Jordan, Montana, 6/27/83
Miles City, Montana, hosts the most “Western” of events each May, a bucking horse sale. Rank horses, brought in from ranches, buck and lunge out of chutes as an auctioneer briskly sells the stock to rodeo contractors from all over the West. One night after the sale, Avedon and Wilson went to a bar in Miles City and met by chance, Richard Wheatcroft. He was twenty-four and ran the cattle his grandfather had put together starting in 1914 with a homestead allotment of 320 free acres. His grandfather continued to buy land during the Depression and in times of drought from hard-up neighbors.

In 1978 Richard found his father crushed to death under a tractor, and the responsibility of running the 15,000-acre ranch near Jordan fell to him. In Wilson’s picture Richard Wheatcroft is in the center. Brad, his brother, who worked as a Lawyer in Miles City, is on the right. The girl on the left, Patty, became Richard’s wife.