On a Saturday afternoon in October 1887, a mystery rider was introduced to the 8,000 people crowding Denver’s River Front Park for the town’s Cowboy Championships, a forerunner of today’s National Western Stock Show rodeo. He appeared on a quick white pony, following a roping exhibition by a black cowboy named Pinto Jim.

The horseman was a memorable stranger in his embroidered sombrero, fringed chaps and bright-red kerchief, an ivory-handled Colt and a knife hanging from his belt. The crowd sensed that this compact man on his high-horned saddle was not from Denver, noted the Rocky Mountain News, but was rather “such a perfect and graceful type of a Texan cowboy that the audience gave one spontaneous A-h-h-h! of admiration.”