Film, music, and literature depict ruddy-faced men effortless herding and tending livestock on the open plains in cowboy lore, a sentimentalization of ranch workers and their prospective duties. At times those men are heroes defending the ideals of the cowboy: hardworking, honest, fearless. In other instances, they are anti-heroes: gunslingers and stagecoach robbers whose lives brewed a reckless lawlessness (both revered and feared) associated with a brand of self-defined freedom. Names like Billy the Kid, Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody, Nat Love (a former slave who found work as a cowboy following the American Civil War), and Annie Oakley (a teenaged sharpshooter who toured with Buffalo Bill) are among the most lauded cowboys and cowgirls. But they originated from a different faction of cowboys.