THE STORY OF THE WES1 SERIES 
 
 EDITED BY RIP LEY HITCHCOLK 
 
 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY 
 
(*fte Story of the ttlest Series. 
 
 EDITED BY RIPLEY HITCHCOCK. 
 Each, illustrated, 12010, cloth, $1.50. 
 
 the Story of tbe Indian. 
 
 By GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL, author of " Pawnee 
 Hero Stories," " Blackfoot Lodge Tales," etc. 
 " In every way worthy of an author who as an authority upon 
 the Western Indians is second to none. A book full of color, 
 abounding in observation, and remarkable in sustained interest; it 
 is at the same time characterized by a grace of style which is rarely 
 to be looked for in such a work, and which adds not a little to the 
 charm of it." London Daily Chronicle. 
 
 tbc Story of tbc mine. 
 
 Illustrated by the Great Comstock Lode of Nevada. 
 By CHARLES HOWARD SHINN. 
 
 " The author has written a book not alone full of information, 
 but replete with the true romance of the American mine." New 
 York Times. 
 
 " Few chapters of recent history are more fascinating than that 
 which Mr. Shinn has told in 'The Story of the Mine.' . . . Mr. 
 Shinn has drawn his pictures skillfully and sympathetically, and 
 he knows the country and people at first hand." The Outlook. 
 
 tbe Story of tbe Cowboy. 
 
 By E. HOUGH. Illustrated by William L. Wells and 
 C. M. Russell. 
 
 "Nothing fresher or finer has been written in many a day. 
 . . . An admirable work." Chicago Evening Post. 
 
 " An unusually vivid and interesting picture of Western life." 
 New York Herald. 
 
 IN PREPARATION. 
 
 The Story of the Railroad. By CY WARMAN. 
 The Story of the Trapper. By GILBERT PARKER. 
 The Story of the Soldier. 
 The Story of the Explorer. By RIPLEY HITCHCOCK-. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 
 
The cowboy. 
 
THE -STORY 
 OF THE COWBOY 
 
 BY 
 
 E. HOUGH 
 
 
 
 AUTHOR OF THE SINGING MOUSE STORIES, ETC. 
 
 I L LUSTRA TED BY 
 WILLIAM L. WELLS AND C. M. RUSSELL 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 I 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1897, 
 BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 
 
 7 t- f 
 
EDITOK'S PEEFACE. 
 
 LIKE everything peculiarly distinctive, the life of 
 the cowboy through its very raciness has lent itself 
 to literary abuse, and the cowboy has been freely pic- 
 tured by indolent and unscrupulous pens as an embodi- 
 ment of license and uproarious iniquity. If he were 
 only this, the great business which he has conducted 
 on the plains could never have grown to its imposing 
 proportions. With the cowboy, as with the Indian, 
 it is essential to disabuse ourselves of illusions. Pic- 
 turesque the cowboy assuredly is, easily superior, so 
 far as effectiveness is concerned, to the guacho of South 
 America and, from an Anglo-Saxon point of view, to 
 the bedizened vaquero of Mexico. Beyond this pic- 
 turesqueness of effect and environment very few have 
 cared to go, and therefore Americans have had little 
 actual realization of the vastness of the cowboy's king- 
 dom, the magnitude of the interests in his care, or 
 the fortitude, resolution, and instant readiness essen- 
 tial to his daily life. The American cowboy is the 
 most gallant modern representative of a human in- 
 dustry second to very few in antiquity. I use the 
 present tense, but, like the other typical figures of the 
 country west of the Missouri, the cowboy is already 
 receding into the shadows of past years. The cattle, 
 wild descendants of Andalusian stock, which he herded 
 in Texas and, later, drove to the North, have been bred 
 
vi THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 to the ways of civilization, with a distinct gain to their 
 comeliness, if not to their agility. The long trails have 
 been blocked, the ranges traversed by barbed wire, and 
 thysuperb freedom of the unowned plains is exchanged 
 for the bounds and limits of exact ownership. 
 
 Such a chapter of American history demands pres- 
 ervation for reasons esthetic and practical alike, and it 
 is a happy circumstance that the demand is so aptly 
 met in the union of actual knowledge and graphic ex- 
 pression presented in Mr. Hough's Story of the Cow- 
 boy. This is not a bare record, not a summary of in- 
 dustriaf. results, but a living picture of a type often 
 heroic and always invested with an individual inter- 
 est, and it is a picture also which brings before us the 
 sweep and majesty and splendid atmosphere of the 
 plains. 
 
 It seems proper to add that the illustrations, like 
 the text, are based upon actual knowledge and, in the 
 case of Mr. Russell, whose home is a Montana ranch, 
 upon the daily experience of a cowboy's life. 
 
IN a certain Western city there is the studio of a 
 sculptor whose ambition m life has been to perpetuate 
 the memory of the West. He has sought to put into 
 lasting form the types of that unique and rugged era 
 of our national growth when the soldier and plains- 
 man, the Indian and the cowboy were the citizens of 
 that vast and unknown region. In the following out 
 of that idea he has made in clay and bronze many 
 things entitled to be called curious and beautiful. It 
 is the fancy of this artist at times to take some of 
 these forms and play at pictures with them for the 
 entertainment of his guests. A revolving pedestal 
 is placed in the centre of the room in such way that the 
 light of the fire or of the candles may cast a shadow 
 from it upon the farther wall. Upon the pedestal is 
 placed some figure which appears much magnified upon 
 the white surface beyond, albeit somewhat blurred and 
 softened in its lines. Now it is the likeness of the 
 grizzly bear, now that of the buffalo, while again one 
 sees the lean gray wolf, the tense figure of the flying 
 antelope, or the reaching neck and cut chin of the 
 panther. At one time a mounted Indian may flit upon 
 the wall, or the soldier with sabre and spur. These 
 things, curious and beautiful, form a wild and moving 
 spectacle, coming as they do from a time which may 
 now almost be said to belong to the past. 
 
 vii 
 
viii THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 Upon a certain night this artist had played long 
 with his pictures, when he picked up another fig- 
 ure, holding it for a moment somewhat lovingly, it 
 seemed, before he placed it upon the little monument. 
 " Look! " said he. There upon the wall, of the size of 
 life, jaunty, erect, was the virile figure of a mounted 
 man. He stood straight in the stirrups of his heavy 
 saddle, but lightly and well poised. A coil of rope 
 hung at his saddlebow. A loose belt swung a revol- 
 ver low down upon his hip. A wide hat blew up and 
 back a bit with the air of his travelling, and a deep 
 kerchief fluttered at his neck. His arm, held lax and 
 high, offered support to the slack reins so little needed 
 in his riding. The small and sinewy steed beneath 
 him was alert and vigorous as he. It was a figure vivid, 
 keen, remarkable. Those who saw it gave it quick ap- 
 plause. When it vanished there was silence, for per- 
 haps here were those who thought upon the story that 
 had been told. 
 
 The story of the West is a story of the time of heroes. 
 Of all those who appear large upon the fading page of 
 that day, none may claim greater stature than the chief 
 figure of the cattle range. Cowboy, cattle man, cow- 
 puncher, it matters not what name others have given 
 him, he has remained himself. From the half-tropic 
 to the half -arctic country he has ridden, his type, his 
 costume, his characteristics practically unchanged, one 
 of the most dominant and self-sufficient figures in the 
 history of the land. He never dreamed he was a hero, 
 therefore perhaps he was one. He would scoff at monu- 
 ment or record, therefore perhaps he deserves them. 
 
 Either chiselled or written record may distort if it 
 merely extol. For this central figure of the cattle days, 
 this early rider of the range, it is best to hope that he 
 may not commonly be seen as thrown up on the air in a 
 
INTRODUCTION. ix 
 
 mirage, huge, grotesque, fantastic, but that he may 
 rather be viewed clear cut against the Western sky, a 
 glorious silhouette of the open air. Before many years 
 have passed the original of such a picture will have 
 disappeared. We shall listen in vain for the jingle of 
 his spurs, or the creak of his leather gear, or the whip- 
 ping of his scarf end on the wind. Tinkle and creak 
 even now die away in the distance beyond. (An ex- 
 plorer, a surveyor, a guide, a scout, a fighting man) he 
 passed this way. If we study him, we shall study also 
 the day in which he lived, more especially that early 
 day which saw the opening and the climax of that 
 drama of commerce the cattle industry of the West. 
 
 So great an industry could exist only over a vast 
 extent of country. Therefore, although its methods 
 and its followers have had a curious permanency of 
 type, it was foregone that locality should determine a 
 certain variety in its practical customs. Obviously a 
 just estimate of the entire industry or of its leading 
 figure must include alike the dissimilar and the com- 
 mon points of view. This is not easily done, for the 
 vocation of the cattle rancher, once curiously without 
 section, has now become much sectionalized, and has 
 been much modified by agricultural influx the latter 
 an influence which will produce still greater change in 
 the coming generation, when all the possible farming 
 lands shall have been tapped and tested, and when the 
 farming man shall have begun to look about him and 
 to travel more in a day of cheaper transportation. In 
 the attempt to arrive at an estimate which should be 
 representative and fair, the writer has found his own 
 experience very much aided by that of many rancher 
 friends living or owning property over a wide area of 
 the cattle range. The counsel of these friends has been 
 desirable and valuable in an undertaking such as that 
 
X THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 in hand. Especial thanks for critical suggestions are 
 due Mr. George Bird Grinnell, author of the Story of 
 the Indian. Mr. Grinnell's experience in the old and 
 the new West has been a wide one, and his observa- 
 tion has extended to the small as well as the large fea- 
 tures of practical ranch life, so that his aid has been 
 matter of good fortune. The writer concludes his 
 labour with a sense of the inadequacy of the result, 
 but feeling none the less that the theme itself is an in- 
 teresting and worthy one. 
 
 E. HOUGH. 
 CHICAGO, ILL., Dec. 10, 1896. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION ^ 
 
 I. THE LONG TRAIL .....!. i 
 
 II- THE RANCH IN THE SOUTH ... J) 
 
 HI. THE RANCH IN THE NORTH ... 28 
 
 IV. THE COWBOY'S OUTFIT .... 50 
 
 V. THE COWBOY'S HORSE .... 70 
 
 VI. MARKS AND BRANDS .... 109 
 
 VII. FREE GRASS AND WATER FRONTS . . 123 
 
 VIII. THE DRIVE 135 
 
 IX. THE ROUND-UP ^50. 
 
 X. DRIFTS AND STAMPEDES ..... 182 
 
 XI. A DAY AT THE RANCH ..... 200 
 
 XII. THE COWBOY'S AMUSEMENTS 221 
 
 XIII. SOCIETY IN THE cow COUNTRY .... 237 
 
 XIV. THE NESTER 204 
 
 XV. THE RUSTLER 272 
 
 XVI. WARS OF THE RANGE 300 
 
 XVII. BEEF AND FREEDOM .... 325 
 
 XVIII. THE IRON TRAILS ...... 330 
 
 XIX. SUNSET ON THE RANGE 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTKATIONS. 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 THE COWBOY Frontispiece 
 
 CUTTING OUT 
 
 THE HORSE-HERD 
 
 BRANDING A CALF 
 
 ROPING A MAVERICK 173 
 
 A STAMPEDE 194 
 
 A CONTEST OF RACES 25 ? 
 
 RED WINS" 261 
 
 LOOKING FOR RUSTLERS 278 
 
 A MEETING IN A BLIZZARD 307 
 
THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE LONG TKAIL. 
 
 IT lies like a long rope thrown idly on the ground, 
 abandoned by the hand that used it. Its strands are 
 unbraided and have fallen apart, lying loose and for- 
 gotten upon the sandy soil. The wind is blowing 
 dust across these disconnected threads, and the grasses 
 are seeking to cover them,, and the waters have in 
 places washed them quite away. The frayed ends are 
 disappearing. Soon the entire cord will have disap- 
 peared. The Long Trail of the cattle range will then 
 be but a memory. 
 
 The braiding of a hundred minor pathways, the 
 Long Trail lay like a vast rope connecting the cattle 
 country of the South with that of the North. Lying 
 loose or coiling, it ran for more than two thousand 
 miles along the eastern edge of the Eocky Mountains, 
 sometimes close in at their feet, again hundreds of 
 miles away across the hard table-lands or the well- 
 flowered prairies. It traversed in a fair line the vast 
 land of Texas, curled over the Indian Nations, over 
 Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana, 
 and bent in wide overlapping circles as far west 
 as Utah and Nevada; as far east as Missouri, Iowa, 
 
 1 
 
2 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 even Illinois; and as far north, as the British pos- 
 sessions. Even to-day you may trace plainly its former 
 course, from its faint beginnings in the lazy land of 
 Mexico, the Ararat of the cattle range. It is distinct 
 across Texas, and multifold still in the Indian lands. 
 Its many intermingling paths still scar the iron sur- 
 face of the Neutral Strip, and the plows have not 
 buried all the old furrows in the plains of Kansas. 
 Parts of the path still remain visible in the mountain 
 lands of the far North. You may see the ribbons 
 banding the hillsides to-day along the valley of the 
 Stillwater, and along the Yellowstone and toward the 
 source of the Missouri. The hoof marks are beyond 
 the Musselshell, over the Bad Lands and the coulees 
 and the flat prairies; and far up into the land of the long 
 cold you may see, even to-day if you like, the shadow of 
 that unparalleled pathway, the Long Trail of the cattle 
 range. History has no other like it. 
 
 The Long Trail was surveyed and constructed in 
 a century and a day. Over the Eed Eiver of the South, 
 a stream even to-day perhaps known but vaguely in the 
 minds of many inhabitants of the country, there ap- 
 peared, almost without warning, vast processions of 
 strange horned kine processions of enormous wealth, 
 owned by kings who paid no tribute, and guarded by 
 men who never knew a master. Whither these were 
 bound, what had conjured them forth, whence they 
 came, were questions in the minds of the majority of the 
 population of the North and East to whom the phe-, 
 nomenon appeared as the product of a day. The an- 
 swer to these questions lay deep in the laws of civiliza- 
 tion, and extended far back into that civilization's his- 
 tory. The Long Trail was finished in a day. It was 
 begun more than a century before that day, and came 
 forward along the very appointed ways of time. 
 
THE LONG TRAIL. 3 
 
 Senor Jose Montero, let us say, lived long ago, far 
 down in the sunny land of Mexico. The mountains 
 rose up blue beyond the hacienda, and before it the val- 
 leys lay wide and pleasant. Life here was very calm, 
 alike for the haciendado and the barefoot peons who 
 made a servile army about him. There w r as a little 
 grain, there were a few fruits, and there were herds of 
 cattle. Yes, there were the cattle, and there they had 
 always been, longer than Jose Montero or his father 
 could remember. It might be that they had always 
 been there, though to be sure there was talk of one Cor- 
 tez. The cattle might have come from another land, at 
 another time. Quien sabe? In the splendid savagery 
 of that land and time it made small difference when or 
 whence they came. There they were, these cattle, lean 
 of flank, broad of horn, clean-limbed, muscular, active, 
 fierce, simply wild animals that knew no care save the 
 hand of force. They produced food, and above all they 
 produced hide and leather. 
 
 The sons of Jose Montero moved slowly north in 
 course of years, and edged into the Indian country lying 
 above the Rio Grande. The priests went with them, to 
 teach them the management of los Indios reducidos. 
 The horses and the herds of cattle went slowly north 
 with their owners. Thus, far down in the vague 
 Southwest, at some distant time, in some distant por- 
 tion of old, mysterious Mexico, there fell into line 
 the hoof prints which made the first faint begin- 
 nings of the Long Trail, merely the path of a half- 
 nomadic movement along the line of the least resist- 
 ance. 
 
 The descendants of Jose Montero's sons spread out 
 over the warm country on both sides of the Rio Grande, 
 and they grew and their herds grew. Many years of 
 peace and quiet passed, broken only by such troubles 
 
4: THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 as were caused by the Indians, with whom the sons of 
 Montero fared for the most part understandingly. But 
 one day, more than three quarters of a century ago, 
 there appeared in that country men of fierce-bearded 
 faces, many of blue eyes, and all of size and courage. 
 There was war, long years of bitter, relentless, un- 
 recorded war, a war of pillage and assassination, of theft 
 and ambush. The fierce strangers from the North 
 would not be driven back. They increased, they be- 
 came more formidable. At times they even crossed the 
 Eio Grande and drove away herds to their ranclios 
 to the north, these being little less than fortresses or 
 barricades, their life one of armed but undaunted so- 
 licitude. In turn the sons of Montero made raids and 
 sallies, and killed men and captured women, and drove 
 away herds. The Long Trail began to deepen and 
 extend. It received then, as it did later, a baptism 
 of human blood such as no other pathway of the conti- 
 nent has known. 
 
 The nomadic and the warlike days passed, and there 
 ensued a more quiet and pastoral time. The fierce 
 strangers, perhaps reticent in regard to the methods 
 by which they had obtained what they liked, now held 
 that which they chose to call their own. It was the 
 beginning of a feudalism of the range, a baronry rude 
 enough, but a glorious one, albeit it began, like all 
 feudalism, in large-handed theft and generous mur- 
 dering. The flocks of these strong men, carelessly in- 
 terlapping, increased and multiplied amazingly. They 
 were hardly looked upon as wealth. The people could 
 not eat a tithe of the beef, they could not use a hun- 
 dredth of the leather. Over hundreds and hundreds 
 of miles of ownerless grass lands, by the rapid waters of 
 the mountains, by the slow streams of the plains or the 
 long and dark lagoons of the low coast country, the 
 
THE LONG TRAIL. 5 
 
 herds of tens grew into droves of hundreds and thou- 
 sands and hundreds of thousands. 
 
 Texas had become a republic and a State before a 
 certain obvious and useful phenomenon in the econom- 
 ics of Nature had been generally recognised. Yet at 
 some time and under some condition of observation it had 
 been discovered that the short gray grass of the north- 
 ern plains of Texas, which the buffalo loved so well, 
 would rear cattle to a much greater size than those 
 of the coast range. A cow of the hot and low country 
 might not weigh more than five or six hundred pounds, 
 whereas if driven north and allowed to range on the 
 sun-cured short grasses, the buffalo grass, the gramma 
 grass or the mesquite grass, the weight might increase 
 fairly by one third. It was the simplest thing in the 
 world to gain this increased value by driving the cattle 
 from the lower to the upper ranges of the great State 
 always subject to the consent or to the enterprise of 
 the savage tribes which then occupied that region. 
 
 This was really the dawning of the American cattle 
 industry. The Long Trail thus received a gradual but 
 unmistakable extension, always to the north, and along 
 the line of the intermingling of the products of the 
 Spanish and the Anglo-Saxon civilizations. Sometimes 
 these fatter cattle were driven back and sold in Old 
 Mexico, but there was no real market there. The thrust 
 was always to the north. Chips and flakes of the great 
 Southwestern herd began to be seen in the Northern 
 States. As early as 182_JEexas cattle were driven to 
 Illinois. In 1861 Louisiana was tried as an outlet with- 
 out success. In 1867 a venturous drover took a herd 
 across the Indian Nations, bound for California, and 
 only abandoned the project because the plains Indians 
 were then very bad in the country to the north. In 
 1869 several herds were driven from Texas to Nevada. 
 2 
 
6 THE STOKY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 These were side trails of the main cattle road. It 
 seemed clear that a great population in the North 
 needed the cheap beef of Texas,, and the main question 
 appeared to be one of transportation. No proper means 
 for this offered. At Rockport and one or two other 
 harborless towns on the Texas coast it was sought to 
 establish canneries for the product of the range, but all 
 these projects failed. A rapacious steamship line un- 
 dertook to build up a carrying trade between Texas 
 and New Orleans or Mobile, but this also failed. The 
 civil war stopped almost all plans to market the range 
 cattle, and the close of that war found the vast graz- 
 ing lands of Texas covered fairly with millions of cat- 
 tle which had no actual or determinate value. They 
 were sorted and branded and herded after a fashion, 
 but neither they nor their increase could be converted 
 into anything but more cattle. The cry for a market 
 became imperative. 
 
 Meantime the Anglo-Saxon civilization was rolling 
 swiftly toward the upper West. The Indians were being 
 driven from the plains. A solid army was pressing be- 
 hind the vanguard of soldier, scout, and plainsman. 
 The railroads were pushing out into a new and un- 
 tracked empire. They carried the market with them. 
 The market halted, much nearer, though still some 
 hundreds of miles to the north of the great herd. The 
 Long Trail tapped no more at the door of Illinois, Mis- 
 souri, Arkansas, but leaped north again definitely, this 
 time springing across the Red River and up to the 
 railroads, along sharp and well-defined channels deep- 
 ened in the year of 1866 alone by the hoofs of more 
 than a quarter of a million cattle. In 1871, only five 
 years later, over six hundred thousand cattle crossed the 
 Red River for the Northern markets. Abilene, New- 
 ton, Wichita, Ellsworth, Great Bend, " Dodge/' flared 
 
THE LONG TRAIL. 7 
 
 out into a swift and sometime evil blossoming. The com- 
 ing of the markets did not make more fortunes than it 
 lost for the Southern cattle owners, for the advent of 
 the long-horned herds was bitterly contested in many 
 sections of the North, but in spite of all a new industry 
 was swiftly and surely established. Thus the men of 
 the North first came to hear of the Long Trail and the 
 men who made it, though really it had begun long 
 ago and had been foreordained to grow. 
 
 By this time, 1867 and 1868, the northern portions of 
 the region immediately to the east of the Kocky Moun- 
 tains had been sufficiently cleared of their wild in- 
 habitants to admit a gradual though precarious settle- 
 ment. It had been learned yet again that the buffalo 
 grass and the sweet waters of the far North would 
 fatten a range broadhorn to a stature far beyond any 
 it could attain on the southern range. The Long Trail 
 pushed rapidly still further to the north, where there 
 still remained " free grass " and a new market. The 
 territorial ranges needed many thousands of cattle for 
 their stocking, and this demand took a large part of the 
 Texas drive which came to Abilene, Great Bend, and 
 Fort Dodge. Moreover, the Government was now feed- 
 ing thousands of its new red wards, and these Indians 
 needed thousands of beeves for rations, which were 
 driven from the southern range to the upper army 
 posts and reservations. Between this Government de- 
 mand and that of the territorial stock ranges there was 
 occupation for the men who made the saddle their 
 home. The Long Trail, which long ago had found the 
 black corn lands of Illinois and Missouri, now crowded 
 to the West, until it had reached Utah and Nevada, 
 and penetrated every open park and mesa and valley of 
 Colorado, and found all the high plains of Wyoming. 
 Cheyenne and Laramie became common words now, 
 
8 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 and drovers spoke as wisely of the dangers of the Platte 
 as a year before they had mentioned those of the lied 
 River or the Arkansas. Nor did the Trail pause in its 
 irresistible push to the north until it had found the last 
 of the five great transcontinental lines, far in the British 
 provinces, where in spite of a long season of ice and snow 
 the uttermost edges of the great herd might survive, in 
 a certain per cent at least, each year in an almost unas- 
 sisted struggle for existence, under conditions different 
 enough, it would seem, from those obtaining at the op- 
 posite extreme of the wild roadway over which they came. 
 The Long Trail of the cattle range was done. By 
 magic the cattle industry had spread over the entire 
 West. To-day many men think of that industry as 
 belonging only to the Southwest, and many would con- 
 sider that it was transferred to the North. Eeally it 
 was not transferred but extended, and the trail of the 
 old drive marks the line of that extension. To-day the 
 Long Trail is replaced by other trails, product of the 
 swift development of the West, and it remains as the 
 connection, now for the most part historical only, be- 
 tween two phases of an industry which, in spite of differ- 
 ences of climate and condition, retain a similarity in all 
 essential features. When the last steer of the first herd 
 was driven into the corral at the Ultima Thule of the 
 range, it was the pony of the American cowboy which 
 squatted and wheeled under the spur and burst down 
 the straggling street of the little frontier town. Before 
 that time, and since that time, it was and has boon 
 the same pony, the same man, who have travelled ilio 
 range, guarding and guiding the wild herds, from the 
 romantic up to the commonplace days of the West. 
 The American cowboy and the American cattle indus- 
 try have been and are one and inseparable. The story 
 of one is the story of the other. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE RANCH IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 DESCRIPTION of the Western cattle industry, wheth- 
 er in regard to its features, its characters, or its en- 
 vironments, must be largely a matter of generalization. 
 The cattle country itself covers a third of the entire 
 territory of the United States. We have sought rough- 
 ly to divide it into the two sections of the North and 
 South, but it would trouble one to say where even a 
 broad and indefinite line should be drawn which should 
 act as a fair boundary between the two. Should we 
 place that boundary, loosely speaking, somewhere at the 
 central or southern line of the State of Kansas, we 
 shall have established a demarcation at best arbitrary 
 and in many ways inconclusive and inaccurate. Even 
 if we presume that this indefinite line be sufficiently 
 accurate, we shall have left, for our Southern ranch re- 
 gion, a domain many times larger than the entire terri- 
 tory of Great Britain, with a few of her choice provinces 
 thrown into the bargain. 
 
 Over so large a region there must prevail some 
 divergence of people and things; and in turn we 
 must remember that all these people and things, more 
 especially as they pertain to the story of the cattle 
 man. have in late years been subject to much change. 
 It would be very natural for any one who had but 
 a partial acquaintance, or one limited to a few sec- 
 
 9 
 
10 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 tions of so large a region, to consider as incorrect 
 any specialized description which, did not tally with 
 his own observation in his own locality. Still more 
 inaccurate might such an observer consider a description 
 which covered accurately twenty years ago a section 
 which he first sees to-day, in the last quarter of the 
 century. For instance, a citizen of the type our friend 
 the cowpuncher is wont to term a " pilgrim," might 
 go to-day to some railroad point in the vast State of 
 Texas, expecting to find there in full swing the rude 
 ways of the past. He might expect to see the ranch- 
 man an uncouth personage, clad in the border garb once 
 pictured in lurid literature or still more lurid drama, 
 his speech full of strange oaths, his home a dugout or a 
 shanty. Much surprised might this stranger be to dis- 
 cover his ranchman a comfortable individual, of well- 
 cut business dress, guiltless of obvious weaponry, and 
 plain and simple in speech. Still more surprised he 
 might be to learn that this ranchman does not live 
 upon his ranch at all, but in the town or city, perhaps 
 many miles therefrom. The ranchman may have an 
 office in the bank, and may be chief stockholder in 
 that institution and other leading concerns of his town. 
 He may be a member of the Legislature, or sheriff of 
 his county, or candidate for higher office. His fam- 
 ily may have a son in college, a daughter in the art 
 school of a distant city. The ranch itself, if discovered, 
 may be simply a vast and partly tilled farm, with white- 
 painted buildings, with busy tenantry, and much mod- 
 ern machinery in intelligent use. This would be accu- 
 rate description of a ranch in the South to-day. But 
 it would be accurate only in particular, not in general, 
 and it would never satisfy the inquirer who knows 
 something of what ranch life once was and is to-day in 
 a wide and wild portion of the Western region. 
 
THE RANCH IN THE SOUTH. H 
 
 If we sought to be more general in the outlook for 
 a ranch fit to be called typically Southern,, we should 
 certainly have much latitude afforded us. Suppose it 
 to be in the Indian Nations, taking it at that time be- 
 fore the Indians had grown wise in their day and gen- 
 eration, and before the United States Government had 
 evicted many of those opulent tenants, the cattle men of 
 the nations. Let us picture our ranch as lying along 
 some timbered stream, such as the Cimarron, which 
 flows just above the " black-jack " country of the Chey- 
 ennes and Arapahoes. Here the land lies in long swell- 
 ing rolls' and ridges, with hills of short oak scrub, and 
 wide intervals of prairie. Into the main stream of 
 the river flow many smaller tributaries, and among 
 these are some little creeks heading back among the 
 hills in fresh, unfailing springs, whose waters flow al- 
 ways sweet and abundant throughout the year. Fancy 
 some such little nook, well up in the hills, a half mile 
 from the river, and in imagination surround it with 
 the forest trees which should grow at such a spot. Well 
 down the hillside, sheltered alike by the hill and by 
 the forest from the cold winds which come from the 
 north in winter, stands the ranch house. It is made of 
 logs, much in the style of the lumberman's log house in 
 the pine woods, except that the structure is more care- 
 less and less finished. The door is made of a single 
 thickness of unplaned and unmatched boards. It hangs 
 loose upon its rough wooden hinges, and its lo'ck is a 
 rude wooden latch the string whereof literally hangs 
 upon the outside. Wide crocks are open about the 
 edges of the door and about the windows and between 
 the logs at the sides and ends of the room for there 
 is but one great room in the ranch house proper. Along 
 the wall of this vast apartment are built sleeping 
 bunks, similar to those used by the cabin dwellers of 
 
12 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 the pine woods. There is little furniture except a rough 
 table or two, and a few stools or broken chairs. The 
 clothing of the men lies under the bunks or hangs on 
 pegs driven in the wall; for trunks, wardrobes, or pri- 
 vate places for individual properties are unknown and 
 unnecessary. The saddles, bridles, ropes, and other 
 gear hang on strong pegs in the covered hallway or 
 open-front room which connects the ranch room with 
 the cook house. This connecting room or open hall is 
 also the lounging place of the many dogs and hounds 
 which make part of the live stock of the place. These 
 dogs are used in the constant wolfing operations, and 
 are a necessity on the ranch, but with them a continual 
 feud is waged alike by the cook from whom they steal, 
 and the foreman with whom they continually endeavour 
 to sleep at night this by reason of an affection much 
 misplaced; for the foreman is a man of stern ideas of 
 life. The cook house is also the dining hall, and here 
 the same rude arrangements prevail as in the main 
 apartment. There is a long pine table, two or three 
 long wooden benches, perhaps a chair or two. There 
 is a good cook stove, and the dishes are serviceable and 
 clean, though not new or expensive. The cook has his 
 bunk in the kitchen, and is left alone in his own do- 
 main, being held a man with whom it were not well to 
 trifle. 
 
