The Ballad of Lucius A. Bugbee

When I first came across the story in a J.Frank Dobey book The Mustangers, I was working on an historical romance set in the era of the great American buffalo hunt; very much into folk dialects and the lore of the American West. Frank Dobey records the story of a black mustang-hunter who employed a Native American ruse for capturing wild horses. That account was fascinating to me; a sudden insight into a lost way of becoming one with nature; and it seemed a way that was not without its dangers. It inspired a campfire tale within the historical romance; a tale of wild, black mustangers setting out for the Frio River in south Texas to catch wild horses. The Ballad of Lucius A. Bugbee.