Overstreet's 2-year-old grandson already has his own herd -- at baby showers around here friends give livestock instead of "Barney" tapes -- and if Junior joins the business he'll be a sixth-generation rancher. "We put him on a horse," says Overstreet, "but my wife said better teach him to work a computer and get him off that damn horse."

Not likely.

Cow hunting is in the Overstreet blood. Just like the scrub horses and Cracker cattle and the black-mouth curs that go with the job, the Overstreets are specially adapted to an unremitting life of riding under a boiling Osceola County sun, pulling fences and picking out thistle burrs.

Yes, Hoss, there are cowboys in the Sunshine State.

In fact, here come about 450 of them, all spurs and chaps and 10-gallon hats, moseying through a midday rainstorm to their campsite under a live-oak hammock on a ranch just outside Kissimmee, with Overstreet leading the way on his little Cracker-quarter horse mix.

In the parade of roans and grays and slicker-clad riders are a few wagons and old-fashioned buggies, some pulled by mules in silver yokes and jingle bells, some carrying babies strapped into car seats. Bringing up the rear is the littlest buckaroo, Lindsey Jowers, 4, riding a Shetland pony named Scout, her dark hair plastered down by the rain, but her spirits still crisp. "It's fun," smiles the St. Cloud tot.

"That pony babysits her," says Lindsey's mother, Susan Jowers, astride a quarter horse that looks like the giant economy-size version of Scout. "People get a kick out of watching her."

These equine enthusiasts, some of them suburban "tender butts," some of them full-time ranchers, are gathered for a yearly eight-day fling organized by the volunteer group Osceola County Wagon Train and Trail Ride Inc. Many also participated in the Cracker Trail Ride, a similar outing held the previous week. Some come from a long way off just to ride the Florida range.

Lisa Bowen-Darby, 36, pulled her husband's stock trailer all the way from Cody, Wyo., five days on the road, to spend time on horseback with her mother, Sara Bowen, 62, and to catch up with some old friends such as one-time next door neighbor Kathy Killmon. Killmon, 38, who lives in St. Cloud, hadn't been on a horse in 20 years. After this day's ride, "My backside needs a little Desitin, but other than that I'm fine," says Killmon, waiting out the downpour under the tent near the chuck wagon.

Though they may not all be ranchers (Bowen-Darby is a former deputy; Killmon is an executive secretary), these modern-day vaqueros are the living repository of Florida's 400-year cowboy heritage.

It's a heritage many of the rest of us have forgotten. We associate cattle and caballeros with the West. We associate Florida with Mickey Mouse.

That slight is particularly annoying for a Florida expatriate such as Bowen-Darby, who married a Colorado man and moved to the heart of Marlboro Country in Wyoming, where the residents fancy themselves to be the real cowboys. "I have to explain to people that, `Yes, there are cattle in Florida,' " she says. " `In fact, we had cattle before you did, and we probably have more than you.' "