 The country of the Nations has a climate hot in 
 summer, though not extremely cold in winter, except 
 for occasional cold storms of wind and snow. Such a 
 storm is called a " norther " ; by which we may know 
 that we are upon a Southern ranch or one manned by 
 Southern cowmen. In the North the same storm would 
 be a " blizzard." On this range shelter for the cattle 
 is never considered, and they fare well in the timbered 
 hollows even in the roughest weather. Hay is of course 
 
THE RANCH IN THE SOUTH. 13 
 
 something little known. It is a wild country, and game 
 is abundant. The nearest railway point is one hundred 
 miles to the north, let us say, at least, at the time of our 
 visit. The ranchmen do not see civilization more than 
 once a year. They are lonely and glad of the company 
 of an occasional deer hunter who may blunder down 
 into the forbidden Indian lands. All men are welcome 
 at the ranch, and no questions are asked of them. Every 
 visitor goes to the table without invitation, and there 
 all men eat in silence. One has seen at such a meal 
 a hunter, a neighbouring ranchman bound for his place 
 fifty miles below, and two suspected horse thieves, bound 
 for some point not stated. No questions were asked 
 of any of them. In this region, where news is the 
 scarcest of commodities, the idea of gossip is unknown. 
 The habit or the etiquette of the cowboy is not to talk. 
 He is silent as an Indian. The ranch boss is the most 
 taciturn of all. The visitor, when he comes to take his 
 departure, if he is acquainted with the ways and the 
 etiquette of ranch life, does not think of offering pay, 
 no matter whether his stay has been for days, weeks, or 
 months. If he be plainsman and not " pilgrim," no 
 matter whether he be hunter, ranchman, or horse thief, 
 he simply mounts, says " So long," and rides away. 
 The taciturn foreman says " So long," and goes back 
 to work. The foreman's name may be Jim, never any- 
 thing more, about the place and among his own men. 
 On the neighbouring ranges or at the round-up he is 
 known perhaps as the " foreman on the Bar Y." Some 
 of the cowboys on the Bar Y may be diagnosed to have 
 come from Texas or some Southern cattle country. 
 The foreman may once have lived in Texas. It is not 
 etiquette to ask him. It is certain that he is a good 
 cowman. 
 
 This may indicate one phase of ranch life south 
 
14 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 of our imaginary boundary line. It is, however, not 
 comprehensive, and indeed perhaps not typically 
 Southern. Let us suppose that the traveller has fared 
 far to the south of the Indian Nations into the country 
 along the Gulf coast of Texas. Here he is still on the 
 cattle range, but among surroundings distinctly differ- 
 ent from those of the Indian Nations. The hardwood 
 groves have disappeared and their place is taken by 
 " mottes " of live oaks, whose boughs are draped in the 
 dismal gray of the funereal Spanish moss. There is no 
 word now of swamp or brush or timber, but we hear of 
 chaparral and cactus and mesquite. We are at the 
 southern extremity of the great cattle range. Here the 
 cattle even to-day are not so large as those of the North. 
 They run wild through a tangle of thorn and branch 
 and brier. For miles and leagues for here we shall 
 hear also of " leagues " the wilderness stretches 
 away, dry, desolate, abominable. Water is here a prize, 
 a luxury. A few scanty streams trickle down to the 
 arms of the salt bays. Across some such small stream 
 the cattle man has thrown a great dam, costing perhaps 
 a small fortune, and built by an engineer not afraid 
 to use masonry, for he knows what the sudden South- 
 ern floods may mean. Thus is formed a vast " tank," 
 at which the cattle water, coming from unknown dis- 
 tances to quench a thirst not stayed completely by the 
 cactus leaves whose thorns line their mouths as they 
 do those of the wild deer of the region. These tanks 
 are the abode of vast swarms of wild fowl which come 
 in from the sea. About them crowds all the wild 
 ame of the country. In the mud along their trampled 
 banks one sees the footprint of the cougar, of the " leop- 
 ard cat," of the wild deer, the wild turkey, the wild 
 hogs, and peccaries, all these blending with the tread 
 of the many wading or swimming birds which find 
 
THE RANCH IN THE SOUTH. 15 
 
 here their daily rendezvous. Sometimes such tanks run 
 far into the open country back of the " wet prairie/' 
 as the sea marsh is generally called, and again they may 
 run close down to the salt bays which make in from the 
 Gulf. Sometimes this artificial water supply of the 
 ranch is supplemented by a few natural lagoons of 
 fresh water, which rarely go entirely dry. These lakes 
 or lagoons or broken pond holes may run for miles 
 through the swales in the coast forest a forest the 
 most forbidding of any in this whole great country in its 
 ominous gray desolation of twisted trees covered with 
 great festoons of that devil's decoration, the Spanish 
 moss. It is a thirsty land, this of the brooding South- 
 west, this land of warmth and plenty, where life grows 
 swiftly and is swiftly cut down. Here the cattle mature 
 and breed more rapidly than in the North. They range 
 over many miles of country, many of them forever un- 
 known and uncounted, for the round-up in no part of 
 the Western range is more trying than in the pathless 
 thorny chaparral, where the rider can see but a few 
 yards about him and where no general view is ever 
 possible. Water is the one needful thing, and water is 
 the loadstone which draws to view the cattle man's 
 wealth as nothing else could do; for the cattle must 
 drink. 
 
 They must drink, even though the suns of summer 
 dry up the water pools till they are but masses of slime 
 and mud, till they are worse than dry till they have 
 become traps and pitfalls more deadly than any that 
 human ingenuity could devise. Into these treacherous 
 abysses of bottomless and sticky mud the famished 
 creatures wade, seeking a touch of water for their 
 tongues. Weakened already by their long thirst, they 
 struggle and plunge hopelessly in their attempt to get 
 back to solid land. The hands of the waterless bogs 
 
16 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 hold them down. For a day the creature holds its 
 head clear of the mud. Then its head sinks down. 
 Lucky is it if there be water enough to make the mud 
 soft, so that it soon covers the nostrils and cuts off 
 the toiling breath. Above these traps of death clouds of 
 buzzards are always soaring. Others drape the dismal 
 live oaks in lines of sombre black, blending fitly with 
 the sombre gray of the hanging moss. Along the banks 
 of such dried water holes there are always lying hun- 
 dreds of skeletons. The loss of life is unknown and 
 uncounted. Horses, cows, calves, all the animals of the 
 range perish here yearly in unestimated numbers. The 
 loss of wealth is frightful in the aggregate, yet it is one 
 of the ways of the cattle trade never to regard it and 
 to take no means of preventing it. Indeed, nothing can 
 be done to prevent it. It is the way of Nature. The 
 rancher of the southern range will say to you that you 
 shall have as your own property every horse you shall 
 pull out of the mud, every horned head that you shall 
 save from death in the depth of the waterless bogs. But 
 though you take pony and rope and drag out helpless 
 victim after victim, what then shall you do? They 
 die upon the banks because they can not travel to other 
 water, if indeed there be any other water within many 
 miles. The tragedy goes on year after year, to what 
 extent no one knows. The rancher comes to be en- 
 tirely careless of it. The business pf cattle ranching is 
 primarily but a rude overlapping of the ways of Nature, 
 and to Nature's care and protection are left the creatures 
 whose lives are only partially taken in charge by their 
 human owners. 
 
 These untrodden wildernesses of the coast range 
 are now, strange to say, threaded by long lines of wire 
 fence. A " pasture " is an inclosed tract of land per- 
 haps forty or fifty miles square. In the long wire 
 
THE RANCH IX THE SOUTH. 17 
 
 boundary fence there may not be a gate for twenty 
 miles. The hunter who is lost there feels fortunate if 
 he finds one of these long fences. Yet many a hunter, 
 and many a new man on the range has found such a 
 fence and followed it until he fell, mad with a thirst 
 which he found no way of appeasing. The gray oaks 
 and the evil cacti and the curled mesquite smile bitterly 
 to-day over many such unfound wanderers. The native 
 cowboys and range men know where the trail goes, 
 where the gates are, where the ranch house is far back, 
 let us suppose, on the high prairie, where the windmills 
 furnish sweet water in an unfailing supply. This house 
 may be built of boards, simply and modestly, and it 
 possibly is left unpainted. The house itself is a long and 
 low one, with but a single story, and constructed with 
 a wide hall extending through, so that the wind may 
 blow in with what coolness it can claim in the torrid 
 summer days. The rooms are large and airy, and the 
 furniture is comfortable. There are green trees about 
 this house, cottonwoods that have grown up tall and 
 thin at the edge of the slender streams of water wasted 
 from the windmill, and some audacious hand has ac- 
 tually planted flowers about a small plat of precious 
 green. Apart from the house of the owner, which is at 
 times occupied by himself and family, there is another 
 and larger building of ruder furnishing. Here we find 
 an interior not widely different from that of the ranch 
 in the Indian Nations. We may find here, too, per- 
 haps, a foreman whose only name is Jim. He has been 
 foreman on the Star D for many years. 
 
 This country of the Texas coast is very hot, except 
 in winter when the " northers " come, which chill the 
 blood so strangely and which often kill hundreds of the 
 weaker cattle with their mysterious, penetrating cold. 
 Snow is never known here, and of winter as it is under- 
 
18 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 stood in the North there is practically none. The rain- 
 fall during the summer is extremely scant. All about 
 the ranch house, miles and miles, as far as the eye can 
 reach, the surface of the earth is gray and cheerless, 
 with few trees inside the range of the low coast timber 
 or chaparral. The hot sun in summer sets all the sur- 
 face of the earth a-tremble, so that it moves and heaves 
 and writhes. On the horizon float the strange pictures 
 of the mirage. All men know there is no water where 
 the mirage beckons. The water, rare, small, precious, is 
 here, a jewel in this circle of green, this oasis in the ap- 
 parent desert of the range. 
 
 Such is another ranch of the South. But with de- 
 scription so partial and imperfect we shall not even yet 
 have covered our text sufficiently well to entitle us to 
 leave it. We shall have left untouched and unindi- 
 cated a vast territory of the Southern range where the 
 cattle industry flourished for generations before it was 
 dreamed of in the North. Suppose we move yet some 
 hundreds of miles into the far Southwest, coming to 
 that long arm of Spanish civilization which projects 
 up from Mexico into the United States, last and lax 
 hold upon a region which once bore the flag of Spain. 
 Here, if anywhere to-day upon the cattle range, the 
 ways of the past prevail, and here we shall find an 
 environment as odd and picturesque as any. The Pecos 
 and the Rio Grande rivers bound a vast and ill-known 
 region, which has mountains and plains untraversed by 
 the foot of the American tourist. Here we shall find vil- 
 lages unmarked on any map. We shall find men who in 
 all their lives have never seen a railroad train nor heard 
 the sound of the church-going bell. Life here, beyond 
 that of any section of the United States, is ancient, 
 simple, unprogressive, and truly pastoral in its features. 
 In this far-away corner of the land the ways of modern 
 
 
THE RANCH IN THE SOUTH. 19 
 
 life are slow to penetrate. The impact of Anglo-Saxon 
 civilization is taken up by the vis inertice of the old 
 Spanish ways. The vigorous Northerner becomes in 
 a few years a slow-spoken and deliberate New Mexican. 
 The cloudless blue sky, the soft warm air, the unvary- 
 ing equanimity of Nature will have none of haste or 
 worry. The country makes all men its own. It softens 
 and blends and harmonizes all things and all men into 
 its own indifferent calm. 
 
 The tone of our landscape here is not light, but 
 deep in tint, a rich red brown which shades off into the 
 plains and back into the darker colours of the mountains. 
 You would call absolutely barren these wide tracts of 
 land which lie shimmering and throbbing in the un- 
 screened sun. The soil appears to be worthless sand or 
 coarse baked earth. As you look out over such a coun- 
 try you can not believe it possible that it would support 
 any animate life, unless it were this lizard upon the 
 rock, or this hideous horned toad which crawls away 
 from under foot, or these noisy prairie dogs which yelp 
 here as they do upon the northern range. Yet this 
 soil carries the rich gramma grass, whose little scattered 
 tufts, not so large or so gray as those of the buffalo grass, 
 cure and curl down upon the ground and form a range 
 food of wondrous fattening quality. 
 
 We are in a mountain country here. The table- 
 lands on which the cattle graze are more than four 
 thousand feet above the level of the sea. The smaller 
 table-lands or mesas are still more lofty. The foothills 
 run up above six thousand feet, and back of these are 
 mountains, sometimes low and brown, sometimes black 
 with the heavy growth of pinons, sometimes high 
 enough to have white tops for many months in winter. 
 Snow never falls at this latitude over the lower valleys 
 and mesas. Hay is rarely seen, except as imported in 
 
20 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 bales. The native Mexican sometimes makes a faint 
 eil'ort to cut a little' hay, but does his mowing with a 
 c-lumsy hoe. His grainfields are but little patches, and 
 the reaping is done altogether with a sickle. In every 
 way this is an ancient and pastoral land. 
 
 We are far down in the lower end of the great Eocky 
 range, and at a point where little detached ranges and 
 spurs run out from the main chain and make small 
 mountain systems, each with a Spanish name of its own. 
 We hear of the San Miguels, the Oscuras, the Sacra- 
 mentos, the Magdalenas, the Capitans, the Nogales, the 
 Bonitos, the Blancos, the Patos, the Carrizos. Out of 
 each of these little subranges runs some one or more 
 mountain streams, each stream called a rio, or river, 
 no matter how small it may be. This high table-land 
 is a waterless country. It may be that only one or two 
 scant water holes are known in a space of a hundred or 
 two hundred miles. A tiny well is a treasure. A rio is 
 a fortune. In this region of rainless skies water is the 
 one priceless thing. 
 
 The small river tumbles swiftly down out of the 
 mountains, as any mountain stream, and it bears the 
 mountain trout as do the waters of the upper ranges; 
 yet after it has emerged from the mountains and passed 
 through the foothills its course is very brief. In a few 
 miles, perhaps twenty, forty, or fifty miles, it sinks and 
 is lost forever in the sands of the plains. Many miles' 
 beyond there may be another river arising from the 
 sand and struggling on a little way in the attempt to 
 reach the Pecos or the Rio Grande. Without doubt 
 these waters are connected with the great sheet of water 
 which underlies all that region, and which will some- 
 time be brought up by man to make this desert blossom. 
 What there may be beneath the surface of the earth, 
 however, does not concern our Mexican ranchero. It 
 
THE RANCH IN THE SOUTH. 21 
 
 is enough for him that his father and his father's father 
 held the land and owned the cattle. Bills of sale record- 
 ing the curious old Spanish brands have been in his 
 family for a long time. 
 
 This is an old cattle country. Countless rodeos have 
 crossed these hills. Innumerable branding irons have 
 been heated in the pinon fires of these corrals. None 
 the less, this is in America, and hither the American cat- 
 tle man was sure to come, in search of opportunity to 
 follow the calling which offered to him so much of 
 wealth and so much of fascination. His money or his 
 methods were sure to make him a place even in so old 
 and well-covered a country. 
 
 Let us suppose that we have come upon some such 
 modern ranch, down in this ancient part of the cattle 
 range. Back of the home ranch house there is a moun- 
 tain range, which seems to be only a few miles away, 
 but which is really more than fifty miles distant. It 
 may be that the presence of the mountains has some- 
 thing to do with the water supply of the ranch. There 
 are known to be several springs up in the mountains, 
 and indeed the ranch owner has also purchased these, 
 and has erected near them log houses from the timber 
 of the mountains near at hand, each house being 
 the home of its own party of the range riders. Between 
 the foot of these mountains and the "home ranch " there 
 is no stream of water nor any sign of one, nothing but 
 a dreary expanse of brown and gray desolation. Yet 
 here, by the ranch house, protected by a heavy fence 
 from the intrusion of the animals, there bursts up out 
 of the ground a strong spring of fresh water, strongly 
 alkaline to be sure, but exceedingly valuable. This 
 spring is the raison. d'etre of the ranch house at this 
 point, out on the wide plain, and far from the shelter 
 of the arms of the mountain. 
 3 
 
22 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 The waters of the great spring, carefully led and 
 utilized, form at a distance of a mile or so from the 
 house a shallow expanse or pool to which the cat- 
 tle, over a range of probably twenty-five or thirty 
 miles, *come regularly to drink. The range near the 
 water is much eaten down, so the animals go far out 
 upon the plains to feed. They do not come to water 
 every day, perhaps sometimes not even so often as 
 once in every other day. An idler at the water pool, 
 lying in wait for the antelope which often come in to 
 water with the cattle, may see far away upon the hori- 
 zon, toward the middle of the day, long trails and col- 
 umns of dust, which grow more distinct as the moments 
 pass, until they are seen to be caused by the hurrying 
 squads of cattle coming in to water. They depart as 
 they came, upon a rapid gallop, and their habit is 
 one of the most singular things of the cattle range. 
 Northern farm cattle would perish here, but these 
 are animals seasoned for generations to this environ- 
 ment. 
 
 The ranch house here is an edifice entirely distinct in 
 type, the adobe, typical dwelling of the Spanish South- 
 west. Never was human habitation more nicely adapt- 
 ed than this to the necessities of the country which 
 produced it. No heat can penetrate these walls, more 
 than three feet thick, of the sun-dried native brick or 
 " 'dobe." The building is exactly the color of the 
 surrounding earth, and stands square and flat topped, 
 like a great box thrown upon the ground. The roof, 
 which has but the slightest slant from ridge to eaves, 
 is made of heavy beams which hold up a covering, two 
 or three feet in thickness, of hard, dry earth. This roof 
 serves to turn the rain during the short rainy season of 
 midsummer, and moreover it stops the vivid rays of 
 the half-tropic sun. Within the 'dobe it is always cool, 
 
THE RANCH IN THE SOUTH. 23 
 
 for it is a peculiarity of this climate that the heat is felt 
 only when one is exposed directly to the sun. 
 
 The interior of this ranch house is rather attractive, 
 with its walls whitewashed with gypsum,, its deep win- 
 dow embrasures, and its hard dirt floor swept clean, as 
 though it were made of wood. A former owner, let us 
 say a wild young man whose family wished him to settle 
 down, but who could not long remain settled at any- 
 thing, once sought to beautify this place. He put lace 
 curtains at the windows, and at great expense brought 
 out a piano from the railroad, one hundred and fifty 
 miles away. He even essayed rugs and pictures. Other 
 times have brought other customs. The present owner 
 cares more for his water front than for his curtains. 
 The cowboys are welcome to come into this house. 
 They throw their saddles down upon the bed or into 
 the bath tub which once the former owner cherished. 
 They go to sleep under the piano. One has seen their 
 spurs, as they slept, tangled in the lace curtains of the 
 windows. There is no one to order otherwise or to care 
 otherwise. Lace curtains have little to do with raising 
 cattle. There is no woman about the place. Nearly a 
 dozen men live here. The head of the domestic econo- 
 my is the cook, a German who was once a sailor. The 
 responsible man of the outfit is the foreman, whose name 
 is Jim, and who may have come from Texas. One does 
 not know his other name. Jim is dark-haired, broad- 
 shouldered, taciturn, direct of gaze. 
 
 A second building, also of adobe, stands at a little 
 distance from the main ranch house, and this serves 
 as general quarters for the men as well as for kitch- 
 en and dining hall. The structure, oddly enough, 
 follows very closely the plan of the ranch house seen 
 in the Indian Nations. There are really two buildings, 
 connected by a covered way or open-air hall, which is 
 
24 THE STORY OP THE COWBOY. 
 
 open in front, and which serves as saddle room and 
 storage place for odds and ends. The beds are merely 
 bunks where the men unroll their blankets. In this 
 country no man travels without taking his blankets 
 with him. The furniture of the kitchen is simple, the 
 dishes mostly of tin or ironstone china. The cook, 
 who was a sailor, never learned to cook. To suit the 
 local taste he makes feeble efforts at the peppery Span- 
 ish methods. Butter and milk are, of course, unknown 
 on this ranch, as they are on all the ranches of the genu- 
 ine cattle range, although thousands of cows are all 
 about. There is no historical record of any such event 
 as a cowboy being asked to milk a cow, nor is it likely 
 that anything so improbable ever happened, for had it 
 occurred, the cowboy must surely have evidenced his 
 feelings over such a request in a manner interesting 
 enough to be preserved among the traditions of the 
 range. 
 
 At table each man takes off his " gun," this being 
 one of the little courtesies of the land, but no one re- 
 moves his hat of deliberate intention. It is polite for 
 a stranger arriving at the ranch to leave his belt and 
 revolver hanging on the pommel of his saddle, or to lay 
 them aside upon entering the house. This is delicate 
 proof that he is not "looking for any one." The coun- 
 try at the time of which we write is wild and lawless, 
 and human life is very cheap. Each cowpuncher rides 
 on his daily work with a Winchester in the holster under 
 his leg, and carries at his hip the inevitable .45 re- 
 volver. The latter he may use for a chance shot at 
 an antelope or deer^a coyote or a wolf, and it is handy 
 for the killing of an occasional rattlesnake whose 
 presence, curled up under the shade of a Spanish bayo- 
 net plant, the cow pony is sure to detect and indicate 
 by jumps and snorts of the most intense dislike. In the 
 
 
THE RANCH IN THE SOUTH. 25 
 
 hands of the cowpuncher the revolver is a practical 
 weapon. One recalls that one evening a cowboy came 
 into camp with the tails of four " crogers " (cougar 
 the mountain lion) which he said he had met in a body 
 at a little piece of chaparral. He seemed to think he 
 had done nothing extraordinary in killing these ani- 
 mals with his revolver. At times the foreman, Jim, 
 has been known to bring home an antelope which he 
 has killed with his " six-shooter," but this is a feat 
 rarely performed, and only to be attempted successfully 
 by a master of the weapon. 
 
 Each home ranch has a corral, and the corral of 
 the Circle Arrow outfit is worthy of our consideration. 
 It is constructed of the most picturesquely crooked 
 cedar logs, and there is not a nail in its whole com- 
 position. It is" lashed together with rawhide at each 
 joint or fastening, the hide being put on wet, and dry- 
 ing afterward into a rigid and steellike binding, which 
 nothing less than a cataclysm could shake loose or tear 
 apart. We are here upon the Spanish- American cattle 
 range, and since time immemorial rawhide has been the 
 natural material of the Mexican. 
 
 Most of the cowboys employed on the Circle Ar- 
 row outfit are Mexicans, or " Greasers," as all Mexi- 
 cans are called by the American inhabitants. Their 
 high-peaked hats, tight trousers and red sashes make 
 them picturesque objects. These men do not speak 
 any English, being popularly supposed to be too lazy 
 to learn it. The speech of the American cowpunch- 
 ers, on the other hand, is nearly as much Mexican 
 as English, and in common conversation many Span- 
 ish words are met, permanently engrafted upon the 
 local tongue and used in preference to their English 
 equivalents. For instance, one rarely hears the word 
 " yes," it being usually given as the Spanish " si." The 
 
26 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 small numerals, one, two, etc., are usually spoken in 
 Spanish, as u?w, dos, etc. A horse is nearly always 
 called caballo, a man an lionibre, a woman a " moharrie " 
 (mujer). Even cattle are sometimes called vacas, 
 though this is not usual. The cow man of any range 
 clings closely to the designation " cows " for all the 
 horned creatures in his possession. Every one says 
 agua when meaning " water." The Spanish diminu- 
 tives are in common use in the English speech of this 
 region, as chico, chiquito. The cowboy will speak of the 
 "cavvieyah" or "cavvieyard" (caballado} instead of the 
 ".horse herd." One hears poco tiempo instead of " pret- 
 ty soon "; and this expression as coming from a native 
 he will learn all too well, as also the expression manana 
 (to-morrow), which really means " maybe sometime, 
 but probably never." 
 
 There 'are many common descriptive words used 
 in the ranch work which would be strange to the 
 Northern rancher, such as rincon, salado, rio, mesa, 
 etc.; and many of the proper names would seem un- 
 usual, as applied to the Mexican cow hands, slim, dark, 
 silent fellows, each with a very large hat and a very 
 small cigarette, who answer as Jose, Juan, Pablo, San- 
 chez, or Antone, and who when they are uncertain an- 
 swer, as do all their American fellows, with the all- 
 convenient reply, " Quien sake ! " (" kin savvy," as the 
 cowpuncher says). 
 
 The Northern ranch country got most of its cus- 
 toms, with its cattle, from the Spanish- American cattle 
 country, and the latter "has stamped upon the industry 
 not only its methods but some of its speech. The cow- 
 boy's " chaps " are the chaparejos of the Spaniard, \\ ho 
 invented them. Such words as latigo, aparejo, "broncho 
 are current all through the Northern mountain and 
 plains region, and are firmly fixed in the vocabulary of 
 
THE RANCH IN THE SOUTH. 27 
 
 the cow country of the entire West. Indeed, widely 
 sundered as they are in geographical respects, it is but 
 an easy and natural subsequent step, in manners, speech, 
 and customs, from the ranch of the South to its close 
 neighbour, the ranch of the North. 
 
CHAPTEE III. 
 
 THE RANCH IN THE NORTH. 
 
 IT was in the North that there was first established 
 what one would think an obvious principle, though it 
 was one which the Texas rancher was slow to recognise 
 namely, that a fatted animal is worth more in the mar- 
 ket than a lean one. On the range of the Southwest 
 a cow was a cow, a " beef " any animal over four years 
 of age was a beef, no matter what the individual differ- 
 ences. Far into the days of the cattle trade all Texas cat- 
 tle were sold by the head and not by weight. The 
 Northern rancher was the one to end this practice. He 
 did not drive to market the sweepings of his range. 
 Moreover, he saw that the beef-producing qualities of 
 the old long-horned Texas breed could be much im- 
 proved by the admixture of more approved blood. The 
 cattle of England met the cattle of Spain, to the ulti- 
 mate overcoming of the Southern type. In less than 
 five years after the first Texas cattle came upon the 
 territorial ranges, the latter were sending better cattle 
 to Texas, over the very trail that had brought the first 
 stock from the lower range. To-day the centre of the 
 beef cattle trade is on the Northern range, and it is 
 some portion of that range which the average Northern 
 man has in mind when he speaks of the " cattle coun- 
 try." 
 
 Yet it is a vast country, this Northern cattle range. 
 '28 
 
THE RANCH IN THE NORTH. 29 
 
 The edge of the Dakota grass lands would make a little 
 state. The basin of the Big Horn alone is as large as 
 any two New England States. There are mountain 
 parks in Colorado which would hold a principality, 
 and the plains of Wyoming are wider than are many 
 European kingdoms. The ranch in the North may 
 be a dugout, well to the east in cold Dakota, where some 
 hardy soul has determined to try the experiment of 
 bringing at least a portion of his cattle through the 
 bitter winter. It may be a cabin in the wild region 
 of the Bad Lands, that Titanic playground of creative 
 evil spirits, where the red scoria buttes and banks, peak 
 after peak, and minaret and tower and high cathedral, 
 all in parti-coloured clays, are burned out of the earth to 
 endure and mock the dreams of man the architect. The 
 ranch may be a hut in some high mountain valley, 
 where the bold summits of the white-topped moun- 
 tains sweep about in the wild beauty of the Snowy 
 Range. Again, it may be a sod house, built on some 
 wide bleak plain, where the wind never is still, and 
 where the white alkali cuts and sears the unseasoned 
 skin. It is somewhere upon that vast, high, hard, and 
 untilled table-land which runs from the Gulf coast to 
 the British possessions, upon the eastern slope of the 
 Rocky Mountains. 
 
 This is a land of little rain and of infrequent 
 water courses, but a land where cattle can live the 
 year through without the aid of man, summer and 
 winter, upon the short gray grass which grows in 
 abundance all over the former range of the buffalo. 
 This upper portion of the great plateau is dry enough 
 to be classified as belonging to the arid lands, but is 
 nevertheless watered much better than the southern 
 range. The streams are larger and more frequent, and 
 are not so apt to go entirely dry in the droughty season. 
 
30 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 of summer. The snows are heavier in winter, and the 
 rainfall of the spring months is relatively more abun- 
 dant, so that the grasses are much better nourished and 
 are not burned out so cruelly as in the South. Under 
 such conditions the cattle of the plains were found to 
 grow far more bulky than in the Southern country. 
 Moreover, the upper part of what is now the northern 
 range was still open and unsettled at a time when a 
 great body of population was pressing up to the edge of 
 these plains, looking for new country and new grazing 
 grounds, and only waiting for the Army to clear away 
 the hostile Indians sufficiently to make the region safe 
 for occupancy. Indeed, long before the Indians had 
 been removed, and before the range was anything bet- 
 ter than a dangerous Indian hunting ground, the ad- 
 venturous ranchmen had been all over it, and were liv- 
 ing there, scattered about here and there, and already 
 engaged in the early and cruder stages of their calling. 
 After the years of 1868 and 1869 the Northern 
 country was occupied, as if by magic, by the herds of 
 the enterprising ranchers who saw the rapid wealth 
 that was to be accumulated under the conditions of 
 the trade in a new and favourable region. Cattle 
 bought at a few dollars per head, delivered on the range 
 free of freight charge, raised " on air," and free air 
 at that, attended by a few men to many hundred head 
 of cattle, and sold in a few years at prices four or five 
 times the first cost per head surely it was no wonder 
 that at once an enormous industry sprang up, one that 
 attracted the interest of conservative capital in this 
 country, and invited floods of capital not so wise from 
 other lands. Enthusiastic at the prospect of early 
 wealth, and enamoured of the manly and independent 
 life that offered, very many young men of the Eastern 
 States, some with money and financial resources, some 
 
THE RANCH IN THE NORTH. 31 
 
 with only hope and a branding iron, plunged into the 
 cattle business of the upper ranges. Many of these 
 made money, and all of them brought energy and a 
 certain amount of new intelligence to their chosen call- 
 ing. The Southern rancher perhaps grew up in the 
 trade, knowing no other, whereas sometimes the North- 
 ern rancher was a new man, who learned the business 
 later in life. None the less the cattle industry re- 
 ceived a tremendous impetus in a very brief time, old 
 men and new studying the requirements of the new 
 countries opened, and uniting in perfecting the opera- 
 tions of the range in every possible respect of system 
 and detail. 
 
