He wakes up in the morning in his little white bedroom decorated in cowboys and horses.

He places one little foot and then the other on the worn wood floor and shuffles over to the straight back chair where his mother laid out his clothes.

She gave up long ago trying to get him to wear anything besides button-downs and jeans.

Dressed to the nines in his get-up with his black boots and Stetson, he bounds down the stairs to the kitchen where the smell of bacon, eggs, and biscuits wafts from the stove.

After breakfast, he bursts out the back door, the screen slamming, and races across the yard, around the barn, and past the corral to take up his regular post.

His lasso that his father made him wraps limply around his arm like a long, tan snake. He holds the head in his hand, ready at a moments notice to climb through the fence and start roping broncos.

There they are, snuffing and snorting, stampeding across the pasture, half-broke horses as wild as this western prairie and as spirited as the little figure watching them through the gaps in the wire.

He watches as the more experienced cowboys ride circles around them, trying to hem them in and lasso them into submission.

He dreams of the day he can join them, when he can feel the wind blowing against his face as he and his pony gallop across the open field chasing after the untamed spirits.

His Stetson sits atop his head at an askew angle, but he does not notice. He only cares that he is on the outside, and the others are on the inside.

This is the life of the littlest cowboy, too small to help but with dreams big enough to try.