Horsemen of Freedom

This is the cowboy as folklore rather than record: one rider at full gallop, a lariat trailing sparks, the whole night sky going off like the Fourth of July.

The lariat is older than the American cowboy. Cattle work on horseback came north out of Spanish and Mexican ranching, and the vocabulary came with it: lasso from the Spanish lazo, buckaroo from vaquero. Texas hands took up the roping, the saddle and the words, and after the Civil War they put them to work on the long drives. From 1867, when Abilene, Kansas, opened as a railhead, millions of longhorns walked north.

The rider wears a broad-brimmed hat and blue-tinted glasses, with a flag streaming behind him as a cape and white stars across the horse's blanket. His rope arcs through the dark in orange and blue light, snaring a pair of burning metal capsules that are breaking apart overhead. Below, a firebird lifts off, longhorns stand in the dust at the edge of the frame, and red mesas sit under the stars.