 Already there was upon the range an instructor, a 
 guide, and a practical leader, waiting to take charge of 
 every phase of the cattle business. The cowpuncher 
 appeared upon the Northern plains as rapidly and mys- 
 teriously as the thousands of cattle. It were bootless 
 to ask whence he came. From the earlier Southern 
 regions originally, no doubt, but not in all his num- 
 bers. He drifted in upon these upper ranges from 
 every corner of the globe. There was always upon the 
 Western frontier a press of hardy young men, born and 
 inured to the rude conditions of the life beyond the 
 line of the towns, and the natural fitness and natural 
 longings of these led them readily into the free out- 
 door life of this peculiar calling. Some would-be ranch 
 owners, failing in their undertakings, settled back into 
 the occupation of the cowboy. Wild and hardy young 
 men from other countries came in, attracted by the 
 loadstone of freedom and adventure, ever potent upon 
 hot-headed youth. 
 
 The range riders had odd timber among them, 
 men rude and unlettered, and men of culture and 
 ability. Quite a noticeable feature of the new cattle 
 
32 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 country was the influx of young men of good family 
 who became infatuated with the cowboy's life and 
 followed it for a time, perhaps never to forsake the 
 plains again. In the late '?0 ? s and early ? 80's one might 
 often see strange company in the great cattle yards at 
 Kansas City, where the train loads of Western cattle 
 came in charge of the men who had had them in care 
 upon the range. Among groups of these men, often 
 rough looking and roughly clad, and sitting sometimes 
 on the ground in the shade of the cattle cars, one might 
 perhaps hear in progress a conversation which he would 
 rather have expected to hear in an Eastern drawing 
 room. It was no unusual thing to see men clad in 
 regulation cowpuncher garb reading a copy of the latest 
 monthly magazine or a volume of the classics. This 
 may have been reversion to early habit, and such men 
 may or may not have remained in the calling. 
 
 Certainly the man aspiring to the title of cowboy 
 needed to have stern stuff in him. He must be equal 
 to the level of the rude conditions of the life, or he 
 was soon forced out of the society of the craft. In one 
 way or another the ranks of the cowpunchers were 
 filled. Yet the type remained singularly fixed. The 
 young man from Iowa or New York or Virginia who 
 went on the range to learn the business, taught the 
 hardy men who made his predecessors there very little 
 of the ways of Iowa or New York or Virginia. It was 
 he who experienced change. It was as though the 
 model of the cowboy had been cast in bronze, in a 
 heroic mould, to which all aspirants were compelled 
 to conform in line and detail. The environment had 
 produced its type. The cowboy had been born. 
 America had gained another citizen, history another 
 character. It was not for the type to change, but for 
 others to conform to it. 
 
THE RANCH IN THE NORTH. 33 
 
 He who sought to ride by the side of this new 
 man, this American cowboy, needed to have courage 
 and constitution., a heart and a stomach not easily 
 daunted, and a love for the hard ground and the 
 open sky. There were many who were fit so to ride. 
 Of these the range asked no questions. If there had 
 been trouble back in the " States," trouble with a 
 man, a sweetheart, or a creditor, it was all one, for 
 oblivion was the portion offered by the hard ground 
 and the sky. Let us not ask whence the cowboy came, 
 for that is a question immaterial and impossible of 
 answer. Be sure, he came from among those who had 
 strong within them that savagery and love of freedom 
 which springs so swiftly into life among strong natures 
 when offered a brief exemption from the slavery of 
 civilization. The range claimed and held its own. The 
 days of the range were the last ones of American free 
 life. They preceded the time of commerical life, that 
 stage of civilization when all men must settle down 
 to wear, patiently or impatiently, the yoke that is im- 
 posed by the artificial compact of society. 
 
 It is probable, then, that we should see small differ- 
 ence between Jim, the foreman of the T Bar ranch in 
 Wyoming or Montana, and the Jim who was foreman 
 of the Bar Y, or of the Star D, or of the Circle Arrow in 
 the Southwest country. It is still uncertain where Jim 
 lived before he came on the ranch, and it is still imma- 
 terial, for it is certain that he is a good cowman. 
 
 In appearance Jim is a man of medium height, with 
 good shoulders, none too square, but broad enough. He 
 is thin in flank, lean and muscular, with the firm flesh 
 of the man not only in perfect physical health but in 
 perfect physical training. Life in the saddle, with long 
 hours of exercise and a diet of plain food, has left not 
 an ounce of fat to prevent the free play of the firm 
 
34: THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 muscles one above the other. His skin is darkened 
 and toughened by the wind and sun and alkali. His 
 hair is not worn long, as persons of a certain class 
 would have us believe was the correct thing for scout 
 or Westerner in the " old times." Jim's hair is hid 
 under his big hat, but very likely hangs in a rough mop 
 down from under his hat and upon his forehead, like the 
 forelock of a pony. 
 
 Jim's eye may be of the red hazel of the ready 
 fighter, or the gray of the cold-nerved man, or the 
 blue of the man who is always somewhere about 
 when there is fun or trouble afloat in whatever cor- 
 ner of the world. It is hard to see Jim's eyes, because 
 the bright sun causes him to hold them well covered 
 with the lids, with a half squint to them. His mus- 
 tache may have been tawny or brown or nearly black 
 at first, but now it is sunburned and bleached to a 
 yellow, faded hue. Upon his feet Jim makes a very 
 poor figure. He is slouchy, awkward, and shambling 
 in his gait, for his feet, in the vernacular of the range, 
 do not " track," but cross each other weakly. His 
 legs are bowed, with the curve which constant horse- 
 back riding in early youth always gives. His toes turn 
 in distinctly as he walks. He does not stand erect, 
 but stoops. But in the saddle he sits erect, and every 
 action shows strength, every movement the grace of 
 muscles doing their work with unconscious ease 
 and sureness. The world can produce no horseman 
 more masterly. With the " rope " he can catch the 
 running steer by whichever foot you shall name. He 
 can " roll a gun " with either hand, or with both hands 
 at once. He has a perfect knowledge of the nature 
 of the steer, and knows the trade to the last detail. He 
 has all the hardihood and courage which come of long 
 familiarity with trouble, hardship, and peril; for what 
 
THE RANCH IN THE NORTH. 35 
 
 is called courage is very much a matter of association 
 and habit. 
 
 With his employer Jim is as honest and faithful 
 as any man that ever breathed. In his conversation 
 he is picturesque and upon occasion volcanic of speech. 
 In his ways of thought he is simple, in his correspond- 
 ence brief. It was perhaps this same Jim, foreman of 
 the T Bar, who wrote to the Eastern ranch owner the 
 quarterly report which constituted for him the most 
 serious labour of the year, and which is said to have 
 read as follows: 
 
 " Deer sur, we have brand 800 caves this roundup 
 we have made sum hay potatoes is a fare crop. That 
 Inglishman yu lef in charge at the other camp got to 
 
 fresh an we had to kill the son of a . Nothing 
 
 much has hapened sence yu lef. Yurs truely, Jim." 
 
 It was possibly Jim, the foreman, who licked the 
 young cub whom everybody called " Kid " into the 
 shape of a cowboy, and it may have been he who taught 
 the wealthy cattle owner something of the essentials 
 of the business as they have come down in the tradi- 
 tions of the range. Grim, taciturn, hard-working, faith- 
 ful, it was this cowboy of the range who made the main- 
 stay of the entire cattle industry. Without him there 
 could never have been any cattle industry. He was 
 its central figure and its reliance, at the same time that 
 he was its creature and its product. 
 
 If it make small difference who the cow puncher 
 was or whence he came, it will make little difference, 
 either, at what exact portion of the vast empire of the 
 Northern cattle range there was located the home ranch 
 of the T Bar outfit. It might have been at any point 
 within a circle of five hundred miles, and still have had 
 
36 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 the same general characteristics. Let us suppose the 
 ranch building to be located upon the upper portion 
 of some one of the great rivers of the Yellowstone 
 system, in that region so long the range of the buffalo 
 and the 'home of the red ranchers who never branded 
 their cattle. This river debouches from the great and 
 snowy mountains which are plainly visible beyond the 
 foothills of the chain. The soil of the river valley, 
 the detritus of ages carried down and spread out by 
 the waters, is deep and rich. The river, subject as 
 are all the streams of the region to sudden freshets 
 or to seasons of low water, is well fed and regulated in 
 its upper waters by the deep snows which each season 
 fall upon the mountains and which hardly melt entirely 
 away throughout the year. Into this larger stream flow 
 other streams at intervals, these heading back into the 
 high grounds of the plains. Along the stream in this 
 upper valley the red willows grow densely. They form 
 a heavy bank of shelter at the arm of the river where 
 the ranch house is built. Below this point the valley 
 spreads out into a wide natural meadow, and here the 
 water has been led out in an irrigating ditch, so that a 
 considerable extent of hay land has been established. 
 All that this soil needs is water to make it fruitful 
 as any in the world. The ranch owner has realized this, 
 and at times a tiny, scraggy garden gives rich reward 
 for all the care bestowed upon it, though here, as all 
 over the cow country, the tin can is the main dooryard 
 decoration. Wheat, oats, and corn could be raised 
 here also, but the ranch man hopes that fact will be 
 long in its discovery by others. His own concern is 
 the raising of cattle. 
 
 Over all the high plains back from the river val- 
 ley the sage brush and the bunch grass grow, as they 
 do all over the "arid belt," and give no promise of 
 
THE RANCH IN THE NORTH. 37 
 
 the vegetation that needs water at its roots. Not 
 far from the ranch there may be small green valleys, 
 six or seven thousand feet above sea level, each with 
 ten or twenty miles of grazing ground, where the 
 grass grows tall and green as it does in the " States " ; 
 but contrary to what the tenderfoot would expect, the 
 cattle do not crowd in to feed upon this luxuriant and 
 fresh-looking grass, but range far out upon the deso- 
 late bunch grass country where, to the eye of the novice, 
 there is no food at all for them. The big flies go with 
 the tall grass, and in these green valleys neither cow, 
 horse, nor human being can endure their vicious and 
 continuous assaults. The green grass is forsaken utter- 
 ly. Early teamsters who crossed the plains, freighting 
 to Denver in the days before the railroads, often struck 
 such valleys where the greenhead flies made life for 
 their horses or oxen almost unbearable. The valley 
 of the Eawhide, in Nebraska, was such a spot. Here 
 the flies were so bad that the horses had to be kept in 
 darkened barns all day, and at night the mosquitoes 
 swarmed upon the unprotected horses of the freighters 
 in such numbers that the poor groaning creatures could 
 not rest and were driven nearly frantic. 
 
 Below our ranch house the river marches on, broad- 
 ening out and flowing more and more gently, until it 
 in turn passes into some other affluent of the Yellow- 
 stone-Missouri system. At the point where the ranch 
 house is located, or a little way above it, the waters have 
 not yet lost the colour they bore in the mountains, a 
 bright, bluish green. There are fine mountain trout 
 within a day's journey that the cook sometimes catches 
 when he is not too lazy to go out after them. But 
 soon after leaving this elevation, and reaching the 
 red soil of the lower plains, the river becomes tinged 
 and discoloured, then red, roily, perhaps full of quick- 
 4 
 
38 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 sands, and no longer beautiful to behold. Here the 
 cottonwoods, those worthless yet indispensable trees 
 of the plains, troop in along the water and spread 
 out their brittle, crooked arms. They give a little 
 shade, and serve for a sort of fuel. In the old freight- 
 ing days the teamster of the plains always carried 
 an extra axle and a spare wheel or two against acci- 
 dent on his long journeys, but it is related of one 
 improvident wagoner that he at one time found himself 
 with a broken axletree and no timber near except some 
 cottonwoods. He tried a half dozen times to make an 
 axle of the ill-grained soft wood, but finally gave it up, 
 and history states that he finally turned out his team 
 there, and stopped and located a farm, because he could 
 not get away from the country. 
 
 In times past these cottonwoods along our river 
 served another purpose. Here, in a sheltered valley, 
 where the willows make a wide thicket extending back 
 over the bottoms for half a mile or more, there are cotton- 
 woods which bear strange burdens, long and shapeless 
 bundles, wrapped in hides or rags. It is the burial 
 place of the red men, with whom the cowpuncher is at 
 war. For these rude graveyards the irreverent cow- 
 puncher has no respect. He tears down the bundles 
 and kicks them apart, hunting for beads and finger 
 bones. Around the cow camp there is knocking about 
 the skull of an Indian, a round hole in the temple. 
 This came from the sandhills, where it had never been 
 accorded even so rude a burial as the one described. 
 Once the Cheyennes swooped down and the cowmen 
 met them. Thirteen of the Cheyennes did not go 
 back when the war party retreated to the villages to toll 
 their people of the new fighting men who had come 
 into the country. 
 
 The T Bar cattle roam over a million acres or so 
 
THE RANCH IN THE NORTH. 39 
 
 of land, of which the rancher perhaps owns one hun- 
 dred and sixty acres. Of course, at this date, no at- 
 tempt is made at fencing the range, though a few 
 rough stops of logs or trees may keep the cattle back 
 from some creek valleys or canons where it is not de- 
 sired that they should go. It is still " free grass " on 
 the range. The cattle are held on a certain part of the 
 country, and prevented from drifting off to the range 
 of another outfit by " outriding." Each day the cow- 
 punchers " ride sign " around the edge of the agreed 
 territory, turning back or looking up any cattle that 
 seem to be wandering from their proper range. At 
 points some miles away from the home ranch, perhaps 
 fifteen or twenty miles or more, there are other and less 
 pretentious quarters built for the outriders. For in- 
 stance, Red, one of the hands, starts out in the morn- 
 ing and rides the eastern edge of the range to the 
 Willow Spring cabin, where he meets Curly, who came 
 down from above on the same side. They stop together 
 over night at the cabin, if they are near it when dark 
 comes, and in the morning separate and return the 
 way they came. Or perhaps both may live at this camp 
 most of the time. The range riders are continual sen- 
 tinels and pickets, besides being courier, fighting force, 
 and commander, each for himself. 
 
 Our ranch house stands upon a sightly spot, here 
 in the bend of the blue river. This was a favourite 
 camping place for hunters and trappers in the days 
 before the beaver were gone. The old camps are 
 gone now, and in their place stands the long and 
 substantial cabin which makes the home ranch house. 
 This is a building better than those seen on the south- 
 ern range, for here the climate, though very hot in sum- 
 mer, is exceedingly cold in winter, and more care needs 
 to be taken with the habitation. The house is built of 
 
40 THE STORY OP THE COWBOY. 
 
 logs, the logs perhaps hewn and squared. The roof 
 is made of logs, boughs, hay, and dirt, or if very 
 modern it may be covered with riven " shakes " or 
 shingles, with perhaps an attempt made at a rude 
 porch or veranda, this taking the place in some extent 
 of the midway hall of other ranches we have seen. The 
 doors and windows are well fitted, for the intense cold 
 of winter will tap sharply every open joint. There 
 is a huge fireplace, and moreover a big " cannon " stove. 
 Kough bunks line the walls, as in the general scheme 
 of the Western ranch house, and on these are beds of 
 heavy blankets, underlaid with robes and skins. The 
 matchless robe of the buffalo at one time played an im- 
 portant part in Northern ranch economy. Upon the 
 floors are the skins of elk and deer, of the mountain lion, 
 and of the bear. The ranchman is almost of necessity 
 a hunter, and this range lies in the heart of one of the 
 great game regions of the land. Upon the walls of 
 the room there hang upon long wooden pegs some of 
 the less used saddles, bridles, " chaps," ropes, and other 
 gear of the men. The cow puncher may throw his 
 hat upon the floor, but is very apt to hang up his spur. 
 Or he may come in tired from a long ride, and rolling 
 himself up in his blankets in the cocoon style of the 
 Westerner, fall asleep with his clothes on, boots, spurs, 
 and all. His life is one of camps and marches. Of a 
 regular home life or settled habits he knows nothing. 
 Civilization is still far off. He sees the railroad per- 
 haps twice a year. Then he sleeps upon a mattress 
 and has a " reg'lar goose-har piller," of which he tells 
 his companions when lie comes back to the ranch. 
 He sleeps as well as he eats or rides. The fresh air of 
 the mountains has blown every mnlaisc from his sys- 
 tem. He rises in the morning with his " fists full of 
 strength," exulting in the sheer animal vigour of per- 
 
THE RANCH IN THE NORTH. 41 
 
 feet health, the greatest blessing that can come to any 
 man. The cowpuncher is a survival. 
 
 The harsh Northern country, stem as it is and 
 unfriendly of aspect, is none the less in some of its 
 phases kindly and beautiful. In the spring the wind 
 blows soft, and many small flowers come out from under 
 the snow. The willow buds swell and burst. The trout 
 run, and the hordes of grouse in the willow thickets 
 break up their packs and spread out over the country. 
 The wild geese cross northward, bound still farther on 
 toward the land of cold. Small birds twitter and flit 
 about the ranch house, and little squirrels come, and the 
 mountain rats appear from their nests. The wind 
 blows steadily, but its bravado is understood and not 
 dreaded. The spring floods of snow water boil down all 
 the water ways, and presently the spring rains come and 
 drench out all the frosts that lie in the ground. Then 
 the prairies show a carpet of flowers dotting in their 
 brief beauty the strips of green so soon to lose their 
 colour. Deeper dashes of green spread out along the wet 
 grounds bordering the smaller streams. The sage- 
 brush blossoms and the trees of the little parks put 
 out new buds and begin again the cycle of unfailing 
 hope. Yet spring is not greeted here as a seedtime. 
 No ploughs cut the soil of these iron plains. No 
 wagon wheel marks 'the hard surface for the notice of 
 the range rider going upon his long rounds. No fig- 
 ures of men setting forth to fields, of horses labouring 
 at drill or harrow, meet his gaze fixed upon the far 
 horizon. Just seen upon some distant ridge there may 
 be the outline of a figure, but if so, it is that of an- 
 other rider like himself, and bound upon a similar er- 
 rand. Or it may be the shape of an Indian rider, per- 
 haps several of them, off their reservation with or 
 without permission, and hurrying under whip across 
 
2 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 the country on some forbidden hunt or distant visit. 
 The Indian plies his whip and looks straight ahead, 
 but he has seen the cowboy. The cowboy sees him 
 too, and smiles contemptuously. He dreams not of 
 the day when he, too, shall be a flitting figure disap- 
 pearing across the range. 
 
 In the spring the cattle straggle out from the 
 warmer and more sheltered portions of the range where 
 they have been huddled during the more biting times 
 of winter. They feed with eagerness and unceasing 
 industry upon the fresh-growing grasses. The little 
 calves begin to totter along awkwardly by the side of 
 their gaunt mothers, whose hips and ribs project 
 prominently in sign of the long season of cold and 
 scarcity with which they have been at war. Coyotes 
 sneak along the hillsides at the edges of the herds, in 
 the morning at sunrise sometimes sitting upon the tops 
 of the high ridges and joining in a keen tremulous 
 chorus, one of the familiar sounds of the range. At 
 times a circle of the great gray buffalo wolves pests 
 of the cattle range close in about a mother and her 
 calf, lying down, bounding about, playing and grin- 
 ning. The feeble cow fights as she can, perhaps get- 
 ting to the circle where others stand and fight. The 
 snarling pack will in time pull down their prey. The 
 rider of the T Bar range reports many calves and 
 heifers killed by wolves. It is one of the factors of 
 loss to be figured upon regularly. He notes also 
 roughly as he makes his early trips over the range the 
 numbers of cattle that " did not winter." At these 
 red or tawny blotches which lie about over the land- 
 scape the coyotes are feeding, then the foxes and 
 swifts. Perhaps by some carcass the cowboy notes the 
 long footmark of the grizzly bear, which has awakened 
 from its sleep in the hills and begun a long series of 
 
THE RANCH IN THE NORTH. 43 
 
 marches in search of food, always scarce for it in the 
 early spring before the crickets and mice begin to 
 move and before the berries ripen. The bear has torn 
 apart with his rugged strength the ribs of the carcass 
 and battened his iill upon the carrion. Eavens cross 
 from side to side. Life and death are in evidence to- 
 gether upon the range in spring. These lean cattle, 
 their rough hair blowing up in the wind, are the sur- 
 vivals. The range is no place for weaklings. The 
 cowpuncher, who is no weakling, rides along over the 
 range, guessing at the proportion of survival in the 
 herd, estimating how many calves the outfit will brand 
 at the round-up soon to begin, figuring on how many 
 strange cattle have drifted in on this part of the range 
 during the last storms of the winter. His eye catches 
 with trained precision the brand of each animal he 
 sees. He is observant of every detail connected with 
 his calling as he rides along, unconscious of his horse, 
 his arm high and loose, his legs straight to the big 
 stirrups, his body from the hips up supple and swing- 
 ing, his eye ranging over the wide expanse of plain 
 and coulee, butte and valley that lies before him. This 
 wide book is his, and he knows it well. The little larks 
 twitter and flit from in front of him low along the 
 ground as the pony trots ahead, and the prairie dogs 
 chatter from their mounds. If the horse makes a shy- 
 ing bound from some lazy rattlesnake that has come 
 out from winter quarters to stretch awhile in the sun, 
 the thighs of the rider tighten, and the ready oath 
 leaps to his lip as he strikes the spur to the horse's 
 flank and asks it, in the picturesque language of the 
 plains, what are its intentions as connected with a 
 future life. 
 
 And then comes on the summer time, with its swift 
 and withering heat. The range shrivels and sears. 
 
44 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 The streams dwindle and shrink. The flowers are cut 
 down by the torrid winds. The sage brush is gray and 
 dismal. The grass is apparently burned to tinder. The 
 edges of the water holes are trampled and made miry 
 by the hoofs of the cattle which press in to water. 
 Out in the hot air the white alkali flats glimmer and 
 shift in the distance. Above them stalk the strange 
 figures of the mirage, cousins of the Fata Morgana, 
 of the southern range. In this weird mirage the fig- 
 ures of the cattle appear large as houses, the mounted 
 man tall as a church spire. The surface of the earth 
 waves and trembles and throbs in the heat like an 
 unsteady sea. The sun blisters the skin of any but 
 the native, and the lips of the tenderfoot blacken and 
 shrivel and crack open in the white dust that arises. 
 In the soft mud which lies between the shore and the 
 water at the watering places lie the figures of cattle 
 which have perished there, but in this hot dry air they 
 dry up like mummies, the skin tightening in parch- 
 ment over their bones. Though the nights are cold, 
 the day flames up into sudden heat. If there be a rain, 
 it is a tempest, a torrent, a cloud burst which makes 
 raging floods out of dried-up river beds, and turns 
 the alkali flats into seas of slimy, greasy mud. Through 
 it all, over it all, the cowpuncher rides, philosophical 
 and unfretted. With him it is unprofessional to com- 
 plain. 
 
 In turn comes autumn, when the winds are keener. 
 The cattle are sleek and fat now, though by this time 
 the fattest have after the beef round-up found their 
 mission in the far-off markets. Now the leaves of the 
 quaking asp in the little mountain valley, which wore 
 light green in spring, dark green in summer, begin to 
 pale into a faded yellow. The wild deer are running 
 in the foothills, and over the plains sweep in ghostly 
 
 
THE RANCH IN THE NORTH. 45 
 
 flight the bands of the antelope. The bears have gone 
 up higher into the table-lands to seek their food and 
 look about for a sleeping place. The wild geese are 
 again honking in the air, this time going toward the 
 south. The mallards swim in the little eddies of the 
 creeks, not to leave them till later in the winter when 
 the ice closes up the water. The smaller birds seek 
 warmer lands, except the mountain jays, the camp 
 birds, and the ravens, which seem busy as with some 
 burdening thought of winter. The rousing whistle 
 of the challenging elk is heard by the cowboy whose 
 duties take him up into the hills. The pause of Nature 
 gathering her energies for the continuance of the war 
 of life is visible and audible all about. The air is 
 eager and stimulating. In the morning the cow- 
 punchers race their plunging ponies as they start out 
 from the ranch, and give vent in sheer exuberance to 
 the shrill, wolf-keyed yell which from one end of the 
 range to the other is their fraternal call. 
 
 . The snows whitened long ago the tops of the moun- 
 tains in the range. The foothills are white with snow 
 every morning now, and the wind blows cold even 
 down in the little valley where the willows break its 
 force. Winter is coming. The wild deer press lower 
 down from the mountains. The big bear long ago 
 went to sleep up in the hills. With a rush and a whirl 
 some night the winter breaks. In the morning the 
 men look out from the cabin door and can see but a 
 few feet into the blinding, whirling mass of falling 
 snow. This is not the blizzard of midwinter, but the 
 first soft falling of the season. Presently the storm 
 ceases, the sun shining forth brilliantly as though to 
 repent. The earth is a blinding mystery of white. 
 The river has shrunken in its barriers of ice, and over 
 the edges of the ice hang heavy masses of snow. The 
 
46 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 willows are heavy with snow, and the grouse that 
 huddle in packs among them are helpless and apa- 
 thetic. 
 
 Then the early snow settles and hardens., and is 
 added to hy other snows. The mallards in the little 
 spring creek have but a narrow swimming place now 
 left to them. Along the bank of the river appears the 
 curious drag of a travelling otter, driven down by the 
 too solid closing of the stream above. The great 
 round track of the mountain lion has been seen at one 
 or two places on the range, and that of the big gray 
 wolf, the latter as large as the hoof mark of a horse. 
 The cowpuncher at one of the out camps who steps 
 to the door at midnight and looks out over the white 
 plain, when the moon is cold and bright and the stars 
 very large and beautiful, hears wafted upon the air the 
 long, dreary, sobbing wail of the gray wolf, sweeping 
 in its tireless gallop perhaps forty miles a night across 
 the range in search of food. He will find food. 
 
 And now midwinter comes. The cold becomes in- 
 tense. Horse and cow have now put on their longest 
 coat of hair, all too thin to turn the edge of the icy 
 air. Yet the wind is their friend. It sweeps constantly 
 for them, moaning that it can do no better, the tops of 
 the hills where the blessed bunch grass lies curled and 
 cured for food. It sweeps at the hillsides, too, and 
 makes the snow so thin that the horses can easily paw 
 it away and get down to the grass, and the cattle find 
 at least a little picking. From the hills the snow is 
 blown away in masses that fill the ravines and gullies 
 in deep drifts. It packs against the cut banks so hard 
 that the cattle may cross upon it. The hand of the 
 winter is heavy. It is appalling to the stranger in its 
 relentless grasp at the throat of life. The iron range is 
 striving bitterly with all its might to hold its own, to 
 
THE RANCH IN THE NORTH. 47 
 
 drive away these invaders who have intruded here. 
 It is hopeless. These men are the creatures for the 
 place and hour. They survive. 
 
 And the cattle. Ah! the cattle. They did not 
 choose of their own volition this Northern country of 
 cold and ice. They were driven here from a very dif- 
 ferent clime. Yet they retain the common desire of 
 animate things, and seek to prevail over their sur- 
 roundings. Gradually the creature shall adapt itself 
 to the surroundings or perish. The cattle feed on the 
 swept hillsides, losing flesh, but living. A thaw fol- 
 lowed by a freeze is the worst thing that can befall 
 them, for then the grass is sealed away from them, 
 and upon their backs is formed a cake of ice, a blanket 
 of cold continually freezing their very vitals and op- 
 pressing them with a chill which it is useless to attempt 
 to escape. The cattle then soon cease in their struggle 
 for life. They huddle together in little ragged groups 
 in the lee of such shelter as they can find, their rough 
 coats upright and staring. They no longer attempt to 
 feed. One by one they lie down. 
 
 The Northern cattle range is not a hay country, 
 and the early cowman counted naught on hay. Yet 
 sometimes a little hay was made, and, in the case of a 
 prolonged cold season such as that described, an at- 
 tempt was made to feed the cattle. Of course, the 
 thousands of the herds can not be fed, but some of the 
 weaker of the cattle are rounded up and a rough effort 
 is made at giving them a little care. The hay is thrown 
 off the wagons to them in the corrals as they stand 
 where they were driven, humped up, shivering in mor- 
 tal rigours, many of them frozen. At times their 
 legs, frozen to the bone, are too stiff to have feeling 
 or to be capable of control. The animals stumble 
 or fall or are jostled over, and are too feeble ever 
 
48 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 to rise. The croak of the raven is the requiem of the 
 range. 
 
 It is winter on the northern range, but though it 
 be winter the work of the cowboy is not yet done. At 
 times he must ride the range, in a partial way at least, to 
 keep track of the cattle, to -see whether any are back in 
 box canons from which they should be driven, to see 
 whether any are " drifting." Knowing the danger of 
 a sudden storm upon such a ride, he goes well prepared 
 for the work. Many men have gone out upon the 
 range in winter who never came back again to the 
 cabin. Their rough companions at the ranch do not 
 say much if the cowpuncher does not return from out 
 the sudden raging storm that may set in without an 
 hour's warning. Each man would risk his own life 
 to save that of his fellow, but each man knows how 
 futile is the thought of help. The whole atmosphere 
 is a whirling, seething, cutting drift of icy white, in 
 which the breath is drawn but in gasps, and that only 
 with face down wind. The heaviest of clothing does 
 not suffice, and not even the buffalo coat can stop the 
 icy chill that thickens the blood into sluggishness 
 and makes drowsy every vital energy. The snow covers 
 the trail of the wanderer, as it winds his burial sheet 
 about him and hides him from hope even before death 
 has come to stop his last feeble, insentient efforts to 
 struggle on. But all the men know which way to look 
 down wind somewhere, for it could have been in 
 no other direction. He may be lying a long, shape- 
 less blot on the earth, his clinched hands over his 
 head to shut out the snow and the thought of death, 
 in some little coulee miles and miles from where the 
 blizzard caught him. There have been seen rider- 
 less horses on the range, with parts of saddle still 
 hanging to them. The round-up may perhaps liiul 
 
THE RANCH IN THE NORTH. 49 
 
 the place where the cowpuncher is sleeping through 
 many sleeps. 
 
