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[{"type":"text","text":"No, I'm almost positive it's not icy..."}]

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Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>You Still Here? Tuesday, June 6, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

No, I'm almost positive it's not icy...

You Still Here? Tuesday, June 6, 2023

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Wyoming Life

Sunday morning, I threw some clothes in a bag and headed east, Sturgis-bound.

For hundreds of miles, Wyoming unspooled beneath a great blue sky, the prairie rolling toward the horizon through cattle, sagebrush and long stretches of nothing at all, until the earth began to rise and the plains folded themselves into the dark, pine-covered ridges of Meade County.

[{"type":"text","text":"Motorcycles seemed to materialize out of thin air."}]

One became three. Three became 20. Packs merged with packs until the highway itself appeared to be migrating toward Sturgis, chrome flashing in the sun and the low thump of exhaust echoing off rocky bluffs.

I left the interstate for an old highway where limestone walls rose around the road, waterfalls spilled from cliffs and disappeared into the trees, and the air seemed to change as the prairie vanished behind me.

[{"type":"text","text":"I had crossed into the primal kingdom of the Black Hills."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"A crow cawed from somewhere above, and a shiver ran down my back."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Too late to turn back now."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Pantydropper"}]

For most of the year, Sturgis is a South Dakota town of close to 7,000 people. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Then August comes."}]

, transforming the place into a temporary city of chrome, leather and humanity, with Main Street as its pulsing center. I was told about half-million people were there Sunday.

Somewhere near the entrance, a 66-year-old Louisiana man was waiting to show me the ropes.

Manny Myers was sitting in a low-slung, tricked-out trike customized down to the smallest details, his gray beard hanging down his chest in two long braids and not one but three packs of Marlboro Blacks riding in the pocket of his sleeveless orange shirt.

The Pantydropper — the name of this wild beast — was painted with ghost flames and built around a 350 V8 car engine sitting obscenely exposed in front of us.

The name is a nod to the toll, but "You get a free ride," he told me with a smirk, because he knows my aunt.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"It goes zero to 100 in a second,\" he said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"This was not reassuring."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Biker, Not An Enthusiast"}]

Manny has been coming to Sturgis for 50 years. His first rally was when he was 16, after hitchhiking from California, but his love affair with motorcycles began more than a decade before that.

[{"type":"text","text":"He was 5 when his father got a Honda 305 and began taking him for rides."}]

Manny remembers there wasn't much talking, just his father in front of him, the road rolling beneath them and Mother Nature whispering into his little ear.

[{"type":"text","text":"One day, Manny looked at his father."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"Dad, are we bikers?\""}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"No, son,\" his father told him. \"We're enthusiasts.\""}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Five-year-old Manny thought about that for a minute."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"You might be an enthusiast, Dad, but I'm a biker.\""}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Sixty-one years later, not much has changed."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"We climbed aboard."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Winding Turns"}]

Manny took the wheel first, steering us away from Sturgis and onto the old highways that twist through the Black Hills.

The Pantydropper was impossible to ignore. The exposed V8 growled in front of us as Manny worked the turns, his two gray braids lifting in the wind and a Marlboro Black burning between his lips. 

Motorcycles were everywhere, traveling alone and in packs, and riders waved as they passed.

[{"type":"text","text":"Manny waved right back."}]

For a while, I was content to sit beside him and watch the world go by, the road winding between walls of pine and rock as he handled the trike with ease.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then, without warning, he pulled onto the shoulder and scooched over."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"Your turn.\""}]

The mini ape-hanger handlebars felt awkward in my hands, and The Pantydropper was harder to steer than I expected, requiring actual muscle to wrestle around the curves.

[{"type":"text","text":"But it had a windshield and seatbelts, so I hit the gas."}]

I was terrified, but I didn't want to let my new friend down, and "bikers don't like pussies," he had told me earlier, so there was that.

We passed the Boars Nest, where people crowded an outdoor deck strung with star-spangled bunting and flags.

Then we zipped around another corner and there, rising unexpectedly from the trees, was a 60-foot stone bust of Abraham Lincoln.

[{"type":"text","text":"The Great Emancipator stared at us solemnly."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The trees became a blur."}]

Beside me, Manny smoked his cigarette, totally unconcerned that a reporter he had met only hours earlier was now piloting his baby through the Black Hills.

