of the knifing but because he didn't have a liquor license.

So, they put Doc in jail.

Doc contracted erysipelas, a terrible skin disease.

That turned into pneumonia, and ten days later he was dead.

That was the tragedy that turned a finable offense into a death sentence for him.

STEVE: Even though he's an outlaw, somehow or other, there is something noble in what he did.

And that's the fascination people have with the outlaws and lawmen of that time, because this is a mythical period in America.

(steady rock music) -[Announcer] Watch more "Nebraska Stories" on our website, Facebook, and YouTube.

"Nebraska Stories" is funded in part by the Margaret and Martha Thomas Foundation.

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