 But in winter the work of the cowman is much 
 less. He has time to sit and spin a yarn and smoke 
 a pipe indoors even in the daytime, and at night he 
 adds disfigurement to the single deck of cards. In 
 the ranch house it is warm no matter what the snows 
 and winds are doing. Perhaps the employer of these 
 men does not live upon the ranch; indeed, it is most 
 unlikely that he is spending the winter there. Per- 
 haps back in some city in the " States " the owner 
 may be sitting in his comfortable home, possibly plan- 
 ning about his trip out to the ranch for the spring 
 round-up. The owner may be rich, but he may be 
 ill, and he may not be entirely happy here in his East- 
 ern home. He may know the troubles incident to life 
 in the complex fabric of highly organized society. In 
 his heart he may long for that other fireside, the roar- 
 ing fireplace in the house of the T Bar ranch. He 
 can see the cowboys in their shirt sleeves sitting about 
 the fire smoking after their evening meal, their knees 
 in their hands or their elbows resting on their knees, 
 their hair hanging down tangled. He can see the 
 big shadows the fire is making on the rude tapestried 
 wall of the T Bar house. He envies those wiry fellows 
 who loll or sit about the fire. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 IN the cowboy country the fashions of apparel do 
 not change. The fashion plates of our own history 
 show the extremes of customs based largely upon folly 
 or caprice, or the plots of tradespeople. The cowboy 
 has been above such change. He is clad to-day as he 
 was when he first appeared upon the plains. His char- 
 acter has been strong enough to be above prettinesses 
 and uselessnesses. His weapons and his dress show 
 none of the idle ornamentation bestowed by those peo- 
 ples who would rather carve and embroider than march 
 and fight. The costume of the cowboy is permanent 
 because it is harmonious with its surroundings. It is 
 correct because it is appropriate. It will remain as it 
 is so long as the cowboy himself remains what he has 
 been and still is a strong character, a self -poised in- 
 dividual, leaning on no other soul. We call his cos- 
 tume picturesque, but that is because it takes us 
 into places to which we are unaccustomed. We call 
 the absurdities of many European natives aJso pic- 
 turesque, with their starched and frilled appendages, 
 which can be of no possible use or advantage in any 
 human garb. But when we come to note closely the 
 costume of the cowboy, we shall find that it has been 
 planned upon lines of such stern utility as to leave 
 us no possible thing which we may call dispensable. 
 
 50 
 
THE COWBOY'S OUTFIT. 51 
 
 By the costume we may tell the man. We can not fail 
 to recognise a nature vigorous far beyond those weak 
 degenerates who study constantly upon changes in 
 their own bedeckings. 
 
 The coat, trousers, and waistcoat of the cowboy are 
 of the rough sort commonly obtained at the rude stores 
 of the frontier. They are, of course, ready made, and 
 of course they do not fit in the city acceptation of the 
 term. They are sure to be of wool, and they are sure 
 to be large and roomy enough. It is one of the odd 
 things of the Southern country that the men largely 
 affect black or dark-coloured clothing. The men of 
 the Southern cities to-day nearly all wear black cloth- 
 ing as their business dress, and it is rarely that one 
 sees anything but a black hat, though that would seem 
 to be precisely the sort of wear most illy adapted to 
 a land of blazing sun. The early cowboy ideas of per- 
 fect dress reverted somewhat to this predilection for 
 dark clothing. In more recent times the mixed goods 
 and lighter colours, which one would naturally con- 
 sider far more sensible for such wear, have come into 
 wider use, but this is mainly because the storekeepers 
 of the frontier have had such goods for sale. 
 
 The typical cowboy costume can hardly be said to 
 contain a coat and waistcoat. The heavy woollen 
 shirt, loose and open at the neck, is the common wear 
 at all seasons of the year excepting winter, and one has 
 often seen cowboys in the winter time engaged in work 
 about the yard or corral of the ranch wearing no cover 
 for the upper part of the body excepting one or more 
 of these heavy shirts. If the cowboy wears a coat, lie 
 will wear it open and loose as much as possible. If he 
 wears a vest, you will see him wear it slouchily, hang- 
 ing open or partly unbuttoned most of the time. There 
 is reason in this slouchy Western habit. The cowboy 
 
52 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 will tell you that your vest closely buttoned about the 
 body will cause you to perspire, so that you will quickly 
 chill upon ceasing your exercise. His own waistcoat, 
 loose and open, admits the air freely, so that the per- 
 spiration evaporates as rapidly as it forms. If the wind 
 be blowing keenly when he dismounts to sit down 
 upon the ground for dinner, he buttons up his waist- 
 coat and is warm. If it be very cold, he buttons also 
 his coat. Meantime you, who have followed the cus- 
 toms of the " States " in your wearing apparel, will 
 be needing two overcoats to keep you warm. A tight 
 coat, a " biled shirt," or a buttoned waistcoat are things 
 not recognised in Cowboyland. 
 
 When we come to the boots of the cowboy we shall 
 find apparent foundation for the charge of inutility. 
 Very curious boots indeed they are, and it is an easy 
 wager that one would be unable to buy a pair of them 
 in the length and breadth of most large Eastern cities 
 to-day. Of fine leather, with light, narrow soles, ex- 
 tremely small and high heels, 'and fitting so tightly as 
 to bind the foot and cramp the toes in a most vice- 
 like grasp, surely a more irrational foot covering never 
 was invented. Yet the cowboy wears this sort of boot, 
 and has worn it for a generation. His ideas of " style " 
 oblige him to cling to these peculiar boots, and to be 
 particular in the make of these as well as in the fabric 
 of his hats and gloves. For the quality of his clothing 
 he cares nothing whatever. Yet these tight, peaked, 
 wretched cowboy boots have a great significance of 
 their own, and may indeed be called insignia of a call- 
 ing. There is no prouder soul on earth than the cow- 
 boy. He is proud that he is a horseman, and he has 
 a contempt for all human beings who walk. He would 
 prefer death to the following of a plough. A dnv's 
 walk through the streets of the city which he infre- 
 
THE COWBOY'S OUTFIT. 53 
 
 quently visits leaves him worn out by evening, and 
 longing for the saddle. It is a saying that he would 
 rather walk half a mile to get a horse in order to cover 
 a distance of a quarter of a mile than he would to walk 
 the latter distance in the first place. The cowboy does 
 not walk, and he is proud of the fact. On foot in his 
 stumpy, tight-toed boots he is lost. But he wishes you 
 to understand that he never is on foot. And if you 
 ride beside him and watch his seat in the big cow 
 saddle you will find that his high and narrow heels 
 prevent the slipping forward of the foot in the stirrup, 
 into which he jams his feet nearly full length. If 
 there is a fall, the cowboy's foot never hangs in the 
 stirrup. So he finds his little boots not so unservice- 
 able, and retains them as a matter of pride. Boots 
 made for the cowboy trade sometimes have fancy tops 
 of bright-coloured leather. The Lone Star of Texas 
 is not infrequent in their ornamentation. 
 
 The curious pride of the horseman nearly always 
 extends also to his gloves. The cowboy is very careful 
 in the selection of his gloves. The Ishmaelite clothier 
 who sells him shoddy stuffs at outrageous prices in his 
 clothing knows better than to offer the range rider 
 sheepskin in his gloves. You will be unable also to 
 find these gloves in the Eastern cities. The proper 
 glove will be made of the finest buckskin, which will 
 not be injured by wetting. It will probably be tanned 
 white and cut with a deep cuff or gauntlet, from which 
 will hang a little fringe. The fluttering of little bits 
 and things in the wind when at full speed of horse- 
 back was always one of the curious Western notions 
 which were slow of change. 
 
 The hat of the cowboy is one of the typical and 
 striking features of his costume, and one upon which 
 he always bestows the greatest of care. The tender- 
 
54: THE STORY OP THE COWBOY. 
 
 foot is known upon the range by his hat. He thinks 
 it correct to wear a wide white hat, and so buys one for 
 a couple of dollars. He is pained and grieved to find 
 that at the ranch he is derided for wearing a " wool 
 hat," and he is still more discontented with his head 
 covering when he finds that the first heavy rain has 
 caused it to lop down and lose all its shape. The 
 cowboy riding by his side wears a heavy white felt 
 hat with a heavy leather band buckled about it, which 
 perhaps he bought five years before at a cost of fifteen 
 or twenty dollars; but he refers with pride to the fact 
 that it is a " genuwine Stetson, an' a shore good un." 
 There has been no head covering devised so suitable as 
 this for the uses of the plains. The heavy boardlike 
 felt is practically indestructible. The brim flaps a 
 little, and in time comes to be turned up, and possi- 
 bly held fast to the crown by means of a thong. The 
 cowpuncher may stiffen the brim by passing a thong 
 through a series of holes pierced through the outer 
 edge. The heavy texture of this felt repels the blaz- 
 ing rays of the sun better than any helmet. There 
 are no recorded cases of sunstroke on the range. The 
 record might be different were straw hats or " derbys " 
 substituted for the rational headgear which for so long 
 has been the accepted thing in the cowboy country. 
 The cowboy can depend upon his hat at all seasons. 
 In the rain it is an umbrella. In the sun it is a shade 
 and a safeguard. At night, if he sleeps cold, he can 
 place it beneath his hips, and in the winter he can tie 
 it down about his ears with his handkerchief, thus 
 escaping the frostbite which sometimes assails tender- 
 feet who rely upon the best of caps with ear-flaps. A 
 derby hat is classed contemptuously under the general 
 term " hard hat." Once upon a time a ranch foreman 
 went to Kansas to get married, and report came back 
 
THE COWBOY'S OUTFIT. 55 
 
 from the town that he had been seen wearing a " hard 
 hat." It required many and elaborate explanations 
 on his part to restore confidence in him after his re- 
 turn to the ranch. There are many stories which re- 
 count the wild delight with which the cowboys greeted 
 the appearance of a silk hat in a frontier town where 
 they and the owner of such hat happened to be so- 
 journing together, and it is literally true that in the 
 earlier days of the frontier such hats were often shot 
 " full of holes " by cowpunchers who did not wait for 
 the removal of the hat from the owner's head. These 
 stories date to the wilder days of the cattle towns, when 
 one of the favourite amusements of the wild range 
 men was to induce some tenderfoot to dance for them 
 by means of the persuasive argument of shooting into 
 the ground close to his feet. Such times passed away 
 long ago. To-day there are many gray-headed cowboys 
 on the range who solemnly deny that they ever did 
 exist. 
 
 A starched collar was never seen on the cow range, 
 and it is matter of doubt what might occur to it were 
 it attempted by one of the cowboys of a ranch. The 
 wearer would probably soon find himself the possessor 
 of some nickname which would cling to him for the 
 rest of his life with annoying adhesiveness. The neck- 
 wear of the cowboy is to-day what it was decades ago. 
 The loose shirt collar has loosely thrown about it a 
 silk kerchief, which may rest about the neck quite 
 above the shirt collar. The kerchief is tied in a hard 
 knot in front, and can hardly be said to be devoted to 
 the uses of a neck scarf, yet it will be found a great 
 comfort to the back of one's neck when riding in a 
 hot wind. The cowboy very probably wears the ker- 
 chief in his peculiar fashion out of deference to the 
 conventional style of the range. It is sure to be of 
 
56 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 some bright colour, usually red,, for these strong and 
 barbarous natures have learned no admiration for the 
 degenerate colours,, such as pale green and the like. 
 
 A peculiar and distinctive feature of the cowboy's 
 costume is his " chaps " (chaparejos). Here the inex- 
 perienced man might think he had found ground to 
 twit the cowpuncher with affectation, for the heavy, 
 wide-legged and deeply fringed leg covers certainly 
 do have rather a wild look. The " chaps " are simply 
 two very wide and full-length trouser-legs made of 
 heavy calfskin, and connected by a narrow belt or 
 strap. They are cut away entirely at front and back, 
 so that they cover only the thigh and lower legs, and 
 do not heat the body as a full leather garment would. 
 They are loose, roomy, and airy, and not in the least 
 binding or confining to the limb, for the cowboy wears 
 no tight thing about him except his boots. The use- 
 fulness of the " chaps " can be very quickly and thor- 
 oughly learned by any one who rides with a cowboy 
 for a single day over the ordinary country of the range. 
 They are not intended for warmth at all, but simply as 
 a protection against branches, thorns, briers, and the 
 like, being as serviceable among the willow switches 
 and sage brush of the North as against the mesquite 
 and cactus chaparral of the South. The invention, of 
 course, came from the old Spaniards, who gave us all 
 the essential ideas of the cattle trade. In the country 
 where chaparejos were first worn the cactus, the Span- 
 ish bayonet, and all the steellike hooks and whips of 
 the chaparral make a continual menace to the horse- 
 man. The hunter in following the hounds in that 
 Southwestern country has perhaps at times found him- 
 self in the middle of a dense growth of cacti which 
 reached higher than his head as he sat in the saddle. 
 To turn in any direction seemed impossible, and every 
 
THE COWBOY'S OUTFIT. 57 
 
 movement of the horse brought fresh thorns against 
 the unprotected legs of the rider. Well for him 
 then had his legs been incased in the " chaps " he 
 should have worn. Not even the best tanned calfskin 
 always serves to turn the thorns and daggers of the 
 cactus. Sometimes there is seen, more often upon 
 the southern range, a cowboy wearing " chaps " made 
 of skins tanned with the hair on. These appendages, 
 with their long shaggy covering of black or white hair, 
 would again tempt the inexperienced to twit the cow- 
 bo}^ with affectation, but once more he would be wrong. 
 The cowboy of the Southwest long ago learned that 
 goatskin left with the hair on would turn the cactus 
 thorns better than any other material. 
 
 The overcoat of the cowboy, or rather his overcoat 
 and mackintosh combined, is the ever-present " slick- 
 er " which he is most pleased to wear tied behind him 
 at the thongs of his saddle. This garment is an oil- 
 skin, similar to that used by fishermen on the sea- 
 coast. It is cheap, almost indestructible, and exactly 
 suited to its uses. 
 
 At times in the winter time, and in a colder coun- 
 try, the cowboy slips on a blanket coat, a long garment 
 of heavy brown canvas lined with flannel. These coats, 
 in a better grade, however, than is usually found upon 
 the cow range, are issued by the Government to the 
 soldiers at the Northern army posts, and the teamsters 
 there declare they are as warm as a buffalo overcoat. 
 Of course, upon the range in a cold Northern country, 
 where the thermometer at times reaches 45 below 
 zero, the cowboy abandons distinctive type in cloth- 
 ing and dresses, as do all men in that climate, in the 
 warmest clothing at hand. He will wear mittens then 
 instead of gloves, and will have heavy overshoes upon 
 his feet. Perhaps he will take to the heavy knit Ger- 
 
58 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 man socks or to the felt boots of the North. In such 
 costume, however, we do not find the cowpuncher at 
 his usual work, and so may dismiss it as not pertain- 
 ing to his dress properly speaking. 
 
 The wearing of arms upon the person is in many of 
 the Western territories now prohibited by law, and it 
 is no longer customary to see the cowpuncher wearing 
 the revolver or even carrying the Winchester which 
 at a time not many years ago were part of his regular 
 outfit. In some of the ruder parts of the range, and at 
 some seasons of the dangerous cattle wars, it was a 
 matter of personal safety that required such arms and 
 a ready familiarity with them. For instance, the laws 
 of New Mexico required the citizen to " lay aside his 
 arms upon reaching the settlements/' and said noth- 
 ing against the wearing of arms in the country outside 
 the towns. The law was made for the safety of organ- 
 ized society, for the arms bearers rarely came to town 
 except upon times of hilarity and drunkenness, and 
 more than ninety per cent of the " killings " of the 
 West occurred among men where intoxicants had been 
 in use or were near at hand. Thus the notorious Joel 
 Fowler, who was eventually hung in Socorro, New 
 Mexico, in 1883, had been required by the sheriff to 
 " give up his gun " as soon as he came in town, his 
 character when under the influence of liquor being 
 well known. Fowler unbuckled his belt and gave the 
 sheriff his revolver, but kept a knife concealed about 
 him. Less than two hours later, when crazy drunk, 
 he stabbed and killed his own ranch foreman and best 
 friend, who had tried to persuade and quiet him. 
 The young sentiment then just growing in favour of 
 law and order allowed Fowler his trial for this, but his 
 lawyers took appeal and got the final hanging post- 
 poned for too long a time; so the citizens, who had 
 
THE COWBOY'S OUTFIT. 59 
 
 only waited for the hanging as matter of form,, con- 
 cluded to save expense and keep on the safe side by 
 hanging Joel themselves, which they did, leaving him, 
 in spite of his loud objections thereto, suspended to 
 a telegraph pole. That was back in what might be 
 called the old times on the range, yet even then the 
 sentiment against bearing arms was beginning to be 
 felt, and some ranch owners would not allow their 
 men to carry the revolver at all. Later on, say in 
 1887, on some of the ranges not so wild as the far 
 Southwestern country, there was slowly growing a 
 sentiment against the wearing of a " gun." In 1894, 
 in one of the wildest parts of Texas, one heard a ranch 
 foreman say, with a noticeable personal pride, that he 
 "never did pack a gun." The candour of this state- 
 ment is open to a shadow of doubt, for that same fore- 
 man had spent his life upon the cow range, and in the 
 old times the cowpuncher certainly did " pack a gun/' 
 Indeed, he looked upon it as a part of his dress and .one 
 of the necessities of life, and as such it should be men- 
 tioned here. 
 
 The cowboy never wore " galluses " (braces), and 
 he rarely wore a belt to support his trousers, depend- 
 ing upon buttoning them tightly enough for that 
 purpose; but he did wear a belt, this the wide, heavy 
 leather belt that carried his pistol holster. This belt 
 had loops for half a hundred cartridges, and the 
 total weight of the affair, gun and all, was several 
 pounds. No pistol of less than .44 calibre was toler- 
 ated on the range, the solid framed .45 being the one 
 almost universally used. The length of the barrel of 
 this arm was eight inches, and it shot a rifle cartridge 
 of forty grains of powder and a blunt-ended bullet that 
 made a terrible missile. In the shooting affairs of the 
 West some one nearly always got killed, because the 
 
60 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 weapons used were really deadly ones. The tenderfoot 
 who brought the little .32 pistol of the " States " to 
 the range was laughed at till he threw it away. There- 
 upon the tenderfoot bought a .45, and was very 
 wretched. He found the heavy thing almost unsup- 
 portable in its constant dragging down, and he could 
 never get at it when he wished to practise on a prairie 
 dog. He buckled the belt tightly about his waist, and 
 perhaps decorated himself with one of the useless 
 sharp-pointed knives which, for some inscrutable rea- 
 son, have always had a place and a sale in the Eastern 
 sporting-goods shops under the name of " hunting 
 knives," though they are scorned by any man who 
 really hunts or who has ever lived in the West. If 
 our tenderfoot would study the belt of the cowpuncher 
 he might learn something to , his benefit. He would, 
 of course, see no knife there. The foreman has a clasp 
 knife at the branding corral for purposes connected 
 with his work, but the cowboy has none at his belt. 
 The belt itself is not buckled about his waist at all, 
 but is worn loose, resting upon the point of the hip on 
 the left side, and hanging low down upon the hip on 
 the right side, none of the weight" of the gun coming 
 upon the soft parts of the abdomen at all. In riding, 
 a cowpuncher's gun is no incumbrance to him, and he 
 gives it no more thought than a well-dressed man does 
 his necktie. Yet quicker than the latter citizen could 
 jerk loose his tie the cowpuncher can jerk loose his 
 gun. Knowing the value of time and the danger of 
 overshooting in a little affair, he will begin to " set 
 the gun agoing " as soon as it gets out of the holster, 
 maybe cutting a little dust inside the distance of his 
 man, but before the second or so of the time of the 
 shooting is past something has usually happened. 
 Some of the bad men of the West tied back or re- 
 
THE COWBOY'S OUTFIT. 61 
 
 moved altogether the triggers of their revolvers, thus 
 simplifying the lock and making it more absolutely cer- 
 tain. The gun can be fired much more quickly by 
 cocking and releasing the hammer with the thumb, 
 all six of the shots being thus almost continuous in the 
 hands of a trained gun fighter. The two horse thieves 
 who were killed in lower Kansas by Three-finger Car- 
 ter, after their long flight across the range from Ne- 
 braska in the early '80's, had their revolvers thus 
 arranged. Though Carter was lucky enough to get 
 in two shots with a Sharps rifle, which killed one and 
 disabled the other before they had managed to hit 
 him, he said that the " ar was plum full o' lead " while 
 he was getting in his second cartridge. The well- 
 founded respect which the cowpuncher had for sim- 
 plicity and certainty in his arms caused him to gener- 
 ally reject the double-action revolver. His depend- 
 ence was placed in the old-style single-action revolver, 
 with the wooden handle. Some young and more mod- 
 ern cowboys sometimes " toted " guns with pearl or 
 ivory handles, on which the head of a " longhorn " 
 was sometimes engraved handsomely; but these works 
 of art were not cherished in the holsters of the old- 
 time men. The genuine cowboy of the times when 
 some men needed guns and all men carried them, 
 wanted a gun that would " shore go off " when it was 
 wanted. It needed to be an arm which would stand 
 rain and sun and sand, which could be dropped in a 
 stampede and run over by a herd of cattle, but which 
 when picked up would still be ready to go to shooting. 
 The cowpuncher wore his revolver on the right 
 hip (if a right-handed man), and the butt of it pointed 
 backward. The army man wears his revolver on the 
 left side, with the butt pointing forward about as 
 poor a way as could be devised, though of course the 
 
62 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 saber is supposed to occupy the right hand of the 
 cavalryman and most of his personal attention. The 
 cavalryman who goes on many plains marches soon 
 learns of the plainsman how to carry his belt without 
 fatiguing himself to death with his own weapons. 
 
 An essential part of the cowpuncher's outfit is his 
 " rope." This is carried in a coil at the left side of 
 the saddle-horn, fastened by one of the many thongs 
 which are scattered over the saddle. The rope in the 
 Spanish country is called reata (la reata), and even 
 to-day is often made of rawhide, with an eye re-enforced 
 with that durable material. Such a hide rope is called 
 a " lariat " in the South. The reata was softened and 
 made pliable by dragging it for some days behind the 
 ranch wagon or at the saddle, the trailing on the 
 ground performing this function perfectly. The 
 modern rope is merely a well-made three-quarter-inch 
 hemp rope, about thirty feet in length, with a leather 
 eye admitting a free play of the noose, the eye being 
 sometimes well soaped to make the rope run freely. 
 This implement is universally called on the range a 
 " rope." The term " lasso," which we read about in 
 books, is never heard, unless in California, nor is the 
 common term of the Mexican, " reata" The " lariat " 
 is in the North used sometimes as another term, more 
 especially to describe the picket rope by which the 
 horse is tied out. In Texas this would be called a 
 " stake rope." The common name gives the verb 
 form, and the cowpuncher never speaks of " lassoing " 
 an animal, but of " roping " it. 
 
 The " quirt " of the cowpuncher (possibly from 
 the Spanish cuerda, a cord or thong) is a short and 
 heavy whip, made with a short stock less than a foot 
 in length, and carrying a lash made of three or four 
 heavy and loose thongs. The handle is a wooden stick, 
 
THE COWBOY'S OUTFIT. 63 
 
 or sometimes a short iron rod, covered with braided 
 leather, and a thong attaches the quirt to the wrist. 
 The quirt is now made as a regular article of saddlery, 
 but in the early days the cowboys often made their 
 own quirts. The cowpuncher took to leather and raw- 
 hide as a fish to water, and some of them, especially 
 those from the Spanish Southwest, were exceedingly 
 clever leather workers. But they never cared much 
 for the fancy-coloured quirts so ingeniously braided of 
 horsehair by the Mexicans, who are fonder of display 
 than the American cowpuncher proper. The quirt 
 was merely supplement to the spur which the cow- 
 puncher wore on each foot. The spur in the old days 
 was made with a very large rowel, the latter being a 
 great wheel, with blunt teeth an inch long about its 
 circumference. Often little bells or oblong pieces of 
 metal ornamented this spur, the tinkling of which 
 appealed to the childlike nature of the plains rider of 
 the early days. The style of spur has come down with- 
 out pronounced change. 
 
 The bridle used by the cowboy for we may as 
 well continue to speak also of the dress of the cowboy's 
 horse was noticeable for its tremendously heavy and 
 cruel curbed bit. This bit was originated by the most 
 cruel people in the world, the Spaniards, and it has 
 in some form retained its hold in the most cruel occu- 
 pation of the world, the cattle business of the plains. 
 A long shank hung down from the bit on either side 
 of the mouth, and low down on these shanks were 
 fastened the reins, with a leverage sufficient fairly to 
 tear the jaw off a pony. Inside the mouth there was 
 a cross bar of iron, made with a IT bend in the middle. 
 The pull on the reins could sink this U deep into the 
 horse's tongue, sometimes nearly cutting it off. Very 
 severe was the " spade bit," which could be forced 
 
64: THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 into a horse's mouth willy-nilly, and still more cruel 
 was the " ring bit," with its circle slipped over the 
 lower jaw of the horse. This savage Spanish bit went 
 out of common use as the Anglo-Saxon cattle men 
 came in. It w r as capable of breaking the jaw of a 
 horse, and has been known to do so. More humane 
 bits are used now than in the past, and probably horses 
 are upon the average not so " broncho " as the original 
 Spanish ponies. In the wild riding of the cowboy he 
 sometimes mercilessly jerks the pony up with his ter- 
 rible bit, so sharply as to throw it back upon its 
 haunches. The horsemanship of the plains has abso- 
 lutely no reference to the feelings of the horse. It 
 is the part of the latter to obey, and that at once. 
 Yet in the ordinary riding, and even in the arduous 
 work of the round-up and in cutting out, the cow- 
 puncher uses the bit very little, nor exerts any pressure 
 on the reins. He lays the reins against the neck of the 
 pony on the side opposite to the direction in which he 
 wishes it to go, merely turning his hand in the direc- 
 tion, and inclining his body in the same way. He 
 rides with the pressure of the knee and the inclination 
 of the body, and the light side shifting of both reins 
 equally tightened. A cow pony does not know what 
 you want of it if you pull upon the rein on one side. 
 They have been known to resent such liberties very 
 promptly. 
 
 The saddle of the cowboy is the first, last, and 
 most important part of his outfit. It is a curious 
 thing, this saddle developed by the cattle trade, and 
 the world has no other like it. It is not the production 
 of fad or fancy, but of necessity. Its great weight 
 a regular cow saddle weighs from thirty to forty 
 pounds is readily excusable when one remembers that 
 it is not only seat but workbench for the cowman. 
 
THE COWBOY'S OUTFIT. 05 
 
 A light saddle would be torn to pieces at the first 
 rush of a maddened steer, but the sturdy frame of a 
 cow saddle will throw the heaviest bull on the range. 
 The saddle is made for riding upon a country essen- 
 tially flat, and it is not intended for jumping indeed, 
 can not be used for high jumping, with its high cantle 
 and pommel. Yet it is exactly right for the use for 
 which it is designed. The high cantle gives a firmness 
 to the seat of the cowboy when he snubs a steer with a 
 sternness sufficient to send it rolling heels over head. 
 The high pommel, or " horn," steel forged and covered 
 with cross braids of honest leather, serves as anchor 
 post for this same steer, a turn of the rope about it 
 accomplishing that purpose at once. The tree of the 
 saddle forks low down over the back of the pony, so 
 that the saddle sits firmly and can not readily be pulled 
 off. The great broad cinches especially the hind 
 cinch so much detested by the pony, and a frequent 
 incentive to steady bucking bind the big saddle fast 
 to the pony until they are practically one fabric. The 
 long and heavy wooden stirrups seem ungraceful till 
 one has ridden in them, and then he would use no 
 other sort. The strong wooden house of the stirrup 
 protects the foot from being crushed when riding 
 through timber or among cattle or other horses. The 
 pony can not bite the foot as he sometimes has a 
 fashion of doing viciously through the wood and the 
 long cover or leather that sometimes further protects 
 it, neither can the thorns' scratch the foot or the limbs 
 of trees drag the foot from its place. 
 
 The shape of the tree of the cow saddle is the best 
 that can be made for its use, though it or any other 
 tree is hard upon the pony's back, for the saddle is 
 heavy of itself, and the rider is no mere stripling. The 
 deep seat is a good chair for a man who is in it nearly 
 
66 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 all the year. In the saddle the cowpuncher stands 
 nearly upright, his legs in a line from his shoulders and 
 hips down. He rides partly with the balancing seat, and 
 does not grip with his knees so much as one must in 
 sitting a pad saddle, but his saddle is suited to his 
 calling, and it is a bad horse and a big steer that shall 
 shake him, no matter what the theories of it be. The 
 question of the cowpuncher's saddle and his use of it 
 can be covered with a little conversation once heard 
 on the trail of a cow outfit. A gentleman of foreign 
 birth, but of observing habits, was telling a cow- 
 puncher what he thought about his riding and his 
 saddle. " I say, you couldn't jump a fence in that 
 thing, you know," said he. 
 