Laughing like little kids, our hair whipping wildly in the wind, I began to understand.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Ah, Shit'"}]

It was about 4 p.m. when we decided to turn around and head back toward Sturgis, but this time when I hit the throttle nothing happened.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"Ah, shit,\" Manny said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Apparently, a wire had come loose."}]

The Pantydropper could still idle, so we began creeping down the highway at 2 mph, and before long a procession of motorcycles and cars stacked up behind us.

[{"type":"text","text":"Manny considered the problem."}]

Then the sprightly senior climbed out of his seat and scrambled onto the front of the trike, one leg on the hood and the other still in the cab, until he was hanging halfway out of the machine.

[{"type":"text","text":"From there, he began operating the throttle by hand."}]

His Marlboro Black was still burning from his lips, bobbing above the exposed V8 engine.

Suddenly, we were hurtling angrily down the highway again, The Pantydropper roaring like a demon from Hell with Manny clinging to the front while I steered.

[{"type":"text","text":"It was going remarkably well."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Until I saw flashing lights."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Busted"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"A South Dakota state trooper was behind us."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"We pulled over."}]

Manny climbed down from the front of the trike, and the trooper approached.

[{"type":"text","text":"He looked at both of us with complete horror."}]

He asked Manny to go sit in the patrol vehicle for a minute, then turned his attention to me.

[{"type":"text","text":"It slowly dawned on me what was happening."}]

He appeared to want some reassurance that I knew this strange, double-braided man, that I was OK and that I had willingly climbed aboard.

[{"type":"text","text":"I assured him I had."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"I was, in fact, there voluntarily."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"I was a journalist."}]

The explanation did not make the situation sound any more reasonable. If anything, it seemed to affirm for both of us the peculiar lunacy of a reporter hunting for a good story.

I don't know what Manny said inside the trooper's car, but somehow he talked his way out of a ticket and came back with an idea.

We rigged a jumper cable to the lever he'd been pulling, creating a makeshift throttle he could operate from inside the trike.

Then we fired up the horses, reins in hand, and off we went, me still steering while Manny worked our homemade throttle, winding our way back through the Black Hills toward the gathering thunder of motorcycles in Sturgis.

[{"type":"text","text":"Manny was cackling."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Hell-Raiser To Helper"}]

Having survived our run-in with the law, we crested a hill and spotted a sign advertising $20 steaks.

[{"type":"text","text":"We pulled in, and he told me what Sturgis was like a half-century ago. "}]

It was rougher then, with fewer rules and considerably more danger. These days, he considers much of it a tourist trap.

The old outlaw mythology is still everywhere — leather, loud bikes, nearly naked bodies and enough skulls and flames to decorate the gates of Hell — but now it shares Main Street with families on vacation. During the day, little kids weave through the crowds while motorcycles rumble past despite women walking around wearing almost nothing. 

Manny has watched Sturgis go from a place your mother might warn you about to a place where somebody might bring their mother.

[{"type":"text","text":"Manny has changed, too."}]

There was a time, he said, when he came to Sturgis mostly to "fight and drink."

Today, the old hell-raiser has become something of a helper. He told me he spends much of his free time trying to make the world a better place, and when he comes to Sturgis now, he isn't looking for the trouble that once drew him here.

[{"type":"text","text":"He just wants to ride."}]

He gets up early and cruises the old highways while the rest of the rally is still sleeping off the night, following the roads wherever they take him, much as he did as a little boy riding behind his father in the hills of California. 

His trikes draw attention everywhere they go. People stare from the roadside. Riders turn their heads as they pass. Strangers wave, and Manny waves right back, like the unofficial mayor of Sturgis greeting "the peasants".

[{"type":"text","text":"Eventually, we climbed back into The Pantydropper and rolled toward town."}]

We ended up at "The Beach," a little sandpit where bikers gather to do burnouts. One man revved and revved until his tire blew apart.

[{"type":"text","text":"I climbed out of the death trap, grabbed my things and waved goodbye."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"It was getting dark, and Sturgis was just waking up."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"Goodbye, my sister in the wind,\" Manny called after me."}]

Kolby 3 wheel sturgis 2 8 10 26

<title>Sturgis 2026: Climbing Into A 3-Wheeler Called The Pantydropper Was Not A Good Idea | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Climbing into a three-wheeler called "The Pantydropper" with a 50-year Sturgis veteran who boasted "it goes zero to 100 in a second," ended up with me at the wheel and the flashing lights of a South Dakota patrol car behind us.

