Richard Virgil Talley was a cowboy, or “Cow Puncher” as his military records defined his occupation. Other occupations listed through his life included drilling water wells, farming, and laboring with a bridge building project. But through most of his life, he worked cattle and was known mostly as Dick or R.V. Talley.
Born Oct. 22, 1893, in Vale District, Butte County, South Dakota, he was the fourth of nine children born to Joseph Gibson and Emma Zurcher Talley. Family lore reported that when Dick was eight years old, and following the birth of his youngest sibling, his father mounted Dick’s horse and rode away, never to be seen again. Joseph’s death is generally recorded as 1901, and Emma raised the family by laboring with housekeeping and laundry in and around Belle Fourche, South Dakota.
Dick never finished elementary school, according to an early census. But his occupation was confirmed as a “Cow Puncher” in his WWI draft record on June 1, 1917. He was 23 and working at the Whitcomb Ranch in Campbell County, Wyoming. He would work on the same ranches later in his life when they were owned by the Jessen family.
Talley also worked for the historic Keeline Ranch. During that time Flora Mae Hamill was tracking down her runaway saddle horse near Rozet. Dick was in the area, she explained the problem, and he helped cut the horse from the herd it had joined. The Keeline cowboys were also surprised to see Mae later riding a horse they had turned out because it was ill-behaved. “Clown” bucked every time someone mounted him, but that didn’t stop Mae from using him. The Keeline cowboys were pushing cattle along the road to Moorcroft one day and spotted Mae riding Clown. George Keeline commented, “These cowboys turn a horse out for an outlaw and the first thing you know there’s a girl riding it.” Mae said Dick and his cohorts were good cowboys, which mean “they could ride or rope anything.”
Mae and Dick both took homesteads south of Rozet. They had to wait six months to be married so Mae could prove up on her homestead. They married the last day of 1921. They had two children, John Vernon and Phyllis Evelyn. Dick worked on the side as a laborer building bridges in the area and the couple spent one year working at Charles Belden’s Pitchfork ranch near Meeteetse. Belden became a famous western photographer who, as Dick later reported, would have his hands drive cattle over repeatedly through various scenes until he was sure he had a good photo captured. Though Belden likely photographed Dick some time in that period, Dick’s family hasn’t ever found one—perhaps owing to the tragic destruction of many of Belden’s glass negatives following his death.
Dick didn’t fare well in his entrepreneurial adventures, primarily in the business of water well drilling. In those days husbands could mortgage their wife’s property and Mae was not fond of having to pay off loans against her cattle more than once. For whatever reason, the couple became somewhat estranged and Dick lived many years on other ranches. He spent well over 60 years doing cowboy work on the many ranches where he worked.
He became a classic working cowboy figure over the years. He was renowned as the guy who could roll cigarettes one-handed on a trotting horse. He was a heavy smoker who rarely flicked the ashes from his cigarettes, that causing the trademark burn holes in his Pendleton wool pants. Those pants were the classic signature attire of R.V. Talley through his later years.
He worked at the J Bar 9 ranch on the South Fork of the Shoshone River west of Cody, where he could be close to his daughter and her children. He was feeding cattle there when he collapsed from a stroke and another hand carried him back to the ranch house on a tractor-mounted hay fork.
Dick Talley died July 22, 1972, and was buried in Sturgis, South Dakota.