 " Stranger," said the cowpuncher, " this yer is 
 God's country, an' they ain't no fences, but I shore 
 think I could jump more fences than you could 
 rope steers if you rid in that postage stamp thing of 
 yourTi." 
 
 The cowboy loves his own style of saddle, but he 
 goes further than that. He is particular to a nicety 
 in selecting his saddle, and, having once selected and 
 approved of it, he can not be induced to part with it 
 or exchange it for any other. He might sell his gun 
 or his coat or his boots, and he cares nothing how 
 many times he changes his horse, for which he has no 
 affection whatever, but he will never part with his 
 saddle. The cowboys who came up with the drive 
 from the lower range in the early days took their sad- 
 dles back home with them, no matter how long the 
 journey. To sell one's saddle was a mark of poverty 
 and degradation, and perhaps the cowpuncher felt 
 about it much as the Spartan mother about the loss 
 of her son's shield. No matter how dark it is when 
 he saddles up, no cowpuncher ever gets any saddle 
 
THE COWBOY'S OUTFIT. 67 
 
 but his own., and should any one borrow or misplace 
 his there is apt to be explanation demanded. 
 
 In the early days of the " Texas saddle/' or the 
 first type of the cow saddles, these articles were made 
 in the shops of the Southwest. Before long, however, 
 after the drive got into the Northern country, the 
 saddles of Cheyenne became the favourites of the range, 
 North and South, they being made of better leather. 
 The " California tree " was sometimes used. There 
 was some local variety in manufacture, but the saddle 
 of the cowman remained constant in the main points 
 above mentioned. The old Spaniard who designed it 
 put forth many models which have endured practically 
 without change. 
 
 A good saddle would cost the cowboy from forty 
 to one hundred dollars. In his boyish notions of 
 economy to want a thing was to have it if he had the 
 money, and a saddle once seen and coveted was apt 
 to be bought. The embossing and ornamentation of 
 the saddle had most to do with its cost. The Spanish 
 saddles of the Southwest were often heavily decorated 
 with silver, as were the bits, spurs, and bridle reins, 
 as well as the clothing of the rider; but this sort of 
 foppery never prevailed to any extent among American 
 cow punchers. There was one rude and wild sort of 
 decoration sometimes in practise by the younger cow- 
 boys on the range. They often took the skins of rat- 
 tlesnakes, of which there were very many seen nearly 
 every day, and spread them while yet wet upon the 
 leather of their saddles. The natural glue of the skin 
 would hold it firmly in place when it dried. Some 
 saddles have been seen fairly covered with these lines 
 of diamond-marked skins. It was not uncommon to 
 see the skins of these snakes also used as hat bands. 
 
 Let us suppose that chance has brought us to some 
 
68 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 one of the little frontier towns in or near the edge of 
 the cattle country, and that there is in the neighbour- 
 hood of the village a band of cattle in the care of the 
 usual outfit of cowboys. Perhaps the duties of these 
 are well over for the time, they having shipped their 
 cattle or turned them over to another owner. It is in 
 the evening, and the party of cowboys have concluded 
 to come to town for a little celebration. Far across 
 the open prairie country we may see them coming, 
 their way marked by the rapidly flitting cloud of white 
 dust. In a few moments they are near enough for one 
 to make out their figures. They sit straight up in the 
 saddle, their legs straight down, the body motionless 
 except through the action of the horse. They are 
 in their shirt sleeves, their hats blowing back, their 
 right hands occasionally wielding the quirts as they 
 race headlong over the rough ground of the unbroken 
 prairies. Now and again their heels strike home the 
 spurs to push on the racing ponies, which come flying, 
 their heads low down, their legs gathered well under 
 them, their ears back, their nostrils wide. As the 
 wild range men come on one hears their shrill call, the 
 imitation of the coyote yelp. They dash into the main 
 street of the town, never drawing rein, but spurring 
 and whipping the harder, the hoofs of the horses mak- 
 ing a louder beat upon the hard streets. On they ride, 
 yelling and spurring, their loose scarfs flying, but oach 
 man upright and steady as a statue in his seat. They 
 arrive at the main portion of the town, perhaps at the 
 central " square," about which some of these towns 
 are built. Still at full speed, each man sudd only pulls 
 np his horse with a strong jerk upward of his hand. 
 The heavy bit does its work. The pony, with its head 
 tossed high by the sudden pull, which it has learned 
 instantly to obey, throws its weight back as it does 
 
THE COWBOY'S OUTFIT. 69 
 
 in the corral when the rope has flown. It falls back 
 upon its hind legs, sliding upon its fetlocks, and com- 
 ing to a stop from full speed within a few feet. Be- 
 fore it has fully paused the rider is off and has thrown 
 the reins down over its head. Then, while the pony 
 rolls its eye in resentment, you will have opportunity 
 to see the cowboy on his feet and dressed in his work- 
 ing clothes. 
 
CHAPTEE Y. 
 
 THE COWBOY'S HOUSE. 
 
 THE earliest written records of mankind show that 
 man was first a warrior and next a cattle man, and that 
 most of his wars were over cows. We are told that 
 the Aryans were cowmen by universal occupation, and 
 it is pointed out to us that the Sanskrit word for king 
 means nothing more than chief of cowboys, or other- 
 wise foreman of the ranch. Our word " pecuniary " is 
 directly derived from the Latin pecus, thus pointing 
 back sharply to the time when the cow was the unit 
 of all values. The ancient warrior of Europe paid so 
 many cows for his wife, as the warrior of the red peo- 
 ples of America pays so many ponies, or as the head 
 men of the pale faces to-day pay so many dollars, by 
 a slight modification of standards and customs. It 
 needs but the most casual glance back over the his- 
 tory of the race to see how primitive, how strong and 
 steadfast, have been the customs of the cattle men from 
 the time of the Aryans to the time of the beef barons 
 of a decade ago. Until within a very short time a cow 
 was a cow on the cattle range, and one cow was as 
 good as another. Surely it was a radical and omin- 
 ous change which broke down so old and strong a 
 custom. It means that the days of our Sanskrit and 
 Roman and Western heroes, men " who fought about 
 cows," are gone forever, and that a new time has set 
 
 70 
 
THE COWBOY'S HORSE. 71 
 
 on in history, wherein the money changer and the 
 merchant shall take their place forever. Woe is that 
 time in the history of any people. 
 
 In the ancient days of the cattle industry the same 
 problems must have presented themselves which were 
 offered to the earliest cattle men upon this continent. 
 These cows, which constituted the wealth of the indi- 
 vidual, were four-legged creatures, which could run 
 far away from man, the two-legged creature. Man 
 as Nature made him cut a sorry figure as a cowboy. 
 But Nature had given to man another creature as 
 strong as the cow, more fleet, and more courageous. 
 This creature man took into his plans, and upon the 
 back of the horse he at once became the physical supe- 
 rior of the cow. With the horse he is master of his 
 herds. Without it he must ever have remained the 
 hunter, and could never have been the cattle man. He 
 could never have organized his means of increasing 
 his own wealth or of commanding it. Most intimately 
 blended, then, is the horse of the cowman with every 
 movement of his calling. 
 
 It is impossible to tell beyond the stage of guess- 
 work just at what time the first cowman rode into 
 view upon the hot and desert plains of the vast South- 
 west that lean and bronzed fighting Spaniard who 
 had set his stubborn foot upon the virgin soil of a new 
 continent sometime in the early and glorious day at 
 the opening of American history. It is sure that as a 
 military man the Spaniard knew the value of a beef 
 herd with the marching column or at the base of his 
 operations. He brought over cattle almost as soon 
 as he did horses, and the one grew with the other. 
 There is a tradition that the Spanish Government, 
 toward the close of the sixteenth century, turned loose 
 upon the plains of the Southwest some numbers of 
 
72 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 horses in order to stock the country with that ani- 
 mal. The common supposition is that the wild stock 
 of America began in the stray and runaway horses 
 which were lost by the Spaniards. Be that as it may, 
 the horse of the Spaniards soon had a better hold on 
 American soil than the Spaniard himself. By the 
 year 1700 the Northern Indians had not yet become 
 generally possessed of horses, and many of them used 
 dogs as beasts of burden, while their hunting was all 
 done on foot. Yet at this time the Southern Indians 
 had horses, and had learned to use them extremely 
 well. The natural course of horse trading and horse 
 stealing soon spread the animal all over the vast coun- 
 try of the West. The advent of the horse upon this 
 continent changed the entire manner of life of the 
 native tribes. It only perpetuated the manners and 
 customs of the people that had brought the horse. 
 So strong, so virile were these customs that the type 
 of the horse itself has changed more in three centuries 
 than that wild industry of which it has always been 
 and must always be a central figure. 
 
 If we should have a look at the continent of Eu- 
 rope at the time of the wars of the Moors and Spaniards, 
 we should see there a state of matters much as we may 
 see upon our own cattle range. In the north of Eu- 
 rope the cattle and the horses, as well as the men, were 
 bulky, powerful, and large of frame. In the south of 
 Europe the cattle, the men, and the horses, reared in 
 a hot and dry country, were smaller, and were lean, 
 sinewy, and active rather than big and bulky. The 
 Moors were always horsemen, and they brought from 
 northern Africa with them into Spain the horse of 
 a hot, dry land, a waterless land, where the horse was 
 alike a necessity and a treasure. The Moor prized his 
 horse, and so developed of him a creature of worth 
 
THE COWBOY'S HORSE. 73 
 
 and serviceableness, one which could carry an armed 
 man all day under a tropic sun and subsist upon such 
 food as the desert offered. 
 
 The horse of the Moor became the horse of the 
 Spaniard, and the horse of the Spaniard became the 
 horse of the Spanish-Indian or Mexican, which in turn 
 became the horse of the cattle trade which was handed 
 down along with it. The animal certainly found an 
 environment to its liking, one indeed similar to that 
 which had produced its type in northern Africa. The 
 suns of the great Southwest were burning, the lands 
 were parched and dry, and small shade ever offered. 
 Water was rare and precious, and to be reached only 
 by long journeys. These journeys, this dry and unfat- 
 tening food of the short grasses of the hot plains, took 
 off every particle of useless flesh from the frame of the 
 horse. It needs moisture to furnish fat to a people, 
 and a fat person must always be drinking water. The 
 Spanish pony had no more water than would keep it 
 alive, and soon came to learn how to do without it in 
 great measure. For generation after generation it lost 
 flesh and gained angles, lost beauty and gained " wind " 
 and stomach and bottom and speed, until at the time 
 of the first American cowboy's meeting with it it was 
 a small, hardy, wiry, untamed brute, as wild as a hawk, 
 as fleet as a deer, as strong as an ox. It had not the 
 first line of beauty. Its outline of neck was gone for- 
 ever, merged into a hopeless ewe neck which looked 
 weak, though it was not. Its head was devoid of beauty 
 of outline, often Eoman nosed, but still showing fine- 
 ness and quality in the front and the muzzle. Its 
 head was very poorly let on. Its ribs seemed a bit 
 flat and its hips weak. Its back was reached up for- 
 ward of the " coupling " in a pathetic way, as though 
 the arch were in sympathy with a stomach perpetually 
 
74: THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 tucked up from hunger or from cold. Its eye was not 
 good to look upon, and its fore legs not always what 
 one would ask of his favourite saddler. But suppose 
 the stripping of Nature had been followed out until 
 the bony framework of this plains horse had been laid 
 quite bare, and the skeleton alone left in evidence, 
 this skeleton would be worth a study. The quality 
 of the bone of this forearm would be found dense and 
 ivorylike, not spongy as the bone of a big dray horse. 
 The hoofs and feet would be found durable and sound. 
 The cat-hammed hips would be seen to supplement 
 that despised roach in the back, and we should have 
 offered that grayhound configuration which is seen in 
 all the speedy animals where the arch of the back is 
 marked and the hind legs set under and forward easily 
 in running. Such an animal '" reaches from behind " 
 well in running, and turns quickly. Moreover, these 
 flat-bladed shoulders would be seen to be set on oblique- 
 ly, which again one asks of his speedy dog or racing 
 horse, if he knows the anatomy of speed. The shoul- 
 ders play easily and freely, and the hind legs reach well 
 forward, and the chest, though deep enough to give 
 the lungs and heart plenty of room, is not too deep to 
 interfere with a full extension of the animal and a free 
 and pliant play of the limbs. In short, the pony of the 
 range as first seen by the American cowboy was not a 
 bad sort of running machine. It had, moreover, the 
 lungs built upon generations of rare pure air, the heart 
 of long years of freedom, and the stomach of centuries 
 of dry feed. It stood less than fourteen hands high, 
 and weighed not more than six hundred pounds, but it 
 could run all day and then kick off the hat of his rider 
 at night. In form it was not what we call a thorough- 
 bred, but in disposition it was as truly a thorough- 
 bred as ever stood on two or four feet. Jim, the fore- 
 
THE COWBOY'S HORSE. 75 
 
 man of the Circle Arrow outfit, down near the line 
 of old Mexico, would have told you long ago that such 
 a horse had " plenty sand." It was very well it did 
 have. 
 
 This was the cow horse of the Southwest, and the 
 type remained constant in that region until the middle 
 of this century. All the horses of the North and the 
 East on the plains came up from Mexico and Texas 
 on the eastern side of the Rockies, where much the 
 same sort of climatic conditions prevailed. Meanwhile 
 there had been another line of migration of the horse, 
 also from Mexico, but up along the California coast 
 west of the Rockies. There was heat and dry air and 
 little water for a long way to the North, but at length 
 the wet climate of Oregon was reached. Here the way 
 of Nature went on again, and the type began to change. 
 The horse became a trifle stockier and heavier, not 
 quite so lean and rangy in build. The cow horses of 
 the early trade in Montana came in part from Oregon 
 across the upper mountain passes by the route over 
 which the Northern horse Indians who lived close to 
 the Rockies first got their horses. On the northern 
 range the cow horse was called a " cayuse," a name, of 
 course, unknown upon the southern range, where the 
 horse was simply a " cow horse," or, if a very wild and 
 bad horse, was called a " broncho," that being the 
 Spanish word for " wild." The term " broncho " has 
 spread all over the cattle country and all over the coun- 
 try until its original and accurate meaning is quite 
 lost. There never was any very great difference be- 
 tween the horses of the North and those of the South, 
 for they came of the same stock, bred in the same un- 
 regulated way, and lived the same sort of life. Either 
 cayuse or broncho would buck in the most crazy and 
 pyrotechnic style when first ridden, plunging, biting, 
 
76 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 bawling, and squealing in an ecstasy of rage, and either 
 would rear and throw itself over backward with its 
 rider if it got a chance, or would lie down and roll over 
 on him. The colour of either was as it happened, 
 perhaps with a bit greater tendency to solid colours in 
 the Northern horse. Bay, sorrel, black, gray, " buck- 
 skin," roan, or " calico " were the usual colours of the 
 cow horses. In the South a piebald horse was always 
 called a "pinto," from the Spanish word meaning 
 " paint." In the upper parts of Texas one often hears 
 such a horse called a " paint horse." In the South a 
 horse does not buck, but " pitches," which comes to 
 the same thing with a tenderfoot. A " wall-eyed pinto 
 that pitches " is an adjunct to be found upon almost 
 any Southern ranch even to-day. Both in the South 
 and in the North the horses are now generally bred up 
 by crosses of " American horses," though this is much 
 a misnomer, for the cow horse is the American horse 
 per se and par excellence. 
 
 In the " States " we pen our cattle and house our 
 horses, and have both horse and cow always at hand 
 and under control. Not so fortunate is the cowboy 
 with his mount. The latter is a wild animal loose upon 
 the range. From year's end to year's end it has no 
 care but the hand of mastery and no food but that 
 afforded by Nature. This we shall say for the cow 
 horse proper, and as applying to the days of ranching 
 in the old times, before modern methods had come in. 
 On the upper ranges, where the snows of winter are 
 on the ground for long months and the weather is 
 often very cold, it has long been the custom to make 
 all the hay possible and to keep a little feed on hand 
 for use in winter. Even in the country of the middle 
 range, as in the Indian Nations, baled hay and oats are 
 used in the winter for the saddle band. This, how- 
 
THE COWBOY'S HORSE. 77 
 
 ever, is not that typical ranching of the old times 
 which will offer us most of picturesqueness and of in- 
 terest. In those loose, wild times the cow horse was 
 treated the same as the cow, with only such differences 
 in the handling as a different nature required or neces- 
 sity of the business made desirable. Both were wild, 
 there is not any doubt of that. Jim, the cowboy who 
 handled both, was as wild as they. Upon that time 
 let us rather linger than upon a more degenerate day. 
 There is no more interesting time in which to study 
 the business of horse ranching than just at the begin- 
 ning of the great drives to the North which marked the 
 sudden expansion of the cattle business. Such study 
 will take us to the plains of upper Texas, for here the 
 day of the well-conducted horse ranch began. At a 
 time before the middle of this century, before the civil 
 war and before the railroads, the great State of Texas 
 began to fill up with settlers from States above it. 
 These travelled in colonies at times, the journey being 
 made in a long cavalcade which was sometimes upon 
 the road for months. From the old State of Missis- 
 sippi a great many families went to Texas in that 
 strange and restless American fashion, absolutely leav- 
 ing their former homes and pulling up root and 
 branch. These families took with them their horses, 
 their cattle, and their household goods, and the entire 
 family of each emigrant went with him in his wagons, 
 accompanied by all his slaves, for this was in the slavery 
 times. One of these great parties settled at a lovely 
 spot near the head of a clear spring-fed river and 
 founded the town of San Marcos, which even to-day 
 bears all the character of that earlier settlement in the 
 names and families of its citizens. Here began some 
 of the first experiments in grading up the native Span- 
 ish horses with the better blood of the Northern States, 
 
78 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 more than a quarter of a century before the great and 
 well-conducted horse ranches of the North commenced 
 their systematic work. 
 
 One of the first horse ranches was established on 
 the Rio Blanco about 1849 by Jim Patton, an eccen- 
 tric recluse who was born in Pennsylvania and wan- 
 dered down into that country and fenced a few hun- 
 dred acres which surrounded a deep spring of live 
 water. Patton began slowly, and at the time of the 
 civil war had only a few hundred head of horses. The 
 foundation of his herd w r as the native Mexican pony, 
 which could then be bought at two to five dollars a 
 head. Patton had a very fine black stallion, for which 
 he always evinced the greatest regard. The horse was 
 fed at the house, and followed his master about like 
 a dog, and his owner made of it almost his only com- 
 panion. In the rude times just previous to the civil 
 war, when all things were much unsettled, a band of 
 raiders scouts, pillagers, or whatever they might be 
 called came in upon Patton's ranch and said they 
 wanted horses for the Southern army. Patton told 
 them to go to the horse herd and help themselves; but 
 they demanded the favourite horse, and this he told 
 them they could not have. They insisted, and Patton 
 made some temporizing excuse, though he had resolved 
 they should not have the horse. He called up a negro 
 servant, and told him to get the animal and lead it to 
 the spring back in the timber, for that he intended to 
 kill it himself rather than allow it to be taken by the 
 raiders. The negro did as he was told, and Patton 
 started to follow, having his gun ready to shoot his own 
 favourite; but as he stepped into the path to follow 
 after it the raiders shot him in the back and killed him. 
 They then took the horse, but did not take any others 
 of the herd. Patton's brother came down from the 
 
THE COWBOY'S HORSE. 79 
 
 North later to clear up his estate, but the ranch was 
 allowed to go to. pieces. This ended what was probably 
 one of the very first of the attempts at horse ranch- 
 ing east of the Eockies on the cow range. Another 
 early and well-known horse ranch was the Key brand 
 ranch of Joe Brown, and yet another and more ex- 
 tensive one was the C. 0. X. ranch, both of these 
 near San Marcos, and both established in the early 
 part of the decade which began at 1850. The trail 
 horses of these outfits were known from the Rio Grande 
 to Abilene in the days of the drive. 
 
 In these different ranches there were several sires 
 fine-bred Kentucky horses of proved blood and excel- 
 lence and it was soon discovered that the progeny of 
 
 ^these made better cow horses than the native horses. 
 
 ~ : Th<e grade horse would weigh perhaps eight hundred 
 pounds instead of six hundred, and would have a bet- 
 ter turn of speed and more strength, though retaining 
 the hardiness and staying quality of the native stock, 
 One of the famous horses taken from Kentucky to that 
 region was known as Buckskin, and grading of that 
 strain began about 1856. ^/By the time the days of the 
 cattle drives began there was well established in north- 
 ern Texas a strain of cow horses which must have had 
 superior qualities, for they came to be sought far and 
 near by outfits going " up the trail." 
 
 Life in those early days was very free and wild and 
 picturesque. It was long before the day of fences, and 
 all the country belonged to the settlers who had dis- 
 covered it. The neighbours were very far away. The 
 horses ranged quite free and unfenced, as wild as the 
 cattle. Horses naturally band up more closely than 
 the cattle, and this trait was strengthened by the habits 
 of the stallions, which would drive off, each for him- 
 self, a band of forty to seventy-five (known as his 
 
80 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 " menalha" this being the native pronunciation of the 
 Spanish word " manada" a band or drove), endeav- 
 ouring always to steal more mares from other bands. 
 These bands would come to feed more or less apart, 
 and each would localize itself, establishing a range 
 upon which it could nearly always be found. The 
 climate of that country did not offer such extremes 
 as that of the northern range, and this in a man- 
 ner simplified the work of ranging the animals. A 
 horse never liked to leave its native range, and if 
 stolen and taken away would often come back, some- 
 times over a distance of more than two hundred 
 miles. A band of thirty-five horses has been known to 
 break back from the drive and return home over two 
 hundred miles in about twenty days. Much was left 
 to this home instinct of the horses, and it was consid- 
 ered sure that they would range over a country not 
 much more than twenty-five or forty miles from where 
 they were born, if the feed remained good. Fences 
 were therefore not needed, for fifty miles on the range 
 is but a little way. 
 
 The men of the horse ranches joined in the spring 
 round-up just as the cattle men join in their round-ups. 
 The start was usually made about the first week in 
 March in that country, and the early search was made 
 among the hills and broken ground along the water 
 courses. Each ranch sent a proper proportion of men, 
 and these travelled very light. Each man had for his 
 own saddle band only about three extra horses. The 
 camp baggage was all carried on pack horses. The 
 round-up party went very free and independent, as it 
 needed to be, for it should be remembered that the 
 animals to be gathered were very much swifter than 
 cattle, and at times harder to control or bring to a 
 given point at a given time. It was usually the inten- 
 
82 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 ning would ensue before such a band would finally be 
 surrounded and gotten under control. Only the supe- 
 rior bottom of the Kentucky strain would at length 
 succeed in wearing out these fugitives, though sooner 
 or later the perseverance of the riders got them all in. 
 It was a singular fact that the little colts,, some not 
 more that a week or two old, were the swiftest of the 
 band, and these always were in the lead, the colt usually 
 running ahead of its mother. 
 
 As the horses were picked up on the round-up 
 here and there over the country they were driven to- 
 ward some convenient corral or meantime held under 
 herd. It was the custom in that country to corral 
 the herd at night and to herd it during the daytime, 
 three or four men being set apart for that work. The 
 herd thus grew for some weeks, being shifted as seemed 
 necessary until in perhaps a month all the horses of 
 the range were thought to be gathered, these, of course, 
 belonging to various owners. Then the whole herd 
 was rounded up at some favourable place, and the 
 process of cutting out began, this being much as it is 
 in a cow round-up. The owner's brand determined 
 ownership, and the colts went with their mothers. 
 Each man helped with the entire herd until finally 
 each owner had his own horses all separated from the 
 main herd. Then the round-up party broke up, and 
 each owner drove his own horses back to his own 
 home ranch. It might be toward the close of April 
 when the horses reached their home ranch, a date about 
 equivalent to the first of June on the northern range. 
 The herd was held here as it had been on the round- 
 up in the big ranch corrals, feeding under guard dur- 
 ing the day and confined in the corrals at night. 
 
 Upon the arrival at the ranch of the season's prod- 
 uct of horses, the horse rancher at once went about 
 
THE COWBOY'S HORSE. 83 
 
 branding his young stock. The branding was all done 
 in the " round pen/' as a circular corral was called in 
 the South. This was an inclosure with fence walls 
 ten or twelve feet in height, strongly built, and, as the 
 name indicated, of circular form. A horse when fright- 
 ened is far worse than a steer, and if any angles were 
 left in the corral it might result in injury to the horses, 
 which when pursued by the ropers were sometimes 
 very wild in their attempts at escape. A little bunch 
 of fifteen or twenty horses were driven into the round 
 pen at once, and then the ropers went to work. These, 
 of course, were cowboys of the same sort as those of 
 the cattle ranches. It may have been upon a horse 
 ranch that our foreman Jim had his first education as 
 a roper, under the tutelage of some swarthy Mexican 
 of high straw hat and kerchief bound about his fore- 
 head, who perhaps made a prominent figure in the 
 round pen at the horse ranch when the spring branding 
 was in progress. It was Jim, or Manuel, or Jose who 
 dashed after the flying horses as they sped about the 
 smooth walls, his hide lariat hissing about his head 
 with the turn of his wrist as he rode. With the swoop 
 of the rope and its louder hiss as it cut through the 
 air even against the sharpest wind, some luckless little 
 colt was sure to get its first lesson in the domination 
 of mankind. The roper caught the colt by the fore 
 feet, not by the hind feet as the calves are usually 
 roped, and of course at the instant the rope tightened 
 the colt went head over heels on the ground: lesson 
 No. 1 of the cow pony, which is not to " run against 
 rope." 
 
 At once the colt was dragged to the gate of the 
 round pen, where just outside a fire was burning 
 and an iron glowing for his tender hide. A hissing 
 of hair and a plaintive scream from the colt and it was 
 
84: THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 all over, and another animal had become the property 
 of the ranch. Perhaps a dozen and a half of colts 
 would be branded and marked in an hour, and then 
 another bunch was brought in from the big corral. 
 Cattle were not customarily branded in the corral but 
 upon the range, while horses were always taken to the 
 corrals for this work. After the branding the colts 
 had little attention except now and then a rude ex- 
 amination to see that worms had not gotten into the 
 burned spot on the shoulder or hip. The brand mark 
 was sore for a week or so, but in about fifteen days 
 it would heal and peel off and give no further incon- 
 venience. At the same time as the branding of colts 
 progressed the yearlings and two-year-olds received 
 such attention as seemed necessary, and the herd was 
 looked over for any stock which for any reason it was 
 desired to hold out. By the end of April or middle 
 of May the horse rancher could tell what had been his 
 year's profits or losses in stock. 
 
 The loss of horses on the Southern ranges was 
 mainly from scarcity of water or through drought that 
 cut down the feed too closely. Some animals would 
 be bogged down and lost in that way. The "brand 
 blotters " and horse thieves would get a few, and the 
 wolves and cougars would get a few colts. Lastly, 
 the wild mustangs might run off a number of the herd. 
 A great many persons think that all Texas ponies were 
 " mustangs," and so call them, but the rancher made 
 a sharp distinction between his stock and these wild 
 horses of the plains. For years they made one of the 
 menaces of his industry, and did not all disappear from 
 the range until as late as 1878 or 1880. Indeed, even 
 in 1896 a few bands of mustangs were still running 
 in the Panhandle country of Texas. These are the 
 increase of a few individuals left from the old horse- 
 
THE COWBOY'S HORSE. 85 
 
 hunting days. The Southern rancher believed these 
 horses to be of a stock distinct from his own, and 
 thought they were descendants of the wild horses 
 which sprang from the horses turned loose upon the 
 plains by the Spanish Government. It is certain 
 that these were swifter and warier than the range 
 horses, for no cowboy could ever round up a band of 
 mustangs, no matter how hard he rode. The leader 
 of a band of these wild horses was always a stallion 
 of great cunning and speed, often of great size and 
 beauty. It was useless to try to trap the mustangs 
 in any way, and they seemed to have a preternatural 
 shrewdness at suspecting and foiling any effort made 
 for their inveiglement into the toils. Once a party 
 of cowmen worked all night to lay a corral fence 
 back in a mountain pass through which a band of these 
 wild horses were accustomed to run whenever they 
 were pursued. The next day they were started again, 
 and took their usual course till they came opposite the 
 mouth of the narrow pass, when without hesitation they 
 ran on by and did not enter the pass, thus breaking 
 a custom which they had invariably followed up to 
 that day, though the new corral was built far back 
 from their sight in the narrowest part of the pass. 
 These wild horses could not be run down by any 
 horses ever brought upon the range. They were some- 
 times " walked down " by parties of horse hunters a 
 wild, half-civilized breed of individuals, the fascination 
 of whose singular calling was something never shaken 
 off. These men would take turns in following a herd 
 of mustangs day and night for perhaps six or eight 
 days, allowing them not a moment's rest, until the 
 animals would become entirely worn out and could be 
 readily approached closely enough for roping. A few 
 of them were at times taken by the singular method 
 
86 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 known as " creasing/' which killed a dozen horses to 
 every one ever taken alive. The hunter who wished 
 to crease a wild horse stalked it as he would game until 
 close enough for a sure shot. He then sought to plant 
 a rifle ball through the cartilage of the top of the 
 neck, just above the spinal processes. Such a shot 
 could sometimes be made in such way that the horse 
 would fall to the earth stunned, but would afterward 
 recover and be uninjured; but in the great majority 
 of cases the horse was missed or killed outright. 
 