Sturgis 2026: Climbing Into A 3-Wheeler Called The Pantydropper Was Not A Good Idea

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

 years old when he learned that a family friend, Bill Carlisle, was one of the most famous outlaws in America. 

Gillian, now 82 and living in Saratoga, said he only knew the Laramie business owner as a good friend of his grandmother, Olive Peberdy, until one day he overheard his grandma and Carlisle chatting casually about the crimes committed in 1916 and 1919.  

Gillian's Grandma Olive was a frequent guest of Carlisle's at his restaurant in Laramie and he said it was a treat for him to tag along. Peberdy was just one of numerous citizens in Wyoming who admired the former outlaw and thought the law had been too hard on him. 

In fact, thanks to this sympathetic public, Carlisle nearly got away with the train robberies in 1919.

“I thought it was neat because they said he robbed the trains with a toy gun,” Gillian said. “That left an impression on me because I played with toy guns, too.”

According to Carlisle in his 1946 autobiography, “Bill Carlisle, Lone Bandit,” he carried a toy glass gun on his first two robberies but also had a real gun. 

Carlisle fired the real gun into the air to prove he was robbing the train when a passenger thought the whole thing was a joke. 

 into the ribs of a brakeman who also thought the robbery was staged — until the toy gun proved otherwise.

Dubbed the Gentleman Bandit by Wyoming newspapermen, Carlisle

had just a nickel in his pocket when he impulsively decided to rob the Portland Rose, a Union Pacific train near Rock Springs.

 He refused to rob the women and even apologized to them for the inconvenience his robbery caused them. Carlisle tipped the porter and successfully escaped.

“He was a local hero,” Gillian said. “He was always so good to the people that he was robbing.”

Carlisle robbed his second train two months later and again was polite as he passed the hat, collecting money from only the male passengers. He escaped again. 

Now with a reward on his head and headlines reporting on his gentlemanly manners, Carlisle was captured near Laramie by a posse. 

He was a hero to a public that demanded clemency but was instead was given a life sentence.

A model prisoner, Carlisle was hopeful his sentence 

 John B. Kendrick. Instead, in 1919, it was reduced to 50 years, which meant Carlisle would have to serve at least 25 years until he was considered for parole. 

If it had stayed a life sentence, Carlisle said, he could have 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Escape By Delivery Truck"}]

Faced with a lifetime behind bars, Carlisle spent the next few months planning his escape. He worked at the shirt factory at the Wyoming State Penitentiary and decided to stow away in a box

. His plan worked and, when it hit the press, most of the public was on Carlisle’s side.

His first night away from the Rawlins penitentiary, Carlisle had dinner at a sheep camp.

“I told the camp tender that I wanted something to eat, that I had taken only what clothes I needed and a rifle and ammunition,” Carlisle later wrote. “He grinned and said it was all right with him, that he hoped I got away, and that I need have no fear of him or the herder.”

He shared a meal with the two men and then, late in the night, Carlisle said he returned to the railroad at Creston with the intention of heading west. However, the posse was searching all the trains heading that direction from the prison, so Carlisle did what appeared to be the only sensible plan. 

He headed back to Rawlins to board a train going in the opposite direction.

Because he now had the sheepherders rifle, Carlisle pretended to be a guard. Carlisle said he joined a group of railroad men in a shack used for breaks. When they all remained quiet, Carlisle relaxed, thinking he wasn’t recognized.

Then one of the men stared straight at Carlisle in his role of guard and said, “I have got my opinion of a man who will hire out for three or four dollars a day to catch Bill Carlisle.”

Another man agreed, cursing at Carlisle about pathetic guards who would search for 

 for a few measly dollars. Not knowing if this was a warning or if they were truly disgusted with someone they supposed was hunting for the escaped convict, Carlisle slipped out of the shack and boarded the train.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Fugitive Guard"}]

Carlisle said the train passed through Hanna, Medicine Bow, Rock River and on toward Laramie as he pretended to keep an eye out for hobos. He had been a fireman on a train three years prior and knew his role well.

When Carlisle was offered a chance to warm up in engine cab, he gladly accepted and joined the engineer, fireman, head brakeman and rear brakeman in the cab.

“Again, the opinion was openly expressed about train guards,” Carlisle said. “I said the pay was good and that I really hoped I would never meet Bill Carlisle.”

