Dale Hughes wasn’t looking for an icon, when he found Cutter Bill on eBay. All Hughes wanted was a horse to tie to a hitching post by his front porch.
“We live in what I call a typical 9-to-5 subdivision, about as far away from the cowboy life as one can be,” said Hughes, a project manager for the City of Baytown, just east of Houston. “But I’ve always been partial to Westerns and our home has a Southwestern flair.”
It was several months ago, after he built a new patio fitted with Western accoutrements, that Hughes decided a fiberglass horse would “give it that official cowboy look.” An eBay search led him to Bosque County, Texas, where he unwittingly found the life-size statue of cutting champion Cutter Bill, which had stood for decades atop the famous Cauble Ranch sign on I-35, north of Fort Worth.
“The pictures of the statue showed its age and neglect, along with a few bullet holes, but I decided to buy it anyway,” said Hughes, who also restores vintage cars.
Hughes drove to the LR Ranch, former home of the late Lewis Cauble, to pick up his find, which was attached to a one-inch thick steel plate. As he cruised home with Cutter Bill standing on a flatbed trailer behind his truck, he got lots of smiles and thumbs ups. One couple even asked if he would stop so they could take a picture.
Once home, however, Hughes began to wonder about the history of the horse behind the statue.
“I knew of the Cutter Bill Western stores back in the day, but I didn’t know a lot about the horse,” he said. “The closest thing I have to a horse is a 2006 Ford Mustang parked in my garage. So I began looking on the internet for anything I could find on Cutter Bill, and that’s when the project took on a whole other meaning.
“After everything I’ve read and learned, there’s no way I could alter this true Texas artifact in any way that doesn’t honor Cutter Bill. The statue is nearly 50 years old and I want to preserve it so that up close some of the wear of the years will be a reminder of that, as well as of the stamina that Cutter Bill was known for.”
A few facts about Cutter Bill:
-1955 palomino stallion sired by Buddy Dexter
-Bred by R.L. Underwood and purchased as a yearling by Rex Cauble
-1962 NCHA world champion ridden by Sonny Perry
-1964 NCHA non-pro world champion with Rex Cauble
-A noted sire of cutting champions
-His granddaughter Jazabell Quixote is one of the sport’s all-time leading broodmares
-Died in 1982 and buried on the Cauble Ranch in Denton, Texas
Rex Cauble, a former oil field roughneck turned millionaire, struck oil in 1944, when he was 31. The very model of a flamboyant Texas oilman, Cauble brought national attention to the sport of cutting through his promotion of Cutter Bill. On one occasion, cigar in hand, he led the palomino stallion into the offices of the Press Club of Houston.
Cauble owned four ranches in North Texas, the most famous of which was the ranch near Denton, where he built the Cutter Bill arena and installed the fiberglass statue atop the sign.
In 1982, Cauble was convicted on federal charges of embezzlement, conspiracy and racketeering. He served five years in prison and was released in 1987. He died in 2003, maintaining until the end innocence of all charges.
The Cutter Bill statue purchased on eBay by Dale Hughes had been in the hands of Lewis Cauble, the son of Cauble’s fourth wife, Josephine. After his release from prison, Cauble filed a lawsuit in a futile attempt to regain rights to Cauble Enterprises from Lewis Cauble and Josephine.
“I’m getting in better financial shape the last six months, after I quit suing what used to be my family,” Rex Cauble told me in September 1995. “I lost every (law) suit I ever had. Of course, they had my money to fight me with and I had to do mine on credit.”
To see photos of Dale Hughes’ step-by-step restoration, click here.