 At one time there was a celebrated white stallion in 
 charge of a band of mustangs which ranged near the 
 Big Thicket of the Blanco, and on this horse a certain 
 famous mustang hunter, a Mexican by name of Soyez, 
 had long set his heart. He sought many times to snare 
 or trap the creature, but could not do so, and at length 
 tried to crease it. Secreting himself in a tree near a 
 water hole where the band watered, Soyez waited until 
 his quarry came down to water, himself not scented 
 because he was above the ground and at a little distance 
 from the water. He aimed to strike the stallion just 
 upon the crest, but, "with Mexican skill, shot it instead 
 square through the head. Years afterward Soyez would 
 nearly weep when telling of his chagrin and sorrow 
 at this unfortunate ending of his quest. This stallion 
 was milk-white, except for a black forehead and black 
 ears. In the year 1856 there was another one of these 
 famous wild stallions which ranged in somewhat the 
 same country. This horse was a pacer, and could never 
 be urged into a gallop by any means. When pursued, 
 he would always forsake the main herd and strike off 
 by himself, taking up a gait which soon shook off 
 pursuit. He was a grand black horse, and was much 
 coveted by all the ranch men and their cowboys, and 
 very often these would make up hunts for him, taking 
 
THE COWBOY'S HORSE. 87 
 
 stands along his known runways. But though this 
 horse was chased for over ten miles by six mounted 
 men in turn, he was never turned and never reached 
 within roping distance by any rider. At length he was 
 chased so much that he forsook his range and went 
 over to a spot lower down on the Blanco. For two 
 years word came from that country that he was being 
 pursued by the cowmen of that country, but he was 
 never taken and at length seems to have disappeared 
 from the country altogether, perhaps at the hand of 
 another ambitious creaser. These wild mustangs often 
 ran off the stock of the ranch men, and even mules 
 sometimes joined these wild bands. The ranch men 
 hated the mustangs on this account, and were not averse 
 to the work of the horse hunters. At times choleric 
 cowboys who had pursued such a wild band of plains 
 horses dismounted and in wrath opened fire from their 
 rifles upon the fleeing herd, sometimes killing several 
 of the mustangs from no motive except that of wanton- 
 ness or anger. 
 
 These several perils of the horse range having 
 been evaded or overcome, the horse rancher finds him- 
 self, let us say, at the middle of the month of May with 
 several hundreds of horses on his hands. These are 
 not " mustangs," and not all " bronchos," and not all 
 pure-bred Texas stock. Some of them are pure Texas 
 or Spanish, and some are grades. All are wild as deer, 
 and every one of them will " pitch " as sure as that 
 he will breathe, for it is said that no horse was ever 
 born on Texas soil which would not buck at some 
 time or other of his career. The rancher sometimes 
 sold his saddle stock as it stood, untrained and un- 
 tamed, but the regular horse ranchers usually sold noth- 
 ing but broken horses, as they got a better price for 
 that class of stock. The process of breaking the young 
 
88 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 horses for the saddle occupied the great part of the 
 entire summer after the round-up and the branding, 
 and this branch of the work was one of the most pic- 
 turesque and exciting phases of life on the cattle range. 
 No better riders were ever turned out than those who 
 were raised on or near the horse ranches, for there the 
 business of riding wild horses went on for nearly half 
 the year. 
 
 The differentiation of the cattle trade has made 
 horse breaking a trade of itself in much of the cow 
 country, but at first the cowboys of each ranch usually 
 did the breaking for the ranch, with such help as 
 might come through the services of some neighbouring 
 rider of exceptional gifts at horse breaking. Such 
 specially gifted men gradually became a class of them- 
 selves, known all over the range as " broncho busters," 
 and they took to the hazardous trade of horse breaking 
 as a steady business, usually working under contract, 
 and "busting" horses at so much a head for all the 
 big ranches having unbroken stock on hand. The 
 name given this process of breaking is suggestive and 
 not inaccurate. A horse was considered " busted " after 
 he had been ridden two or three times under the hand 
 of iron and the heel of steel. Out of such an ordeal 
 the horse came with a temper perhaps ruined for life, 
 and with a permanent grudge against all things human. 
 It would really never be cured entirely of the habit of 
 bucking, and was never absolutely safe unless ridden 
 to the point of fatigue. Some of the best cow horses 
 on a ranch will always buck when first mounted after 
 a long rest, and some need a little preliminary train- 
 ing every time they are mounted. These animals prob- 
 ably had their first touch of the saddle at the fjontk 1 
 hands of the " buster," who got four or five dollars a 
 head for proving ocularly that such and such a horse 
 
THE COWBOY'S HOKSE. 89 
 
 could actually be mounted and ridden without death 
 to either horse or man. Sometimes the event was not 
 thus for either the horse or the man. Horses were at 
 times killed in the process of " busting," and very often 
 the " buster " himself was the victim. The most suc- 
 cessful of these men, who came of the hardiest and 
 most daring of the range riders, rarely lasted more than 
 a few years in the business. Sometimes their lungs 
 were torn loose by the violent jolting of the stiff-legged 
 bounds of the wild beasts they rode, and many busters 
 would spit blood after a few months at their calling. 
 Injury in the saddle at some stage of this wild riding 
 was almost a certainty, and falls were a matter of 
 course. A broken leg or arm was a light calamity, 
 accepted philosophically with the feeling that it might 
 have been much worse. The life of the soldier en- 
 gaged in actual war is far safer than that of the broncho 
 buster. There is no wilder or more exciting scene than 
 the first riding of one of these wild range horses. It 
 is a battle of man against brute, and of a quality to 
 make the heart of a novice stand still in terror. Yet 
 upon the range this is one of the necessities, and those 
 who engage in this business go about it methodically 
 and steadily, probably with no thought that they are 
 doing anything extraordinary, because they have never 
 done anything else. 
 
 Between the more modern methods, such as one 
 may see practised on Northern ranches to-day, and the 
 methods of the earlier Southern ranches there is some- 
 thing of a distinction. On a Northern horse ranch, 
 for instance, which sells sixty or eighty horses a year, 
 the breaking is commonly done by a " contract buster." 
 Perhaps thirty or forty horses are gathered in the big 
 corral and are turned one by one into the small round 
 corral, which has a snubbing post in the middle. Two 
 
90 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 or three men rope the horse by the fore feet and throw 
 him, using the snubbing post if necessary. He is then 
 quickly tied up and the " hackamore," which is pro- 
 vided with a blind already fastened to it, is put on his 
 head. The blind is now slipped down over the horse's 
 eyes, and he is allowed to stand up. The reins of the 
 hackamore are led back, and the saddle is put on and 
 cinched up. Sometimes the stirrups are tied together, 
 but usually not, the buster perhaps being too proud to 
 take advantage of this aid to easy riding, though it would 
 perhaps save him some fatigue or danger. The blind 
 is now lifted a little and the horse is led out, the blind 
 then being slipped down again. Now the buster comes 
 to the horse and mounts him, the beast usually stand- 
 ing quietly and cowering in its supposed helpless blind- 
 ness. Two other men, sometimes known in these days 
 of modern ranching as " hazers," now mount and ride 
 up with their quirts in hand ready to drive on the 
 horse that is to be broken. When all is ready the 
 buster leans forward from his seat, lifts the blind, and 
 sets whip and spur to the horse, the assistants mean- 
 time yelling, waving their hats, and pounding with 
 their quirts. The horse so beset is apt to be " bad " for 
 a time, but is likely to start away from sheer fright, 
 and as soon as he leads off the assistants leave him, and 
 the buster " rides it out/ 5 perhaps making a run of 
 two or three miles, and then gradually getting back to 
 the corral again. Here the horse is again blinded, and 
 his saddle and hackamore are taken off. He is then 
 turned into a separate corral, as a horse that has been 
 " ridden." Another horse is then prepared for the 
 buster. The latter may ride five or six horses in a 
 day, all of these operations of course being repeated 
 until each animal has been reduced to what seems near 
 enough to the Western idea of docility. 
 
THE COWBOY'S HORSE. 91 
 
 In the early days of ranching in the Southwest the 
 main ideas of horse breaking were much the same as 
 above described, but the methods employed varied in 
 some particulars. As those were the earliest days, they 
 are perhaps the most interesting, and offer the best field 
 for the examination of this essential phase of ranch 
 work. 
 
 Some of the early Southern busters were negroes, 
 and very good breakers they made. Many were Mexi- 
 cans, whose cruelty and roughness were practically cer- 
 tain to ruin the disposition of any horse, and who soon 
 came into disrepute with American ranchers. Others 
 were rough riders from the cowboy ranks, who had 
 been riders from their youth and feared no horse that 
 ever stood on earth. Many of them were graduated 
 from the horse ranches where cow horses were bred 
 and broken as a business. It is perhaps in such a 
 school that our foreman Jim learned his splendid horse- 
 manship, away back in the early days. In no calling 
 known to man shall we find more of rugged, stern, 
 and masterly quality demanded than was asked in this 
 original school of the cowboy. In no scene of civilized 
 life shall we find more vivid and animated interest and 
 action than made common features about the home 
 ranch at the time horse breaking was going on. 
 
 A horse ranch of average size would employ from 
 six to ten men for the summer breaking season, and 
 these would be busy from the middle of May till the 
 end of summer. It took about a week to break a horse, 
 and each breaker would usually handle two horses at 
 the same time, riding them a part of the day each. 
 After the first work was done, others might continue 
 the handling of the horse through several weeks more, 
 but about six days would usually fit a horse for the 
 saddle so that a good rider could ride it; and none but 
 
92 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 good riders had any business about the cow country. 
 For this sort of work the cowboys were usually paid 
 about twenty to forty dollars a month, according to their 
 value. Some Mexicans were employed, but they were not 
 so much valued. Of course, there were always some 
 of the young men about the ranch who were breaking 
 their own saddle horses for themselves. Such horses 
 were not run with the band, but usually kept up about 
 the house. It was a notorious fact that one of the 
 " pet horses " was sure to be about the worst case of 
 the lot when it came to riding it, especially if it had 
 been allowed to go late in life before it was ridden. 
 
 Any visitor to a cow ranch has seen the men at 
 work among the horse herd, and has noticed how 
 quickly a horse will stop as soon as it feels the rope 
 touch it, even though it may perhaps not be caught by 
 the noose at all. This submission to the magic of the 
 rope is a cardinal principle in that horse's ideas of 
 common sense. He bears deep within his mind the 
 early lessons of his youth. The wildest broncho is very 
 apt to cool down when he feels the iron grip of the 
 rope. The first lesson of the rope he receives, as above 
 mentioned, when a brawny cow puncher circles both 
 his fore legs with a noose of this dreaded rope, throws 
 him flat with a turn of the wrist, and hales him on his 
 side through the dust away from his mother's side to 
 the spot where the fiery iron is waiting. From that 
 instant the colt hates man and all his doing. He hates 
 the rope. He resolves that if ever he gets a fair chance 
 he will break that rope into a thousand fragments. 
 He is a couple of seasons older and bigger and stronger 
 when he is at length driven into the round pen some 
 fresh spring morning, so strong, he is sure, that he can 
 rend any rope. He breaks into a run about the wall 
 of the corral, but Jim, the lean and sinewy rider on 
 
THE COWBOY'S HORSE. 93 
 
 the older cow horse., follows, about his head curling al- 
 ways that unpleasant snakelike thing the pony remem- 
 bers and has hated from his babyhood. The rope comes 
 at him with a wide curling sweep, and, in spite of his 
 tossing and plunging, settles fair about his neck or 
 fore feet. It tightens with a jerk. The old horse which 
 Jim is riding stops in his stride and falls back, brac- 
 ing his fore legs firmly. The young wild horse which 
 was determined to break the rope finds himself upside 
 down, the rope perhaps choking the life out of him. 
 He has had lesson No. 2. 
 
 Jim, the cowpuncher and horse breaker, calmly 
 waits till the young horse's eyes nearly start out of his 
 head, and then signs to his assistants, who loosen the 
 rope just in time to save the pony's life. The latter is 
 furious at the indignity he has suffered, and as soon 
 as he can breathe begins to plunge and kick and rear, 
 throwing himself quite over in his struggles. Yet 
 quietly he is pulled up, pulled down, pulled along, 
 until he is ready for another lesson. 
 
 Upon the head of the horse now ready for break- 
 ing there is slipped a curious bitless bridle, or halter, 
 of strands of rope, very strong and capable of being 
 so arranged that too much pulling on it will close it 
 fast upon a pony's nose and make the act of breathing 
 difficult. This halter is called a "hackamore," and 
 of course it was the invention of the Spaniard. The 
 pony when put on the hackamore is staked out on the 
 open ground on a long " stake rope." He is left alone 
 for awhile here, and soon learns his next lesson. Re- 
 solved again in his heart to break this hated rope, 
 he runs full speed to the end of it, and there comes 
 to a halt with his heels high in the air and his neck 
 perhaps doubled under him. If his neck happens 
 to be broken it makes no difference, for there are 
 
94 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 other ponies just as good, plenty of them. If his 
 neck is not broken, he gets up and does it over again, 
 and perhaps again. Then he shakes his head and 
 thinks it over. His next act will be to get himself 
 tied up thoroughly in the coils of the rope, trip- 
 ping himself, throwing himself, and burning his heels 
 terribly on the harsh fibre of the rope. In this he is 
 allowed to follow his own sweet will, because he is 
 not intended to be used on Broadway, and a little skin 
 missing here or there constitutes no drawback for the 
 purposes of the range. The pony cuts and bruises 
 himself and falls down, and no doubt reviles and swears 
 in Spanish, but it does no good, except that ever there 
 grows in his mind a vast and vaster respect for this 
 relentless thing, this rope which has him fast. 
 
 And then Jim comes along after a while, with a rope 
 or blanket or something of the sort, and begins to whip 
 it over the back of the pony, driving the latter half 
 crazy with fright, for never has he had such a thing 
 near him before. The pony cringes and plunges, but 
 Jim lays a hard hand upon the hackamore and draws 
 him into submission and into a personal contact re- 
 sented with all the soul of the fiery little creature thus 
 robbed of his loved liberty. A second man comes up 
 on the other side of the pony and lays hands upon him. 
 In a twinkling a red kerchief is slipped across his face 
 and tied fast to the side strands of the hackamore. 
 Smitten with blindness, the pony cowers and is motion- 
 less and dumb. The end of the world for him has 
 come, for never in all his wild life did he ere this fail 
 to see the light of day or the half light of night, which 
 served him full as well. Surely, thinks the pony, all 
 now is over, and the end has come. He shrinks and 
 does not resist the hand laid upon his muzzle, the other 
 hand laid upon his ear, the twist given to his head, 
 
THE COWBOY'S HORSE. 95 
 
 the whipping of the blanket over and on his back, 
 touching him where never any object has touched be- 
 fore. But with a jerk he may perhaps throw off the 
 blinder of the handkerchief and begin instinctively 
 the wild stiff-legged bucking of his breed. " He's 
 shore bronch'," says Jim. " You'll have to hold his 
 head closter." Then the hackamore tightens again, 
 and the hands lay hold of the ears and the trembling 
 muzzle again, and and then, before the frightened 
 and frenzied pony has had time to dread or suspect 
 anything further, there comes a rattle and a creak, and 
 there falls with an awful thud and crash upon his 
 back a vast thing the like of which he had never 
 dreamed for himself, though he has seen it upon the 
 tamed slaves which aided in his own undoing. The 
 saddle has been thrown upon him. Unless closely 
 blindfolded, he promptly bucks it off again, wildly 
 kicking into the bargain, his head tossed high with 
 terror and hatred, his legs straining back from the 
 iron hands that hold him. 
 
 But the iron hands do not relax. They hold like 
 the hands of fate. The saddle is bucked off time and 
 again, a dozen times, but it comes back again with the 
 thud and crash, and someway it does not actually kill, 
 after all. The pony stops to think about it. Jim, who 
 has been waiting for this moment of thought, cau- 
 tiously reaches under the pony with a long crooked stick 
 to the girth that hangs upon the farther side. Slowly 
 and quietly he pulls this girth to him, talking to the 
 pony the while. Slowly and quietly he puts the end of 
 the girth through the iron ring or buckle. Then, quiet- 
 ly, slowly, Jim gets out to the end of the " cinch " 
 as far as he can, because he knows what is going 
 to happen. Commonly the girth of the breaking 
 saddle has a big buckle with a tongue which will 
 
96 THE STOIIY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 quickly engage in the holes punched through the girth. 
 Taking the cinch strap firmly in his hands, Jim gives a 
 sudden jerk backward and upward, and the pony feels 
 an awful grip of something tightened about his body 
 where never such a thing had been felt before. At once., 
 wild and demonlike in his rage and terror at such in- 
 dignities, he falls wildly to bucking again; but now 
 Jim is close up at his side, pulling the harder at the 
 cinch, which does not slip but holds its own. The men 
 at the pony's head swing down and twist his head 
 askew. The hackamore tightens, the saddle holds. 
 Tighter and tighter the girth goes, and at length the 
 trembling beast feels he must endure this also. Pant- 
 ing and red-eyed, courageous and full of fight still, 
 he braces his feet apart and stands so, trembling with 
 anger and shame. And Jim quietly pokes another 
 stick under and gets hold of another girth, the hind 
 cinch (" flank girth," it is called in the South), and soon 
 the pony feels upon his stomach the grip of this hairy, 
 hateful thing, which all his life he never ceases to re- 
 sent, because it cuts off his lung room and makes him 
 feel uncomfortable with its sinking into the soft part 
 of a pony's anatomy, which ought to be respected even 
 by a cowpuncher, but isn't. The pony rebels again 
 and viciously at this flank girth, but it does 110 good. 
 The great saddle stays with him. 
 
 And now Jim, with his eves gleaming a little and 
 his jaws set hard together, slips up to the side of the 
 panting pony, who stands with his head down, his 
 legs apart, his eyes bloodshot, flinging his head from 
 side to side now and again in a wild effort to break 
 away and win back that freedom for which his heart 
 is sobbing. Jim puts a cautious foot against the stir- 
 rup. The pony whirls away and glares at him. He 
 realizes now what is the purpose of these enemies. Jim 
 
THE COWBOY'S HORSE. 97 
 
 speaks in low and soothing tones to him, but calls him 
 perhaps by some such name as, " You d d black devil, 
 you hoi' on a minute, kain't ye? Whoa, bronch'I " 
 Again and again Jim seeks a place with his left foot. 
 He has now gathered up into a coil the long stake 
 rope, and this he holds in his left hand or ties with 
 a half turn at the saddle horn. He knows there may 
 be a severance of the personal relations of himself 
 and the pony, and if so the rope will be needed to re- 
 establish them. At last Jim makes a swift run, a bound 
 and a spring all in one. Before the pony knows how 
 it has happened he feels upon his back a horrible 
 crushing weight. He feels his side half crushed in 
 by the grip of a long pair of human legs. He feels his 
 head " turned loose." He hears a long keen yell from 
 a dozen throats about him, answered by a similar shrill 
 yell, not of fear but of confidence, above him from 
 this creature which is crushing down his back, break- 
 ing in his sides. All the hate, the terror, the rage, the 
 fear, the viciousness, the courage of this undaunted 
 wild beast now become blended into a mad, unreason- 
 ing rage. He has fought the wolves, this pony, and 
 is afraid of nothing. He will unseat this demon above 
 him, he will kill him as he did the wolves; he will 
 trample him into the dirt of the plains. Down goes 
 the pony's head and into the air he goes in a wild, 
 serio-comic series of spectacular stiff-legged antics. 
 His nose between his knees, he bounds from the ground 
 with all four feet, and comes down again with all legs 
 set and braced, only to go into the air again and again. 
 He " pitches a-plungin' >: that is, jumping forward as 
 he bucks, perhaps going six hundred yards before he 
 stops for lack of wind. Or he may stand his ground 
 and pitch. He may go -up and down, fore and aft, in 
 turn, or he may pitch first on one side and then the 
 
98 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 other, letting his shoulders alternately jerk up and 
 droop down almost to the ground a very nasty sort 
 of thing to sit through. He may spring clear up into 
 the air and come down headed in the direction oppo- 
 site to that he originally occupied, or he may " pitch 
 fence cornered," or in a zigzag line as he goes on, 
 bounding like a great ball from corner to corner of 
 his rail-fence course of flight. The face of Jim may 
 grow a little pale, his hand that pulls upon the hacka- 
 more may tremble a bit, and the arm that lashes the 
 pony with the quirt may be a little weary, but still his 
 legs hold their place, and his body, apparently loose 
 and swaying easily from the waist up, keeps upright 
 above the saddle. Jim knows this must be ridden 
 out. 
 
 The pony soon exhausts himself with his rage. 
 His breath comes short. He stops. The legs of the 
 rider relax a trifle, but the eye does not. With a re- 
 newal of the wild screams or " bawling " with which 
 he has punctuated his previous bucking performance 
 the pony springs forward again at speed. He stops 
 short with head down, expecting to throw the rider for- 
 ward from the saddle. The rider remains seated, per- 
 haps jarred and hurt, but still in the saddle. Then the 
 pony rears up on his hind feet. The cowpuncher 
 steps off with one foot, keenly watching to see whether 
 the broncho is going over backward or going to " come 
 down in front," and go on with his performance again. 
 If he goes on, the rider is in the saddle as soon as the 
 horse's feet are on the ground. If the pony throws 
 himself over backward, as very likely he will, the rider 
 does not get caught at least, not always caught but 
 slips from the saddle, jerking up the pony's head sharp- 
 ly from the ground. He quickly puts his foot on the 
 horn of the saddle, and there is the wild horse flat on 
 
THE COWBOY'S HORSE. 99 
 
 the ground and absolutely helpless, trussed up by the 
 bridle and held down by the foot at the saddle horn. 
 If the horse could get his head to the ground he would 
 have a leverage, and could break away and get up, but 
 Jim is careful that he shall not get his head down. 
 Meantime he " quirts him a-plenty/' He does not talk 
 soothingly now. He wants this pony to know that it 
 is better to keep his feet on the ground than to ac- 
 quire the habit of travelling on his back or on his hind 
 feet. At last Jim lets the pony up, and, much to the 
 surprise of the latter, the rider is someway again in 
 the saddle. 
 
 Now the pony stands quiet, stubborn, with his head 
 down, grunting at the stroke of the long rowelled spurs 
 which strike his sides. At once he bounds forward 
 again wildly, repeating his former devices at accom- 
 plishing the undoing of the rider, whom he now begins 
 to fear and dread as well as hate. The latter is im- 
 movable in purpose, relentless of hand and limb. All 
 this time he is riding without a bridle bit, depending 
 only on the hackamore, which allows the horse much 
 more freedom to show his repertory of feats than does 
 the savage Spanish bit. The pony in time grows weary, 
 and determines to vary its campaign by a Fabian 
 policy. Again he stops still, " sulling," his ears back, 
 out his legs braced stiffly. Jim is talking soothingly 
 to him now, for Jim is no cruel Greaser horse breaker, 
 after all, and has no vindictiveness for his mount, 
 whose breaking is purely an impersonal business mat- 
 ter to him. The pony at length slowly turns his head 
 around and bites with all his force straight into the leg 
 that grips him. The heavy " chaps " protect the leg, 
 and the spur strikes him upon the other side. He 
 turns his head to that side also and bites that leg, but 
 the same process occurs again. With a sullen fear eat- 
 
100 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 ing at his heart, the pony tries yet another trick. De- 
 liberately he drops to his knees and lies down quietly 
 upon his side, perhaps holding the rider a willing 
 prisoner fast hy the leg which lies under his body. 
 The rider need not be so caught unless he* likes, but it 
 is a superstition with Jim that the pony should never 
 unseat the rider nor loosen the grip of the legs on his 
 sides. Jim thinks that should he do this the matter 
 of breaking would be longer and less effective, so he 
 takes chances and holds his grip. Were the pony a big 
 " States " horse, his manoeuvre would be effective, and 
 the rider would be in a sad predicament; but this horse 
 weighs scarcely more than six hundred pounds, and 
 the big stirrup, perhaps tied to its fellow on the oppo- 
 site side, is under him, protecting the foot of the 
 rider, who is now stretched out at full length upon the 
 ground beside the horse. Moreover, the grass is up a 
 few inches in height perhaps, and all in all the leg is 
 able to stand the weight of the horse without being 
 crushed, there being no stone or stub to offer injury, 
 and so long as that is true the cowpuncher does not 
 worry about it. He lies and talks to the pony kindly, 
 and asks it how long it intends to stay there in that 
 way, suggests that it is about time for him to go home 
 for dinner, and that he has other work to do before the 
 day is over. If the pony be very stubborn, he may lie 
 so for several minutes, and Jim may take off his hat 
 and put it under his own head to make the ground 
 feel more comfortable. Both these wild creatures are 
 watchful and determined. It is a battle of waiting. 
 The pony is first to tire of it, for he does not clearly 
 know how much damage he is doing the cowpuncher's 
 leg, and would himself prefer to act rather than to wait. 
 With a snort and a swift bound he is up on his foot 
 and off, his spring jerking the rider's foot clear of the 
 
THE COWBOY'S HORSE. 
 
 stirrup. At last he has won! He has unseated this 
 clinging monster! He is free! 
 
 But almost as swift as the leap of the pony was 
 that of the rider. He has tight in his hand the long 
 stake rope, and with a flirt of the hand this unrolls. 
 With a quick spring Jim gets to one side of the horse, 
 for he knows that an " end pull " on the rope along 
 the line of the horse's back will be hard to stop, whereas 
 the matter is simpler if the rope makes an angle with 
 the horse's course. His gloved hand grasps the rope 
 and holds the end of it close against his right hip. His 
 left hand runs out along the rope. His left leg is ex- 
 tended and braced firmly on the ground, and with all 
 his weight he leans back on the rope until it is nearly 
 taut. Then, just at the instant when the rope is about 
 to tighten, he gives a swift rolling motion to it with 
 his whole strength, sending a coiling wave along it as 
 a boy does sometimes to a rope tied fast to a tree. This 
 indescribable and effective motion is magical. The 
 roll of the rope runs to the head of the pony just as 
 the cowpuncher settles back firmly on his heels. The 
 head of the horse comes down as though drawn by a 
 band of iron. His heels go into the air, and over he 
 comes, a very much surprised and chagrined cow pony. 
 He awakes and arises to find the iron hand again at his 
 head, the legs of steel again sitting him firmly. The 
 pony has not known that, by this skilled handling of 
 the stake rope at a time when a tenderfoot would be 
 jerked clean from his feet, the cowpuncher can " bust 
 wide open," as he calls it, the strongest pony on the 
 range, the twist giving five times the power of a straight 
 pull. 
 
 The heart of the pony fails at the shock of this 
 sudden fall. His head droops. His ears relax from 
 the side of his head where they have been tight tucked. 
 8 
 
102- TEE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 Through his red, bloodshot eyes the landscape swims 
 dully. He looks with a sob of regret at the wide sweep 
 of the prairie lying out beyond, at the shade of the 
 timber niottes on the horizon, at the companions of his 
 kind, who look toward him now with heads uplifted. 
 At last he begins to realize that he is a captive, that 
 freedom is for him no more, that he has met his master 
 in a creature stronger in will and in resource than him- 
 self. The cowpuncher urges him gently with his knee, 
 talking to him softly. " Come, bronch'," he says. 
 " It's 'bout dinner time. Let's go back to the ranch." 
 And the broncho, turning his head clear around at the 
 pull on the hackamore for he is not yet bridlewise 
 turns and goes back to the ranch, his head hanging 
 down. 
 
 The next day the pony has regained something of 
 his old wildness and self-confidence, but is not so bad 
 as he was at first, and the result is the same. Mean- 
 time he has been learning yet more about the lesson of 
 not " running against rope," and has cut his heels so 
 much that he is beginning to be more careful how he 
 plunges at the stake. The cowpuncher rides him at 
 times in this way for four days or so on the hacka- 
 more, and then puts on a light bridle bit, riding him 
 then a couple of days longer, gradually teaching the 
 use of the bit and bridle. Then the hackamore is taken 
 off, and the pony begins to learn that the best thing he 
 can do is to turn at the touch of the rein on the neck 
 and to stop at the instant the reins come up sharply. 
 In two weeks the pony is quite a saddle horse, though 
 it is well to watch him all the time, for he has a light- 
 ning estimation of the man about to ride him, will 
 know if the latter is afraid, and will take advantage of 
 his trepidation. All his life the pony will remember 
 how to pitch a bit at times, perhaps just for fun, be- 
 
THE COWBOY'S HORSE. 103 
 
 cause he " feels good/' perhaps for ugliness. All his 
 life he will hate a hind cinch, but all his life he will 
 remember the lesson about " going against rope/' and 
 will stop still when the rope touches him. Even if 
 very late in life he resumes a bit of friskiness and 
 evades the rope a little in the corral, the sight of an- 
 other horse jerked end over end is apt to bring him to 
 a sudden sense of what may happen, and he sobers 
 down very quickly. The writer recalls a big black 
 Spanish pony which was very bad on the stake, and had 
 learned some way of getting up his picket pin and run- 
 ning off, contriving to loosen the pin by side pulls first 
 on one side and then the other. One day he ran off in 
 this way with rope and pin dangling, and started at full 
 speed through a bit of timber. The jumping picket 
 pin, whipped about at the end of the rope, caught 
 about a tree with a sudden twist, and the horse got 
 one of the worst falls it was ever the fortune of cow 
 pony to experience, going into the air clear and com- 
 ing down on his back with all four feet up. He was a 
 dazed and repentant horse, and from that time on, in 
 the words of the cowpunchers, he was " plum tender 
 about rope." 
 