The men all laughed, and this eased the tension. They spent the next few miles in conversation.

“I know Bill Carlisle, would know him anywhere,” the fireman suddenly said. “I was in the courtroom during his trial.”

Carlisle said he looked up quickly to see if he had been recognized but the fireman didn’t react, so he figured it was just idle talk. Just before daylight, they entered the Laramie yard and Carlisle said he jumped down from the engine and started across the tracks when the engineer called out to him.

[{"type":"text","text":"“So long, Bill,” the engineer said, “And good luck!”"}]

In Laramie, Carlisle was eating at a restaurant across from the police station. When he went to pay for his bill the waitress told him to keep his money because he would need it.

“I knew I was recognized,” Carlisle said.  “I told her, you take out what I owe. The government is still making money and when I need more, I will probably get it.”

Carlisle purchased a better gun, using the last of his money. He contemplated robbing a Laramie clothing store but discarded the idea quickly.

“As long as the railroad was looking for me, why should I bother a storekeeper in Laramie, or any other place,” Carlisle wrote. “Why not just go ahead and hold-up another train? I could be in no worse position than I was if I were to hold-up a dozen.”

years lay ahead of him regardless and because of his escape, he could not hope to receive further clemency. He decided to hold up a train once more before leaving Wyoming.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Another Train Robbery"}]

Carlisle hopped on a freight train and rode it to the Ohio Oil Camp at Rock Creek. He was once more recognized, but the men were all friendly to him. Later, he was approached and warned that one of the five was planning to turn him in.

Carlisle said he calmly ate his dinner and told his confidant not to worry, that he would soon be long gone. Carlisle described then how he returned to the train yard as a train slowly moved through. He swung up between two coaches and rode for a mile before attempting to enter.

When he stepped inside the passenger car with a drawn gun, Carlisle was shocked. Most of the passengers soldiers and sailors on their way home from France.

“I felt that I would be very fortunate if I ever left this train without a fight,” Carlisle said.  "Some of these men had as much, if not more, nerve than I had. They had fought overseas and would not be as easy to handle as the passengers had been on my other hold-ups.”

It was too late to back out now so Carlisle shouted out to the men to put their hands up. The command was obeyed and Carlisle said he was scared for the first time during a robbery.

“Had I lost my nerve, I wondered,” Carlisle wrote. “It was no time for me to hesitate. This time I did my own collecting.”

He ordered a man to put coins in his cap and moved on to the next seat where two soldiers sat, their hands up and watching him curiously.

[{"type":"text","text":"“Just back from France?” I asked."}]

When the soldiers responded to the affirmative, Carlisle told them to keep their money.

“I would have been over there with you had they let me go,” Carlisle said.

He only robbed about six passengers — all men. He let alone all the soldiers, women and an old couple.

“All I wanted was enough money to buy an outfit of clothes that would allow me to dress so that I would not arouse suspicion when I reached Denver, where I had planned to go,” Carlisle said.

Word had spread through the train that he was robbing it. A young man appeared holding a gun and, not wanting to shoot anyone, much less a youth, Carlisle attempted to disarm him and ended up getting shot in the wrist.

“Wounded, with no thought of surrender, I stood formulating new plans,” Carlisle said. “I would have to take to the hills again until such time as it would be safe; or until I could get my hand taken care of, which might be weeks."

At Medicine Bow, Carlisle jumped off the train. A man leaned out of another car and started shooting at him and Carlisle threw himself down. As he rolled out of range, another man who had jumped out took aim and shot once but then he, too, had to run for cover from flying bullets.

“Every car door was belching forth fire,” Carlisle said. “Passengers and guards alike were shooting wildly into the night and anyone within range of their bullets could have been hit.”

Carlisle ran over ground he knew well and disappeared into the range, leaving behind a small trail of blood.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Into The Hills"}]

Carlisle spent the next two weeks on foot, walking from one ranch to another, his wounded hand giving him fits. Sometimes he was recognized, other times the families were unaware of who the fugitive was they were hosting.

Carlisle described how they kept track of the posse on the ranch telephone. As the posse passed a ranch, someone at that ranch would phone ahead that it was coming. They kept track of the posse until one day it reached Antelope Basin and failed to show up again.

The posse had given up the hunt for Carlisle and had gone antelope hunting.

