Frank Sherett

Frank Sherett is a young bronc rider in the resident company at Polk's Cow Stadium, introduced as a lively performer whose clean ride has left him buoyant. His importance is less a developed personal history than the pressure his youth and emerging usefulness place on Mike Milo: first as the target of Mike's anger about aging, and later as a possible successor in the Ride-Out.

Identity and Place in the Company

Frank is twenty years old and arrives with a group of four punchers. He leads them and is described as especially rambunctious after completing a clean ride on the field. The detail establishes him as an active performer, not merely a spectator or an outsider to the rodeo company's daily life. The contrast with Mike is immediate: Frank's recent success belongs to the present, while Mike's reputation is displayed in the trophies and awards he has accumulated.

Mike habitually identifies Frank in his thoughts as the man without acne, despite recognizing that Frank does not actually have acne. The odd mental label turns Frank into a face Mike associates with youth and blemishes that are not really there. It conveys more about Mike's way of registering him than about Frank himself: Mike sees a young man and, at the same time, the passage of time that the younger rider represents.

The Confrontation with Mike Milo

During the encounter, Frank addresses Mike with a familiar, grandfatherly nickname. Mike stops him, demands to know what he called him, and then grabs him and directs his attention to the awards displayed by the open locker. The exchange becomes a defense of Mike's standing. He points out medals, ribbons, buckles, and a National Finals award, then singles out a Ride-Out medal that he had won at an exhibition just three years earlier. The exact interval matters: Mike is not only invoking a distant career but insisting that his achievement is recent enough to contradict Frank's implication that he belongs to an older generation.

The other young men do not intervene while Mike confronts Frank. Their stillness makes the encounter a public test of status, and their later reaction changes its course. One of them begins to tease Frank, and Mike hears the laughter as well as his own escalating anger. That moment brings him back to himself. He turns away from the humiliation he had been forcing on Frank, mutters an apology, and ends the confrontation; Frank retreats behind the hardware rack and leaves. The scene therefore does not resolve the difference between the two men through a contest of riding skill. Instead, Mike recognizes the cruelty of what he is doing before the others' amusement can turn it into a spectacle.

The Ride-Out and Mike's Replacement

Frank's role acquires a practical consequence when Mike later returns to Howard Polk after being fired. Howard says that the Ride-Out was the only reason he had kept Mike, but that Frank performed it twice while Mike was away. Howard concedes that Frank did not do it particularly well, yet judges that he can improve, whereas Mike can only decline. Frank's attempts thus become part of the employer's case for dismissing a celebrated rider: a younger company member can take on the featured act, even if his performances remain imperfect.

The contrast is sharp because the Ride-Out had been announced as a special event featuring Mike, the rodeo's star and a winner of three National Finals. At that performance, Mike rides Tabasco and makes his familiar hat flourish, drawing the crowd's applause. Frank is not shown taking Mike's place in that celebrated scene; his two attempts are reported later by Howard as evidence in a dispute over Mike's employment. The difference between public acclaim and the manager's assessment shows how quickly an established act can become replaceable within the company.

Narrative Significance

Frank's limited appearances connect two forms of pressure on Mike. In the locker-room encounter, the young rider's teasing name exposes how strongly Mike resists being seen as old; the awards and the three-year-old medal become his evidence that he remains an accomplished competitor. Later, Frank's performance of the same special event gives Howard a concrete comparison with which to argue that Mike's place is no longer secure. Frank is therefore both a person in the company and a measure of its changing needs.

The narrative gives Frank no comparable account of ambition, private feeling, or life beyond the arena. What it does show is enough to make his function specific: he has the energy of a successful young rider, can attempt Mike's signature event, and becomes the occasion for a revealing lapse and recovery in Mike's conduct. His presence helps frame the cost of a rodeo identity built on public prowess. Mike's awards preserve the record of earlier achievement, but they cannot prevent the company from testing a younger performer or guarantee that the old star will remain its choice.