 In the breaking season on a horse ranch the edu- 
 cation of several ponies would be going at once, and 
 thus a half dozen breakers would in the course of the 
 summer break in a good number of horses. Sometimes 
 a few additional " busters " would be hired, these some- 
 times paid by the head say five dollars or so a head, 
 according to the time and locality. The close of the 
 season would see the horse ranch ready to sell off quite 
 a band of broken horses. These might go into the 
 "cavviejrard" (cdballada; sometimes corrupted also into 
 "cdvayer" or "cdv-a-yah") of some outfit bound up 
 the trail, or they might go to some other part of the 
 
104 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 cow range. Some of the breakers would be apt to go 
 up the trail a great ambition among cowpunchers in 
 the early days. Thus Jim was something of a traveller. 
 He saw many parts of the range, and became as ready 
 to settle in Wyoming as in New Mexico, in Montana 
 as the " Nations." But \vherever Jim went, no matter 
 upon what part of the range, his mount was some one 
 of these sturdy little wild horses of the range. This 
 horse would stick with the herd when the day herder 
 came out to drive in the bunch for the day's work. It 
 would pause in its bound and throw itself back on its 
 haunches when the rope tightened on the leg of a steer. 
 It would stand still as though tied if the cowpuncher 
 threw the reins down over its head and left them hang- 
 ing. It would stay in a flimsy rope corral made by 
 stretching a single rope from a wagon wheel to the 
 pommel of a saddle. It would comport itself with 
 some effort at common sense in a storm, though some- 
 times breaking out into the wildest and most uncon- 
 trollable of panics. A stampede of the horse herd was 
 far worse and harder to handle than a stampede of 
 cattle, and the very worst of all stampedes was that 
 of a band of old saddle horses. But gradually the 
 pony learned its trade, and forgot its former complete 
 freedom in the half freedom of the ranch work. It 
 learned to follow the herds of cattle with a vast touch 
 of superiority in its tone. It would plunge into the 
 mill of a round-up and follow like a bird each turn 
 of a running steer, cheerfully biting its thick hide at 
 every jump, and enjoying the fun as much as the rider. 
 It would travel hour after hour across the wavering 
 and superheated sands of the desert country, not com- 
 plaining about water, and willing to make its living 
 at night by picking at the short grass of the hard 
 ground in the summer, sometimes living on browse in 
 
THE COWBOY'S HORSE. 105 
 
 winter, and never, in the early days, even knowing a 
 taste of grain. (The Texas herds thafc came up in the 
 early days would at first nearly starve before they 
 would eat corn or oats). This cow horse never had a 
 grooming in all its life, and if touched by a curry- 
 comb would have kicked the groom to death in a mo- 
 ment and then broken down the corral. Its back was 
 sure to be sore, and its temper accordingly a trifle un- 
 certain, but it would go its journey and do its stint 
 and take what Nature gave it. Its rough rider had small 
 apparent love for it, but would occasionally slap its 
 side with a rough gesture of half regard after some 
 long ride when it stood, tucked up and steaming, pant- 
 ing with the fatigue of the work. No blanket ever 
 covered it after the hardest ride, and in winter it had 
 no shelter but what it could find for itself. Hardier 
 than a steer, and with more intelligence, it would live 
 where cattle would starve to death, pawing down 
 through the snow and getting food while the horned 
 herds were dropping of starvation all about it. 
 
 No cow horse ever attained to the dignity of a name 
 of its own, though it might for purposes of identifica- 
 tion be mentioned in some descriptive term, as the 
 " wall-eyed cayuse," the " star-face sorrel," the " white- 
 eyed claybank," the " Bar horse from Texas," etc. 
 Yet each cowpuncher of the ranch force would know 
 almost every horse belonging to the outfit, and if one 
 strayed could describe it to any one he met, and in 
 such fashion as would enable the other, if he were a 
 cowman himself, to identify it at once. This keen 
 observation was matter of habit on the range, and its 
 development was greatest among the old-time men of 
 the open ranges. 
 
 Without the American cow pony there could have 
 been no cattle industry, there could have been no cow- 
 
106 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 boy. Thus the horse was the most essential and valu- 
 able property of the cowman indeed, of any man who 
 faced the great distances of the plains. The cow range 
 was a horseback country. Men had few items of prop- 
 erty, and could carry little with them. What they had 
 they needed, and most of all they needed their means 
 of transportation. The horse thief was the criminal 
 most hated and despised in such a country, and his 
 punishment was always summary and swift. The horse 
 thief asked no mercy, for none was ever given. The 
 justice of the plains was stern. The hunting parties 
 who went out after a horse thief rarely came back with 
 him. Commonly there would be a grave report made 
 to the authorities that the prisoner had been taken, 
 but had unfortunately escaped. Mexicans at times 
 were enterprising horse thieves on the lower ranges. 
 One ranch party pursued and shot four such thieves 
 on one occasion, and threw their bodies up on top of 
 the chaparral; yet the report at the settlement was that 
 the prisoners had " escaped in the night from their 
 guards." One other party came in empty-handed, and 
 said their prisoner had " jumped over a bluff and re- 
 ceived fatal injuries." So he had, though two bullet 
 holes were found in his body by the coroner. A negro 
 horse thief was pursued at another time, and it was 
 declared that he had been " found drowned." This also 
 appeared to be true, but he was later discovered to have 
 stones tied about his neck and several bullet holes 
 through his body. Nothing but extreme youth could 
 serve as a defense for the man found guilty of stealing 
 horses. It was of no avail for him to attempt to palliate 
 or deny. It took the early cowmen a long time to be- 
 come patient enough to wait for legal conviction of such 
 a criminal, and the delays of the law seemed to thorn 
 wasteful and wrong. An old-time cowpuncher, speak- 
 
THE COWBOY'S HORSE. 107 
 
 ing of this feeling, voiced the general sentiment. 
 " Why, h 1," said he, " a horse thief ain't folks! " In 
 these summary trials of the plains it was very rare that 
 mistakes were made. The same cowpuncher, for the 
 time more confidential than his kind on such topics, 
 where reticence was usually permanent, admitted that 
 he was out on one round-up of a horse-thieving band 
 when fifteen men were hung. " An'," said he, with 
 conscious virtue in his tone, " we never did make but 
 one or two mistakes, an' them fellers ought to a-been 
 hung anyhow." 
 
 There comes to mind one such hunt for a horse 
 thief, though in this case the youth of the offender 
 saved his life. The writer was riding alone over 
 a part of the cattle range in the extreme West, some 
 thirty miles from a settlement, when he saw the dust 
 of an approaching vehicle. In those times and in that 
 country any such coming traveller was regarded with 
 interest, for it was never known what he might prove 
 to be. In this case it turned out to be nothing more 
 formidable than a fourteen-year-old boy, who was driv- 
 ing a jaded team hitched to a buckboard. The boy was 
 anxious and alert-looking, and held between his knees 
 as he drove a Winchester rifle, on which he kept one 
 hand in a manner familiar enough for one so young. 
 He drove steadily on, and of course was not suspected 
 of being anything more than a chance traveller in a 
 country where nothing that one did ever attracted 
 much attention. Some miles farther along, however, 
 at a point where the trail turned into the rough vol- 
 canic country known as the Mai Pais, there came gal- 
 loping into view a band of eight dusty and determined- 
 looking cowpunchers, who pulled up short and stopped 
 the traveller, asking what had been seen back farther on 
 the trail. The description of the outfit passed fitted 
 
108 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 their case exactly, and they said that the boy had 
 stolen the team from a ranch fifty miles away. The 
 men dismounted, loosened their saddle girths for a mo- 
 ment, and gave their animals chance to breathe, but 
 soon were in the saddle again, and sweeping on over the 
 hot flats on a long gallop. They caught the boy about 
 twelve miles farther on, where he had stopped for 
 food and water. He made a show of fight, but was 
 disarmed. Some were for hanging him, but the ma- 
 jority thought it was wrong to hang a " kid," so he 
 was set free. The cowpunchers brought back the 
 buckboard and team, leaving the ambitious youth at 
 last accounts on foot in the middle of the plains. His 
 youth had been a blessing to him. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MAKKS AND BKANDS. 
 
 LET us suppose that we have, so to speak, discov- 
 ered our cowboy, and have traced rudely the beginnings 
 of his occupation, that we have noted something of his 
 equipment and his adjuncts, and gained some partial 
 idea of his environments. It would seem, then, very 
 fit to inquire somewhat of the motives and methods of 
 the cowboy and his calling. If we have been in the least 
 just to this rude character, we shall have seen that the 
 foundation of his whole sense of morality is a love of 
 justice. In that one thought we have the key alike to 
 the motives of the cowboy and the methods of his trade. 
 Crude and loose as were those methods, their central 
 idea was the purpose of substantial justice, their ani- 
 mating and innate intent a firm respect for*the prop- 
 erty rights of one's fellow-man. Those rights, large 
 as they were and as indefinite, were held merely on the 
 tenure of a sign. 
 
 The sign of ownership on the cow range was as 
 potent as the iron bars of hoarded wealth in the set- 
 tlements. The respect for this sign was the whole 
 creed of the cattle trade. Without a fence, without a 
 bar, without an atom of actual control, the cattle man 
 held his property absolutely. It mingled with the 
 property of others, but it was never confused there- 
 with. It wandered a hundred miles from him, and he 
 
 109 
 
HO THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 knew not where it was, yet it was surely his and sure 
 to find him. To touch it was crime. To appropriate 
 it meant punishment. Common necessity made com- 
 mon custom, which became common law, which in 
 time became statutory law. But with each and every 
 step of this was mingled the first and abiding princi- 
 ple of the American cattle man the love of justice. 
 
 For the salient features of the cow trade we must 
 go far back into the past, and as usual search among 
 its beginnings in the Spanish Southwest. What, then, 
 must have been the problem which presented itself to 
 that old Spaniard, the first cowman of the West, as he 
 sat a half-wild horse in a country almost wild, and 
 looked out over herds of cattle wholly wild? He could 
 not feed these cattle, and he could not fence them. 
 They roamed free and uncontrolled, mingled with 
 herds from other parts of the country which were sup- 
 posed to belong to some other owner. How should 
 he establish the extent of his just claims as against 
 the just claims of his neighbour? Surely it must have 
 taken even the slow mind of the old Spaniard but a 
 moment to realize that he must find some means of 
 pinning upon each separate animal of all the thou- 
 sands hia own sign of ownership, so that it should not 
 be confused with the animals belonging to other men. 
 But how should this be done? This sign must be 
 something which would endure always, which neither 
 wind nor water would erase. How could such a thing 
 be compassed? Surely, reasoned this distant and mist- 
 enwrapped old Spaniard, this sign must be burned 
 deep into the hide of the creature itself! For the crea- 
 ture did not shed its hide. The mark burned there 
 would always remain. Had not the galleys of Europe 
 shown that? Had not the Inquisition taught it, and 
 the Incas proved it in their persons? Truly the ques- 
 
MARKS AND BRANDS. HI 
 
 tion was solved. On each animal there must be seared 
 this sign! 
 
 This was an idea which grounded itself upon jus- 
 tice that justice in this case perhaps tempered with 
 a respect for the knife and escopeta of one's neighbour. 
 At least, our early ranchman talked this over with his 
 neighbour, and thus they formed the first cattle men's 
 association of the range, and registered the first brands. 
 No doubt these primitive cowmen went at their busi- 
 ness in a loose and inefficient way. They drove into 
 the nearest corral all the cattle they could find, irre- 
 spective of age or sex, and, each agreeing upon what 
 should be called his own, they began tracing upon the 
 shrinking hides of the animals the first rude imagery 
 of ownership. No regular stamp for the branding im- 
 plement had been formulated. The only branding 
 iron was a straight bar of iron, whose end was heated 
 red hot in the fire and then used as a glowing pencil 
 with which to inscribe on the living flesh the agreed 
 emblem of title. It is not likely that the initials of 
 the owners were the first signs used, for the old dons 
 had so many initials and titles that the hide of an ordi- 
 nary steer would hardly have served to show them writ 
 large as their owners liked to see them. But that was 
 a day of crests and coronets and heraldic signs, as well 
 as a day of much religious fervour. The cross, the 
 sword, the lance these were things much in view in 
 that time, and perhaps they contributed of their sig- 
 nificance to these first totems of the trade. The circle, 
 the square, the triangle, the bar, the parallel lines all 
 these, too, were things simple and not easily to be 
 confused. Some of the old Spanish brands have hints 
 of some such origin. They were executed upon a large 
 scale, the expanse of hide seeming to invite large pat- 
 terns for their tracery. When imagination failed a 
 
112 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 ranchero in those days, he varied matters by a series of 
 unique cuttings of portions of the animal's anatomy. 
 Perhaps he cut off half an ear from each of his calves, 
 or cut an ear off on one side and made a deep V in 
 the other ear. Or he undercut one ear, or slit both 
 ears, or did many other ingenious embroideries in such 
 portions of the animal as offered him the best field for 
 operation. He might cut a wattle on a jaw, or slit the 
 dewlap so it hung down, etc. These marks were as 
 constant as the brands, and of course needed to be 
 done in the same regular fashion. They continue in 
 use upon the range to-day. Of course, as the country 
 grew older and more cattle came upon the range the 
 property of an increasing number of owners there 
 arose necessity for increasing variety in marks and 
 brands, each of which needed to be different from all 
 others, and yet simple and readily recognised under 
 the conditions of ranch life. To-day there are thou- 
 sands and thousands of such different brands. 
 
 For many generations the cattle of the prolific 
 Southwest ran free, each bearing on its hide the sign 
 of the man who owned it. That is to say, a part of the 
 cattle did, for in the loose methods of the early days 
 the rodeo was shiftless and imperfect, and many cattle 
 got through year after year unbranded. Such cattle 
 ran wild over the range, and belonged to nobody or 
 to anybody. There was no system of dividing them 
 out among owners. They were not enumerated or 
 estimated or taken into account. Each ranchero 
 branded cattle until he felt too weary to continue in 
 the work, and so left it to the saints to finish, or until 
 he had all the cattle he cared for. A cow was worth 
 no actual price, and such a thing as a market there 
 was not. The unbranded cattle increased in numbers for 
 many years. Of course, every one has heard of the enter- 
 
MARKS AND BRANDS. 113 
 
 prising Texan of the second quarter of this century, 
 by the name of Maverick, who made a business of 
 searching the range for such unbranded cattle and 
 putting his own brand on all such he found. Thus in 
 a few seasons he got together an enormous herd, and so 
 laid the foundation for a vast fortune. His example 
 was followed by many, and until a time long after the 
 civil war the " Maverick " supply was a prominent 
 source of profit in the cattle trade. Many a young 
 man owed his start in life and subsequent independ- 
 ence to this custom, which at the time was an allowable 
 and legitimate one; and there were large herds in 
 Texas and New Mexico which had their beginnings in 
 such operations. At the time of the opening of the 
 Northern ranges the Maverick industry was less profit- 
 able, but the question of unbranded cattle still re- 
 mained; for, of course, in the nature of things it was 
 impossible to collect every animal born upon the 
 plains, and so there ran at large the unestablished title 
 to a vast amount of wealth, whose consideration was 
 one demanding serious thought. 
 
 Yet another question came into the early problems 
 of the cattle trade. At times a man might wish to sell 
 some or all of his cattle. His son might wish to marry 
 and move away, or his son's wife might wish to bring 
 as dowry a few cows, or he might wish to pay his wife's 
 father a few cows for his daughter. How could such 
 change of ownership be indicated? Naturally, by the 
 addition of the receiver's personal brand. But then 
 some suspicious soul asked, How shall we know whence 
 such and such cows came, and how tell whether or not 
 this man did not steal them outright from his neigh- 
 bour's herd and put his own brand on them? Here 
 was the origin of the bill of sale, and also of the coun- 
 terbrand, or the " vent brand," as it is known on the 
 
114 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 upper ranges (probably through the corruption of the 
 word " vendor " or " vend "). The owner used his own 
 brand on another part of the animal, and this, in the 
 sign language of the range, meant, " I, owner of the 
 recorded brand of, say, Triple Cross, have sold this 
 animal, as see his hide, to the owner of the recorded 
 brand of, say, J. Bar A." The bill of sale corroborated 
 this unchanging record. It was a trifle unfortunate 
 for the animal if it chanced to be conveyed a great 
 many times. Some animals from the Spanish ranges in 
 the early cattle days were covered with a medley of 
 composite marks with which the fabled lawyer from 
 Philadelphia would certainly have been quite helpless. 
 
 Yet another use of the idea of marks and brands 
 came up at the time of the transfers of the great herds 
 from the South to the North at the time of the trails. 
 As it was very likely that such herds would suffer 
 much loss on the way from straying or stampeding or 
 theft, it was customary to " road brand " each animal 
 of such a herd, this brand being the sign of ownership 
 en route. This brand saved many cattle to the drovers, 
 as there were certain men who made a business of look- 
 ing up 'missing cattle and returning them for a per 
 capita consideration to their owners. 
 
 Such were some of the more obvious and simple 
 forms of the necessities and uses of marks and brands. 
 Almost without further investigation one could pre- 
 dict the method and the system of the trade, and see 
 how efficient though rude must be such methods, how 
 just the results obtained by them under the wild sur- 
 roundings of an unsettled region. One could predict 
 also something of the character of the cowboy. Of all 
 the methods of the cattle industry and of its dominat- 
 ing intention of justice the cowboy was the active 
 agent. He lived his life in a high and not ignoble 
 
MARKS AND BRANDS. 115 
 
 atmosphere, and he learned a creed whose first tenet 
 was the rugged spirit of fair play. The natural off- 
 spring of such surroundings was a normal and manly 
 nature, too bold for craft, too strong for a thing dis- 
 honourable. Popular opinion, formed upon impres- 
 sions entirely erroneous in the first place, clings to the 
 belief that the chief characteristics of the cowboy were 
 his " toughness " and lawlessness. Those who knew 
 him were aware that his chief trait was his honesty. 
 
 But if we set so high a standard for our cow- 
 puncher one which is certainly not too high let us 
 not be deluded into the belief that the calling trans- 
 muted into metal of equal value all the material that 
 came under it. At the very hour that the American 
 cowboy first rode upon the stage of history there rode 
 behind him a man almost his counterpart in the rugged 
 qualities of the physical man, and like to him in every 
 way except in moral manhood. As the cowboy was the 
 guardian of herds, so was this slinking shadow their 
 menace and their enemy. The advent of the cattle 
 thief was simultaneous with that of the cowboy. We 
 shall need to see how the system of marks and brands 
 was concerned with the operations of this dishonest 
 man. 
 
 It is very easy to see how temptation was offered to 
 the cow thief and "brand blotter." Here were all 
 these wild cattle running loose over the country. The 
 imprint of a hot iron on a hide made the creature the 
 property of the brander, provided no one else had 
 branded it before. The time of priority was matter 
 of proof. With the handy " running iron," or straight 
 rod, which was always attached to his saddle when he 
 rode out, could not the cow thief erase a former brand 
 and put over it one of his own? Could he not, for in- 
 stance, change a U into an 0, or a V into a diamond, 
 
116 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 or a half circle into a circle? Could he not, moreover, 
 kill and skin an animal and sell the beef as his own? 
 Between him and the owner was only this little mark. 
 Between him and changing this mark was nothing 
 but his own moral principles. The range was very 
 wide. Hardly a figure would show on that unwinking 
 horizon all day long. And what was a heifer here or 
 there? 
 
 The cow thief was a danger to the interests of all 
 cattle men, and the existence of a common danger sug- 
 gested the idea of mutual organization against it. The 
 cattle men's associations were a necessity, and so came 
 early into life. To-day every State and Territory where 
 there are considerable cattle interests has such an 
 association, and all these are again united in a national 
 association. These organizations are a power in the 
 land, and have had very much to do with the develop- 
 ment and expansion of the cattle trade. They enforce 
 the laws bearing upon this industry, and they have 
 secured the enactment of many salutary measures 
 which stand upon the statute books of a dozen differ- 
 ent States. Thus a State may make it compulsory for 
 any butcher to produce upon demand the hide of any 
 animal he has butchered, and this hide must show the 
 brand mark, and he must be able to explain how he 
 came in possession of the animal. Always this little 
 mark of ownership is held the " best possible evidence " 
 that the law demands in any case at bar. Altering 
 brands was early made a very serious offence, and the 
 occupation of a brand blotter was a risky one. 
 
 Early in the history of the complexity of range 
 brands it became customary for each ranch to have its 
 branding irons made of a fixed stamp or pattern, the 
 brand being a stencil or stamp rather than a pencil 
 or pen for writing upon the hide. This was at first 
 
MARKS AND BRANDS. 117 
 
 a matter of convenience, but in time became in some 
 States a matter of law. Texas in the ? 70's passed an 
 act forbidding the use of the " running iron " in brand- 
 ing. The ranchman who had acquired by purchase 
 several brands beside his own original registered brand, 
 and who was in the habit of writing his brands with 
 the single iron as occasion required, was forced to 
 carry with him to his work a separate iron for each 
 brand. This, of course, was a blow aimed at the brand 
 blotter, whose innocent single iron would tell no tales 
 if he were caught out riding across the range. The 
 law made an object of suspicion the man found with 
 the single running iron. He was obliged to explain, 
 and that sometimes before a very urgent jury. To 
 protect their brands and regulate the handling of the 
 increase, the ranchers of the different portions of the 
 range very early saw the necessity for the organization 
 of their protective associations. The by-laws of one 
 of these great bodies (the Montana Stock Growers' 
 Association) will serve to show the purposes of all. 
 Section 2 of the by-laws reads: 
 
 " The object of this association is to advance the 
 interests of the stock growers in Montana and adjoin- 
 ing States and Territories,, and for the protection of 
 the same against frauds and swindlers, and to prevent 
 the stealing, taking, and driving away of cattle, horses, 
 mules, and asses from the rightful owners thereof, and 
 to enforce the Stock Laws of the State of Montana." 
 
 Reference to the Brand Book of this association 
 shows that the State board of stock commissioners 
 numbers sixteen men; that the State association has, 
 besides its regular officers, an executive committee of 
 forty-two men; that its membership numbers nearly 
 two hundred; that the different brands registered by 
 owners of the association run fairly into the thousands; 
 
118 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 for hardly any ranch exists which does not own cattle 
 bearing marks and brands very dissimilar in their na- 
 ture. A range covered by a given rancher's cattle may 
 have upon it a great many cattle strayed in from other 
 ranges, which mingle their brands with those owned 
 by the ranch through purchase. Very curious and in- 
 teresting indeed are the pages of such a " brand book " 
 of a cattle association. A page taken at random from 
 the book of the Montana association shows thirty-five 
 different brands besides the home brand of the owner 
 and his " vent " or selling brand. Each of these brands 
 is registered, and each must come into account in the 
 cattle trade along with those of the many other cattle 
 men of the State. Is it not easy to see to what extent 
 has run the idea of the old Spaniard who first con- 
 ceived the notion of writing his totem on the hide of 
 his cows? Moreover for we are concerned not so 
 much with the cattle trade as with the cowboy who 
 conducts that trade is it not easy to see what intelli- 
 gence and skill such a calling demands of any man? 
 The brands of a single ranch would confuse utterly the 
 eye of a tenderfoot; but the foreman Jim, or nearly any 
 man under him, will in his riding over the range un- 
 consciously record upon his mind the brand of almost 
 every animal within his vision, and that at a distance 
 which to the unpractised eye would be impossible. He 
 will note the presence of a strange brand upon some 
 animal, and will note that yet another is carrying no 
 brand at all. 
 
 This last animal which Jim finds in the category of 
 those met in his daily review, this Maverick of the 
 range, still remains an interesting element in the co\v 
 industry. At an earlier day on all the ranges it was 
 customary for any man who liked to rope and brand 
 such animals found wild and unmarked on the open 
 
MARKS AND BRANDS. 119 
 
 range. Then it became customary to brand only such 
 as were found on that country so circumscribed as to 
 be called the individual range of such certain owner. 
 For instance, in the waterless Southwest, the cattle 
 were limited in their feeding habits by the necessity 
 of going to water. The water of one ranch held its 
 own cattle pretty well distinguished from those of an- 
 other. At times the round-up in such a country was 
 a very loose affair, perhaps only one or two owners par- 
 ticipating in it. In such a country, if in the spring 
 or summer after the round-up a calf was found carry- 
 ing no brand, it was branded forthwith by the man 
 finding it on his range. The question of drifts and 
 strays was not then so important as it has since be- 
 come, and the sharp-eyed cowboy who saw an un- 
 branded animal on the range of his ranch took it for 
 granted without investigation that it was the descend- 
 ant of one of his employer's cows. This might or 
 might not be just, but it was the nearest approach 
 to justice under the obtaining conditions. As the 
 conditions changed with the advent of additional num- 
 bers of cattle owners upon the range, so also the de- 
 mands of abstract justice changed. Thus it is to-day 
 the custom in a round-up district say, of the State of 
 Montana to offer at sale in public auction all the 
 Mavericks that may be found in the round-up. These 
 are bid upon and sold at so much .a head before the 
 round-up, no one, of course, knowing how many head 
 there will be. The amount of money thus obtained is 
 distributed pro rata among the cattle owners, the sole 
 idea being, as we have above suggested, the intention 
 to be just to all. This is thought to be fairer than 
 to allow each man to hunt up his own Mavericks. Dili- 
 gence in the Maverick industry is no longer a desirable 
 trait in the cattle country. On the contrary, it is some- 
 
120 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 thing regarded with much suspicion and watchfulness, 
 and has led to the stretching of many necks as well as 
 many pocketbooks. The " rustler " may brand upon 
 the range, but in many parts of the cattle country 
 to-day the associations ask every one else to do his 
 branding in the presence of his associates in business; 
 this rule subject to local variations. 
 
 Thus we see that the old Spaniard's idea has trav- 
 elled very far in its widened applications and its ex- 
 tension of usefulness. Indeed, it goes yet further in 
 its bearings upon the trade. As the brand is lifelong 
 in its nature, so is it lifelong in its usefulness. The 
 beginning of an animal's life is upon the range; its 
 end is in the markets of the East, in the stock yards of 
 the great cities. At each great live-stock market 
 such as Chicago, Kansas City, Omaha, etc. each cattle 
 association of the States and Territories where range 
 cattle are shipped now has a special officer, known as a 
 brand inspector, who has such help as he needs in his 
 work. Whenever a car load of ranch cattle comes into 
 the market, it is viewed by the proper inspector, who 
 examines the cattle to see if they are branded in uni- 
 form manner. Suppose the brand of the shipper is 
 IXL, and that among these IXL cattle there are found 
 two steers branded AXL. The inspector at once asks 
 where the latter came from, and if the shipper can 
 not explain at once how they came to be with his cattle, 
 he is subjected to rigid examination, which may lead 
 to his prompt arrest by the inspector. Unless satis- 
 factory answers can be made to such questions, the 
 suspected animals are taken away from the rest of the 
 shipment and sold by the inspectors. The money 
 from such sale is sent at once, not to the owner of the 
 IXL cattle, but in due routine to the owner of the 
 AXL brand. The whereabouts of the latter is very 
 
MARKS AND BRANDS. 121 
 
 likely easily discovered by reference to the State Brand 
 Book; but if he can not be found, and no representa- 
 tive secured to accept this money sent him from the 
 inspector, the proceeds are finally given to the treas- 
 urer of the State association, to be applied to the good 
 of the whole cattle industry of the State. Here again 
 is a very powerful example of the idea of justice, and a 
 very good instance of the fact that the old Spaniard 
 builded far better than he knew. 
 
 The cattle trade with all its ramifications has never 
 gone, and can never get any further than the possibilities 
 of the old Spaniard's marks and brands. These tokens 
 of ownership remain to-day the expression of a senti- 
 ment of integrity and of a wish for common justice. 
 The outdwellers of the plains have as high a standard 
 of commercial honour as obtains in the most intricate 
 banking system of the cities. Not Wall Street nor 
 the Board of Trade ever inculcated principles more 
 rigid or of more worth. But, as a house is no better 
 than its servants, and as no law is stronger than its 
 executive measures, so is the cattle trade no better 
 than the cowboy. He is its head executive and its 
 working manager, and upon his personal qualities of 
 hardihood and honourableness depends the success of 
 every venture in the wild unfettered business of the 
 range. It is the cowpuncher who first brands the calf 
 when it becomes the property of his ranch. He is 
 perhaps foreman of the ranch which raises it. He may 
 pull it out of the bog hole where it would perish. He 
 may protect it against theft. He may drive it to a 
 range where it can better live. He is perhaps captain 
 of the round-up which " throws it over " to its proper 
 range if it has strayed. He may assist on the drive 
 which takes it to the market after the beef round-up, 
 or he may even go with it to the distant city. The 
 
122 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 very brand inspector who examines it there as the rules 
 of justice require is certainly no man who got his place 
 through political preferment, but is some old cowboy, 
 trained by long years of experience to catch quickly 
 the brand upon any living creature. He practises 
 his trade here in the cattle pens of the city, but he 
 learned it out there on the range, where the earth was 
 very wide and gray, and where the sky was very wide 
 and blue, bending over him with even arch on each 
 hand alike, as wide and as blue for one man as for 
 another. 
 
CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 FREE GRASS AND WATER FRONTS. 
 
 FORTUNATE indeed must have been our ancient 
 ranchero, the first cowman of the West. Before him 
 lay an untouched world, vast, vague, and inviting. 
 What must have been to him the whispers that came 
 across the plains? Did the spirits say nothing to him 
 of the mysterious, the unexplored? Did no wild bird, 
 winging high over this calm and smiling country, 
 carry to him some hint of that which lay beyond ? Was 
 there not some voice whispering in the grasses telling 
 him of things yet to be? Did there not come to him 
 out of that vague, alluring, compelling Unknown some 
 unseen, shadowy, irresistible beckoning? We know of 
 the tasks of those first travellers, but what do we know 
 of their impulses? Perhaps they dared go forward be- 
 cause they dared not do otherwise. 
 