None of the ranchers ever turned Carlisle in for the $1,200 reward and, as one rancher wife simply told Carlisle, “Why would we do that?”

In the end, Carlisle was cornered by law enforcement in an isolated cabin and, despite his hands being up, was blasted through the lungs by a rifle. Trying to surrender saved his life because after the shot, when he lowered his arms, the skin closed around the bullet hole.

Carlisle was roughly treated and not given proper medical care by the deputies until he reached a hospital in Laramie. The doctors were furious at the treatment, and this only built more public sympathy.

Carlisle was again a model prisoner and ended up serving 20 years. Thanks to the persistence of Rev. Gerard Schellinger, he was released in 1936 at the age of 45. Carlisle went on to marry and became a successful businessman with his Carlisle’s Cabins, Roundup Café and The Lone Bandit Trading Post in Laramie.

[{"type":"text","text":"Gillian remembers eating at the cafe as a child."}]

“I think the biggest thing about Bill Carlisle is how he changed his life so much,” hesaid. “Usually when someone gets on a bad road, they stay on the wrong there, but Carlisle wanted to do good and was just so well-liked.”

Frontier prison inset Allen Brown via Alamy 8 9 26

<title>Wyoming's 'Gentleman Bandit' Was National Sensation For Polite Train Robberies | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Newspapers dubbed Bill Carlisle the "Gentleman Bandit" after crime sprees in the early 1900s that earned him favor with Wyoming locals. “He was so good to the people that he was robbing," said an 82-year-old whose grandma was a friend of the bandit.

Wyoming's 'Gentleman Bandit' Was National Sensation For Polite Train Robberies

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Tourism

Will Grant still has the two horses, Chicken Fry and Badger, that he rode across Wyoming in the summer of 2019 when he retraced all 2,000 miles of the Pony Express trail. 

Chicken Fry was born in New Mexico, and no one knows for sure how old he is.

“He’s had some hard miles on him,” Grant said. “Not a hard life, but plenty of work. So we rope off them a little bit, but not too much, and they’re like trail horses.”

Some of those hard trail miles happened in a landscape that deeply respects its roots. Wyoming, Grant told Cowboy State Daily,  has cared for its Pony Express Trail better than other states.

“You can see it there,” Grant said. “It’s very well marked in Wyoming. Very well marked.”

Mosquitoes in Jeffrey City are particularly bad, while South Pass can be freezing cold even in July. 

That’s left Grant wondering how Pony Express riders kept their feet and their hands warm, given that they were riding through South Pass in January of 1861.

“The winds through there are no joke,” he added.

These are just a few of the gritty details Grant learned about Wyoming as he rode through it on the back of a horse, surrounded by a vast, windswept sea of sagebrush. 

He had known from the outset that he would face the same brutal elements the pioneers did — shifting mud, relentless wind, desert conditions, mosquitoes, and the like.

But, as he wrote in his book, “The Last Ride of the Pony Express,” thinking about the hardships ahead of time and experiencing them firsthand are two very different things. 

That point became starkly clear under the flash of a sudden Wyoming summer storm. Grant and his two horses, he realized immediately, were the highest point on the landscape. They were walking targets clad in iron horseshoes. And there was nowhere for them to take cover. It was just miles of open sagebrush in every direction, as far as his eyes could see.

The crack of thunder overhead filled him with dread as he rode across the land in that gathering storm. He also gained a new appreciation for the 1860s couriers who wrote of learning to read the landscape in between blinding pulses of lightning strikes.

“I learned that the Pony Express as a mail service was a really impressive display of American entrepreneurship,” he said. “There’s no other country in the world that could have done the same thing given the same environmental parameters. There were no horses out there. There was no infrastructure on which to set up a fast horse mail relay over 2,000 miles to deliver a letter in 10 days.”

There were wild horses, and they were a huge danger to a lone rider managing two horses. Grant writes about that in his book, how careful he was to avoid either inciting an attack or losing his horses to that stallion’s wild harem.

The Mongols and the Romans and the Persians did have ancient horse relays to quickly traverse their kingdoms. But these were created in already civilized areas that their empires controlled, and those relays were fed and maintained by the full resources and might of those empires. 

Cowboy and journalist Will Grant rode all 2,000 miles of the Pony Express trail on horseback. He said the trip gave him a newfound respect for Wyoming weather. Mosquitoes in Jeffrey City are bad, while South Pass can be freezing cold even in July. 

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