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HOW 'BOUT THEM
Cowgirls? Words and images Dwain Hebda
Raby Sisters
I N T H E FA R R E AC H E S
of Faulkner County,
There’s not a cowpoke in the bunch save for Robbie Raby,
Arkansas, the land yawns wide and flat. Around every bend
the father of this brood and a former bull rider. But he’s well
in the road, the windbreaks cradle flat pastures billowing in
outnumbered by the latest generation, three straight-talking
the breeze. Here and there a house or barn dots the hillside,
and competitive sisters who don’t back down from anyone in
but mostly all you see are ranch gates and dirt roads.
the arena, especially each other.
On a spread just outside of Mt. Vernon near the county line
“It’s been pretty intense from time to time,” said Gracie,
sits the Raby place, home to one of the most prolific rodeo
nineteen, and a sophomore at Henderson State University on
families in the state if not the nation. The Rabys have been
a basketball scholarship. “It’s like, we all want each other to
tied up in rodeo for four generations, and they’re not done
do well, just not better than yourself, you know?”
yet with the current crop of the family’s competitors arguably the greatest in the family line.
If you didn’t know coming in, there’s no mistaking which of the three Raby girls is the oldest. As successful as her
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