 To the imagination of the old Spaniard this un- 
 known country was not a land of cattle, but a land of 
 gold. His thought was always upon gold, and all else 
 was incidental. He looked out over the range of these 
 " cattle of deformed aspect," as Coronado called the 
 buffalo, and he figured to himself that somewhere out 
 in that vast wind-swept solitude there must lie the 
 fabled Seven Cities of Cibola, whose streets were of 
 solid gold, and whose edifices were all builded in that 
 same precious metal. Coronado bold soul! had this 
 
 123 
 
124: THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 thought ever in his mind as he pressed on in his march 
 from Mexico to the Missouri River, the first man to 
 cross the American cattle plains. Always he thought 
 to see the towers arise beyond, out there in the blue 
 and gray horizon. Nay, in his dreams by night he 
 must have seen these cities. In his dreams by day he 
 must have seen them, rising, beckoning, eluding, evad- 
 ing, the wraith of his cherished hope. On and on, far 
 across the red mesas of New Mexico, across the white 
 flats of Texas, the gray plains of Kansas, he pressed, 
 until he stood at the banks of the great Missouri, 
 boundary to-day of the cattle range, a disappointed but 
 still believing man. He turned back he and all his 
 men on foot and crossed the great range again on 
 his return to Mexico, seeing many thousands of these 
 cattle of " deformed aspect," but not finding the cities 
 of Cibola. Yet behind him, as they had been before 
 him, there arose and danced on the air, waving, beckon- 
 ing, these cities of gold. To their beckoning have come 
 since then the thousands of the world. The gold that 
 built their structures lay under Coronado's feet as he 
 walked those many weary leagues, this glorious and 
 still remembered soldier of another day. 
 
 All the gold of the cattle range lay before the first 
 ranchero, all the untouched resources of an empire. 
 All the range was " free grass " then, and the Spaniard 
 grumbled because it was not all free gold. Alas! for 
 those days, and ah! for one more country anywhere 
 upon this globe which shall for one moment compare 
 with that West which lay before the first cowman on 
 the range! 
 
 For a century or two it was still free grass. Since 
 all the earth lay open to everybody, what need to fence 
 a portion of it? If a neighbour came from a hundred 
 miles away, was he not welcome? His cattle would 
 
FREE GRASS AND WATER FRONTS. 125 
 
 not come so far, but would stay nearer to the range 
 where they were born. But after a time there began 
 to be more people and more cattle. Some strong- 
 legged hidalgo, who had walked a thousand leagues or 
 so and made some hundreds of Indian converts by the 
 simple process of cutting oft' their heads, had for this 
 high service to the Crown and Church gift made to 
 him of some great grant of land. The sovereign grant- 
 ing this land to his beloved subject had no idea where 
 it was, and neither had the subject. He came to 
 America with a parchment entitling him to enter into 
 possession of so many miles of land, beginning at a 
 stone and running to a tree, and this was description 
 good enough so long as no one cared. The hidalgo 
 was pretty sure to locate his grant upon the best water 
 he could find, for in that dry and desert country water 
 was something of the most constant concern. The man 
 who went on a journey took with him certain skins of 
 water, lest he should find none on the way. A little 
 rio, a living spring, a tank that never failed these were 
 the things which determined the locations of haciendas 
 and of towns. The families which were later to be 
 the great and wealthy ones were those lucky enough 
 to get in upon the shores of some large river such as 
 the Rio Grande. Less fortunate was he who had but 
 a tiny spring which flowed a feeble rivulet over the 
 thirsty soil. 
 
 There came a time when the cattle of some adjoin- 
 ing rancho trampled the spring of some old ranchero, 
 who in wrath laid down a few crooked cedar boughs 
 about the spring, and thus built the first fence upon 
 the range. As this old ranchero had his sheepskin 
 grant, and as he, moreover, perhaps had a body of men 
 trained and paid to fight for him, he was no doubt 
 allowed to leave his fence as he had placed it, and the 
 
126 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 cattle went elsewhere to drink. Their owner in turn 
 fenced off for himself a bit of water, building a fine 
 large fence of cedar limbs, bound well together with 
 strips of rawhide. And so this went on, generation 
 after generation, each generation needing more range 
 and more water, though still the generous West had 
 enough for all. 
 
 There was abundance of grass for all, but the water 
 was startlingly and disproportionately scanty. Yet if 
 a man kept his title legally or by force of arms to the 
 water he had fenced, what was to be done? The cattle 
 could go only so far to drink, and if the owner of a 
 water front wanted all the water for himself, there was 
 no way to settle it but to buy him out, kill him, or 
 marry into his family all of which methods were 
 popular, and each of which had especial merits of its 
 own. Water front thus came to be the one desired 
 thing in the cattle trade of the dry Southwest. In 
 brief, the grass was free, but the "Water was not free. 
 The result was that the man who owned the water had 
 all outdoors for his range, and needed to pay not a 
 dollar for any land outside that along the water. No 
 one wanted this outside land. Any one could settle 
 upon it who liked, but it was very sure no one would 
 like. 
 
 Perhaps there was a daughter of some ranchero's 
 family who owned a mile of water front and a heart 
 susceptible to the charms of the robust Albericano. 
 Some wandering teamster, perhaps a deserter from one 
 army or other in the civil war, drifted in across this 
 country, met and wooed and married the senorita, and 
 so after a fashion got control of the water front. Per- 
 haps the teamster sold out after a while to some ranch 
 agent, giving at least a quit-claim deed to his shadowy 
 rights, and moved off across the country again, prob- 
 
FREE GRASS AND WATER FRONTS. 127 
 
 ably to marry some other senorita at some other place. 
 Then perhaps the ranch agent hired some cowboy or 
 some one else who was not very busy just then to 
 " file on a quarter " on some other water at another 
 place, he making his claim under the Desert Lands Act, 
 or the Mineral Lands Act, or the Homestead Act, or 
 any other act upon which there could be hung a lawsuit 
 or a fight. Since the only opposing title was perhaps 
 one dating back into the impenetrable haze of some 
 Spanish land grant, and since it was very far to the city 
 of Washington, and since, moreover, it was a weary 
 country, where no one cared very much what any one 
 else was doing, the affair was probably concluded pleas- 
 antly all around, with not more funerals than seemed 
 absolutely necessary. Thus the land agent got control 
 of several " pieces of water," no one knowing or caring 
 who owned the land. Then, if this were in the palmy 
 days of the trade, the agent very likely went to Eu- 
 rope and sold out all the land lying between these 
 pieces of water which he owned and which he did 
 not own, Government land and all, fraudulent home- 
 stead or desert or mineral land entries included, to 
 whatsoever customer he could find. It was not diffi- 
 cult to find a buyer in those days, for Europeans had 
 no knowledge of this country, and were wild at the 
 stories of the profits of the cattle trade, than which 
 nothing ever did figure out more handsomely upon 
 paper. Sometimes the land agent had a map of his 
 country nicely executed. It is of record that one of 
 the most successful of these ranch agents took over 
 to Holland with him a finely drawn map of a tract of 
 land in New Mexico, showing many rivers no one else 
 had ever found, and displaying steamboats, with pretty 
 clouds of smoke rolling from their smokestacks, navi- 
 gating the waters of the upper Pecos, where really a 
 
128 THE STORY OP THE COWBOY. 
 
 man could wade comfortably for mountain trout. Yet 
 this map did its work, and made the man his fortune. 
 Some time after he had departed, the Holland syndi- 
 cate bethought itself to send over a representative to 
 look into this land of steamboats. This representative 
 assured them that they ought certainly to have their 
 money back, for no steamboats could be found. It 
 was too late then, however. The jovial inhabitants 
 laughed merrily at the protests of the foreign custom- 
 ers for a cattle ranch, nor has explanation ever been 
 forthcoming for the absence of the steamboats on the 
 Pecos. A wealthy Englishman or English syndicate 
 was a favourite customer for such a tract of land, and 
 history hath not yet recorded all the frauds that were 
 perpetrated upon foreigners under the name of ranch 
 property in the sunny and calm Southwest. In these 
 operations there were so many crimes committed 
 against the United States land laws that early in the 
 '80's inspectors were sent down by the Government, 
 who looked into matters and uncovered a very pretty 
 kettle of fish. 
 
 In other portions of the Southern country where 
 also the soil was dry and valueless, vast bodies of land 
 held under various individual or State titles were upon 
 the market at a price of not more than a few cents an 
 acre. Fifteen cents an acre was long thought to be 
 an exorbitant price for land which has since then sold 
 for many dollars an acre. Many men thus got control 
 of large bodies of land by actual purchase. Many 
 leased or bought large tracts of school lands or rail- 
 road lands, perhaps leasing every alternate section of 
 the land. This latter tenure usually seemed sufficient 
 to warrant fencing in the entire tract upon which the 
 alternate sections lay, this keeping out other parties 
 who did not know just what was the description of 
 
FREE GRASS AND WATER FRONTS. 129 
 
 the land. Limits and bounds were more elastic in 
 those days than they are now, for the country seemed 
 unspeakably large and inexhaustible. Numbers of 
 alien landholders went into the State of Texas under 
 ranch titles such as the above. In time there came to 
 be trouble over ranch titles in that State, just as there 
 has been trouble in every State where the loose nature 
 of such titles has finally been discovered. Meantime 
 the farming element came steadily on in Texas, and 
 now that State is free grass no more, and the rancher 
 must there control his holdings under some process 
 of law. 
 
 In the Indian Nations, to follow the course of the 
 ranch to the North, the cattle men did not have free 
 grass, but made very desirable leases of large tracts of 
 land of the Indians, often gaining extremely valuable 
 privileges at a nominal cost. Later these privileges 
 were much curtailed by the Government. The Kiowas 
 and Comanches leased their own land direct to the 
 cattle men. In the case of the Cherokees and Creeks 
 the leases had to run to the United States Govern- 
 ment, the usual form being a per capita tax upon all 
 cattle pastured upon the tribal lands. But as this tax 
 was sometimes estimated upon the cattle actually 
 shipped, and not upon those actually ranged, the 
 sophisticated ranchmen were able to stand the hard- 
 ship. The " ten-mile strip " on the upper part of these 
 lands, adjoining the State of Kansas, was parceled out 
 into lots of perhaps ten by twenty miles, and leased 
 to cattle men, who fenced it, charging up the cost of 
 the fencing against their lease payments, and leaving 
 the Indians owners of the fences, as they desired to 
 be; for they did not want their own cattle running 
 over the farms of the Kansas grangers. All the moneys 
 of the ten-mile strip leases were applied to the joint 
 
130 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 revenue of the tribes. The cattle men of the Nations 
 have their ranges under fence, so that the old forms 
 of cattle growing are there much changed, the business 
 being more like a vast farming operation. Under such 
 conditions all the features of round-ups, the question 
 of Mavericks, etc., are much simplified. Yet the ten- 
 ure of the ranch holdings in the Nations is a more or 
 less uncertain thing, held in some sections only from 
 year to year, and subject to the watchfulness of the 
 authorities at Washington. There is no free grass in 
 that country now. 
 
 In Kansas there is a herd law, under which the 
 farmer does not fence his land, but which compels the 
 cattle man to pay for any damage done by his cattle 
 to the crops of the farmer. Naturally the cowman 
 does not love a State where they " turn out their farms 
 and fence up their cows," as the cattle man expresses it. 
 This State is now largely given up to farming, though 
 at the time of the great drives it had large tracts of 
 free grass. Ten years after the drives the settlers had 
 flooded all over the Government lands and left little 
 open ground. Since that time many of the home- 
 steads of the dry southwestern parts of the State have 
 been abandoned, and there are some cattle ranging 
 there without objection, though there is little left to 
 appeal to a large operator. 
 
 In Nebraska the same herd law exists. This State 
 was also long ago tested as a farming region, yet there 
 remain some tracts of wild land in the western part 
 of the State, where a great many cattle are ranged. 
 Some ranchers there hold large bodies of school lands 
 under lease. These are fenced, and it is very possible 
 that there may bo included in these fences some lands 
 not included in the leases. The Western cowman has 
 always had a naive way of believing that everybody 
 
FREE GRASS AND WATER FRONTS. 131 
 
 wished to give him the benefit of all the doubts in the 
 matter of range limits. 
 
 In Colorado we come again upon the dry country 
 similar to that of New Mexico, where the question of 
 water fronts first came up. There is free grass in 
 Colorado, but much of it is free upon country which is 
 of no use without water, and the best of the water was 
 taken up long ago. Here, as also to a great extent 
 in Texas, the cattle depend upon water raised from 
 artesian or other wells by windmills. The best of the 
 natural water of Colorado is fenced and used for irri- 
 gating purposes. In this we meet still another factor 
 of great moment in the cattle questions of the day. 
 The tendency of a country where crops can be raised 
 by irrigation is toward small holdings, and this is, of 
 course, contrary to the spirit of the cow trade. Yet 
 there are many large tracts of land in Colorado which 
 are leased or owned by cattle men. 
 
 Both North and South Dakota have herd laws simi- 
 lar to those of Kansas and Nebraska. Yet there are 
 vast tracts of " bad lands " in the Dakotas which will 
 never be farmed, and where the hopes of the cattle 
 man for undisturbed range may nourish, subject only to 
 the constant fear of the depasturage of the range from 
 too great numbers of the cattle. There are bodies of 
 Government and railroad lands in these States which 
 are leased by cattle men, and in the wilder parts of 
 the country the grass is free or practically free for the 
 small rancher, though technically under the herd law. 
 The herd law, of course, has no terrors for the man 
 who has no neighbours. 
 
 "Wyoming is now the greatest or second greatest of 
 the cattle States. There is free grass in Wyoming and 
 no herd law, and much of the land is so high, dry, and 
 broken in its nature that the farmer will never trouble 
 
132 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 the cowman, who will continue to be as he is now the 
 controlling citizen of the commonwealth, the enor- 
 mous cattle industry overruling all others. It is for- 
 bidden by State law to fence in any of the public lands 
 of Wyoming, though certain descriptions of lands may 
 be bought or leased of the State and then fenced. Of 
 course the homesteader may fence his little holding 
 if he likes. The small farmer has made his appearance 
 in Wyoming, and will be more and more of a figure 
 there from year to year. Millions of acres of the lands 
 of the State are really fertile as any in the world when 
 only they have water brought upon them, and for some 
 time both large and small irrigating interests have 
 been at work seeking to increase the wealth of the 
 State in agricultural regards. The future of the cow- 
 men in Wyoming lies in the exceedingly uncompromis- 
 ing nature of much the greater portion of the land, which 
 is too broken or too high for farming. In the Dakotas 
 and in Wyoming the natural water is for the most 
 part abundant enough to obviate all question of water- 
 front rights. 
 
 Montana has also free grass for all men, and one 
 man has as good a right as another to let his cattle 
 run free over the unoccupied Government lands. Here 
 the cowman has the best of the farmer, who must fence 
 his crops if he would sustain action against a cowman 
 for damage done by his cattle. Great bodies of land 
 lie wild here which can never be farmed, though all 
 the little flats and valleys over which the water can 
 be led are now pretty well taken up by the man who 
 irrigates and farms. (Properly speaking, the rancher 
 is himself a farmer, though the meaning of the word 
 has been changed by popular usage. The rancher him- 
 self is more generous or perhaps more accurate in his 
 own use of the term. He speaks of a " hay ranch/' a 
 
FREE GRASS AND WATER FRONTS. 133 
 
 " fruit ranch," a " hen ranch," etc.) In Montana the 
 question of water front is of little consequence, for 
 there is natural water enough to balance the natural 
 grass. 
 
 In the free-grass country, such as that of Wyoming 
 or Montana, there may be seen again proof of the 
 cattle man's custom of respecting the rights of others. 
 Although the country is as much one man's as an- 
 other's, the man who has possession of a certain por- 
 tion of the range has his rights roughly regarded, 
 even though he be smaller in importance than his 
 neighbour. The latter will be affected by a depasturage 
 as much as the former, though sometimes a body of 
 cattle is driven in and must take its chances. The 
 new man on the range respects the lines commonly 
 accepted by the local men as the limits of the respective 
 ranges, and hunts about for the best place left open 
 for himself. Of course, the future will see more and 
 more curtailment of the free-grass privilege, especially 
 in such parts of the country as are well watered, and all 
 things point to the d#y when the rancher must control 
 his land in such way that he can legally fence it and 
 shut out all others. 
 
 A great enemy to the cattle trade has for years 
 been growing up upon the same country with it and 
 under the same conditions. At this writing this dan- 
 ger has assumed such proportions as to threaten the 
 permanence of profitableness of cow ranching even 
 upon that portion of the open range which may still be 
 called free grass. This menace is no less than the 
 sheep industry, itself a great one, albeit cordially de- 
 tested by your genuine cowman, who has a deep-seated 
 contempt for any one who will look at a sheep. The 
 great flocks of sheep differ in a singular and impor- 
 tant respect from the herds of the cowman. They can 
 10 
 
134 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 not live unless they move. Confined on close pasture, 
 they contract disease and die by thousands. Allowed 
 to " walk/' or range and feed forward over a great 
 extent of country during the season, they increase and 
 thrive. A flock of sheep starting, say, in Colorado 
 or the Green Eiver country, may range over five hun- 
 dred miles in a year,- entirely leaving their original 
 range. Of course, these sheep can only be driven over 
 a " free-grass " country, and on such a country they 
 have as good right as the cattle have, though often 
 their owners fail to enforce that right upon the range. 
 One of these great flocks of sheep coming over the 
 native range of a local band of cattle will eat off the 
 grass so closely that the cattle will leave the range or 
 starve to death upon it. This year sheep are coming 
 in from the West in such numbers over some of the Wyo- 
 ming free-grass country that many cattle men have 
 shipped their cattle out of the country, giving up their 
 interests and seeking other range. Yet others have 
 sold out entirely and relinquished the business. The 
 farmer, the irrigator, the sheep harder have been fatal 
 to the old order of things which obtained in the days 
 when all the range was free grass, or even the days 
 when the key of the water unlocked the wealth of the 
 range. More and more the cowman himself will be- 
 come a farmer, as indeed many are now. More and 
 more the cowboy will become a farm labourer. Even 
 to-day, in a round-up on the Wyoming plains, you may 
 see as many overalls and jumpers as chaps and shirt 
 sleeves. Thus, it seems, and not in garb of silk or steel 
 or gold, are to be clad the builders of the cities* of 
 Cibola. 
 
CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 THE DRIVE. 
 
 EARLY in the history of the cowbo} 7 , as that his- 
 tory is popularly known, there came from the crowded 
 ranges of the South the urgent cry for a market and the 
 demand for additional territory out of the empire of free 
 grass. It was in the stars that the cattle must go North. 
 To get them North was a problem in transportation to 
 which there could not then be summoned the aid of 
 the railroads. The cattle must walk these hundreds 
 of miles. Hence arose one of the most picturesque 
 phases of the cowboy's occupation. He became a wan- 
 derer, an explorer, as well as a guide and a protector. 
 The days of '67 in the cattle drive were as the days 
 of '49 in the history of gold, inaugurative of an era 
 full of rude and vivid life. Those were epoch-making 
 times, and swift and startling were the changes which 
 they brought. All the West was then in turmoil. The 
 inhabitants of the Eastern and Middle States were just 
 beginning to learn definitely of the great unsettled 
 region into which the railroads were moving. To meet 
 the railroads there came rolling up from the South the 
 great herds of longhorns over the trail. "With them 
 came the cowboys, a news gens, reported a gens Jiorri- 
 bilis. In a trice the trail became one of the institutions 
 of the West, and the cowboy became a character. Prior 
 to the days of the drive he had existed, but he had not 
 
 135 
 
136 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 been differentiated. His calling had not been special- 
 ized, he had not become a type. The trail was the 
 college of the cowboy. In all the lusty life of the 
 West in the old days there was no wilder and no 
 rougher school. Out of it came a man whose rugged 
 and insistent individuality has for a triple decade ex- 
 cited alike popular admiration and popular misunder- 
 standing. 
 
 To-day the cattle drive is one of the occasional 
 necessities of the trade all over the cow country, but it 
 exists only in modified form. The cowman drives 
 to his shipping point the beef he has " gathered " in 
 his fall round-up, or perhaps he drives some grown 
 cattle from one range to another a hundred miles or 
 so distant. At times one cowman purchases young 
 stock cattle from another, and these may be driven to 
 the new range. In one way or another a drive nowa- 
 days may perhaps occupy at most a month or so. Per- 
 haps, again, a cowman of some upper country say 
 Wyoming has also a ranch down in the lower country, 
 such as the Nations, where he raises his own stock 
 cattle, w r hich he wishes to put on his upper range. He 
 is situated perhaps well up in Wyoming, and a hundred 
 miles or so from the nearest railroad point. He ships 
 his cattle by rail from the Nations to this railroad 
 station, and then drives across country as in the old 
 days. No such operations as these, however, compare 
 in extent or interest with the old drives of the early 
 days, when things were booming in the cow towns. 
 
 Let us suppose it to be in those early days when 
 the herds of the South w r ere just beginning to break 
 from their confines and push on in their strange and 
 irresistible migration to the North. Some rancher 
 has learned that he can command at the railroad to 
 the north of him a price far in advance of any obtain- 
 
THE DRIVE. 137 
 
 able in his own country. Perhaps he has a contract 
 for so many head to he delivered at some Northern 
 point, or perhaps he drives on general speculation and 
 in search of a buyer. Perhaps he drives his own cattle, 
 or his own and some of his neighbours', or perhaps he 
 purchases additional numbers and thus embarks in a 
 still greater mercantile venture. In any case the, chifif 
 problem of his venture is that of transportation. The 
 herds are to cross a wild and unsettled region, un- 
 mapped lands, with floods to swallow them up, with 
 deserts in which they may be lost irretrievably. There 
 is continual risk and danger of great loss in such trans- 
 portation, for everything depends upon the control 
 a few human beings may be able to maintain over thou- 
 sands of powerful and untamed animals. 
 
 These wild cattle are sold, let us say, upon the 
 hoof as they run, uninspected, at so much per head. 
 They of course do not reach the dignity of being 
 weighed, but are only counted. The seller may very 
 likely see to it that his men bring in many of the poor- 
 est specimens to be counted in such a transaction, but 
 the etiquette of the trade prevents the buyer from 
 taking any notice of such a fact. On the range a cow 
 is a cow, and may be worth two or three dollars. A 
 " beef " (any animal over four years of age) is a beef, 
 and may be worth three to six dollars. A " dogy " or 
 " dobe " yearling (a scrubby calf that has not wintered 
 well) is such a yearling, and nothing less nor more, and 
 may be worth one or two dollars. It is a day of large 
 methods, and haggling is unknown. It is jubilee for 
 the man of the depastured range who thus finds offered 
 him a price for cattle which have been bringing scarce 
 enoiiffh to pay for branding them. 
 
 The riders go out over the range and round up 
 the cattle by tens and hundreds, holding them most 
 
138 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 of the time in the big corrals until the herd is made 
 up and until the "road branding" is done. Then, 
 after they are counted and sorted, the bill of sale gives 
 the buyer his right and title and his permission to take 
 these cattle off the range. Perhaps the great herd 
 will number four, five, or even ten thousand head when 
 it pulls out North bound over the trail. Another herd 
 of this or another buyer may follow close behind it, 
 and indeed in the height of the driving season there 
 will be many herds strung out all along the trail. 
 
 To handle one of these great bodies of cattle the 
 drover establishes his outfit well in advance of the start. 
 His horses he may buy on the spot or at some horse ranch 
 not far distant. His foreman, or " boss " for the drive 
 he has secured, and been careful in his choice in doing 
 so. The foreman's name may as well be Jim as any 
 other, and it is certain that in his skill and judgment 
 and faithfulness the owner has absolute confidence, 
 for he is putting into his hands a great many thousand 
 of dollars' worth of property. Besides the foreman 
 there are a dozen other cowboys, most of them Ameri- 
 cans, for Mexicans are not fancied for this work. In 
 addition to these is the cook, who has nothing to do 
 with the handling of the cattle. The cook may be a 
 negro or a Spaniard or a " Portugee," but it is almost 
 a certainty that he is hard-featured and unlovely, with 
 a bad temper and perhaps a few notches on his knife 
 handle. If he were not " hard up " he would not hire 
 out to cook. The cowpunchers very likely call the 
 cook the " old woman " or the " old lady," but really 
 the language of a drive cook is something no lady 
 would think of using. It is good times on the range, 
 and the cook may receive fifty dollars a month and all 
 of his own cookery he can eat. The cowpunchers will 
 have wages of forty-five to sixty-five dollars per month, 
 
THE DRIVE. 139 
 
 according to their age and skill. The " cavvieyard " 
 or horse herd will have fifty to one hundred head of 
 horses in it, and will be under the charge of the day 
 herder and night herder (known as " horse wranglers " 
 in the North). The cook has a wagon or cart, which 
 carries himself, his supplies, the bedding, and a few of 
 the scant necessaries of the men. The latter travel 
 light as did ever any cavalry of the world. A tent is 
 something unknown to these men. A scant blanket 
 and the useful slicker, a flip of the roll, and the cow- 
 puncher's bed is made. The saddle is his pillow. He 
 may look freely at the stars. The wolf is not more 
 wild, the broadhorn more hardy than he, nor either 
 more truly a creature of the open air. 
 
 When the great herd of " coasters " moves out on 
 its Northern journey its outset is attended with con- 
 fusion. The cattle are unruly and attempt to break 
 back to their native feeding grounds. The drive outfit 
 is riding day and night, and even then its numbers 
 and its efforts may not be sufficient. A second out- 
 fit perhaps assists the first, pushing the cattle as rapidly 
 as possible over the first hundred miles of the trail, 
 tiring them so that they will be willing to lie down and 
 rest when nightfall comes. After these few days the 
 second outfit returns to start out the next herd in a 
 similar way. Ordinarily it may take a week or ten days 
 to break in the herd to the trail, but when fairly started 
 the cattle will travel ten to fifteen miles a day easily 
 and without much urging, and in the second month of 
 the drive will have so well learned what is required of 
 them as to march with something like military regu- 
 larity, following certain recognised leaders of tacit 
 election. The order of march is in a loosely strung- 
 out body, the herd in motion covering a strip of country 
 perhaps only a few hundred yards in width, but a mile 
 
140 TUB STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 or two miles in length from front to rear of the herd. 
 The stronger animals, or those least footsore, march 
 in advance, the weaker falling to the rear. When it 
 is seen that an animal can not stand the march, it is 
 cut out from the herd and abandoned. There are no 
 close figures in the cattle drive. 
 
 While the herd is on the march the cowpunchers 
 ride at intervals along its flanks, keeping the stragglers 
 up and in as much as possible, and controlling the 
 cattle by that strange mastery the mounted man has 
 always had over the horned creatures of the range. 
 Why the cowboy should be called a " cowpuncher " is 
 one of the mysteries. The whip of the States' drover 
 is unknown to him. He guides the cattle simply by 
 the presence of himself and horse, riding at them when 
 he wishes them to turn, heading them back when he 
 wishes them to stop. Each man on the drive knows 
 what to do, and the duties are for the most part rather 
 monotonous than urgent. The march each day is in 
 much the same order, the dusty herd strung out ahead, 
 the cook wagon and horse herd following on behind. 
 For hours and days the herd may work along stolidly 
 and quietly, with no sound but the monotonous crack! 
 crack! of thousands of hoofs and ankle joints or the 
 rattle of the long horns swung together now and then 
 in the crowd of travel. Or there may arise even in 
 daytime that thunderous unison of the clacking feet 
 and the continuous, confused, and awful rattling of 
 the horns which tells of the horrors of a stamnede. 
 
 By nightfall the cattle are usually weary enough 
 to be willing to stop, and need little instruction when 
 they arrive on the bedding ground which has been 
 selected by some forerunner. Water they have prob- 
 ably had more than once during the day.* In the 
 
 * The cattle trail moved westward in Texas as the plains 
 
THE DKIVE. 
 
 evening they graze a little,, and shortly after dusk begin 
 to lie down, so that by eight or nine o'clock they may 
 all be " bedded down " by the cowpuncher's art into 
 a fairly compact body capable of being watched. After 
 the cook has served his supper of bacon, beans, camp 
 bread, and coffee, with perhaps a very few items of 
 tinned vegetables and of course no fresh vegetables 
 except the inevitable El Paso onion, the foreman ar- 
 ranges the hours for the night herding. Two to four 
 men are put out at the same time, and these are out 
 for two to four hours, all of these details depending on 
 the condition of the cattle and the state of the weather. 
 Before lying down for his share of sleep at night, 
 the cowpuncher takes care of his horses. This is not 
 the act of feeding and grooming, be sure, but has 
 
 were cleared of the Indians and as the country settled up. The 
 first trail ran to southeastern Kansas and northwestern Missouri. 
 The so-called Shawnee trail ran east from the Red River, thence 
 north across the Arkansas and west along that stream. The 
 " Chisholm trail " was farther to the west, over the Neutral Strip. 
 The " Pecos trail " was still farther to the west, in New Mexico, 
 following the Pecos River north into Colorado, and crossing the 
 Arkansas River in that Territory. The latter trail was used only 
 in the territorial or stock cattle drive. There was an attempt 
 made at one time to set apart a strip of country north and south, 
 near the sixth principal meridian, for the exclusive purposes of 
 the cattle trail, though this was never done. The " Chisholm 
 trail " was laid out by a half-breed Indian bearing the name of 
 Jesse Chisholm, who drove horses and cattle to the western parts 
 of the Nations as early as 1840, before any one else dared go in 
 that country. He did a good business in horses, which he 
 bought of the lower plains Indians, the latter being able to sell 
 to him at low prices, since they stole all their horses them- 
 selves. He often had long trains of horses, cattle, and goods, 
 which he brought up over the best country for grass and water. 
 E. II. 
 
142 THE STOtfY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 reference to that possession in hand which is the only 
 concern the cowpuncher gives himself in the matter. 
 He usually pickets the horse he intends to ride during 
 the night, and hobbles out the one he has been using, 
 the custom of hobbling being one brought down from 
 the ancient plains days. His picket pin the cow- 
 puncher carries with him, for much of the time he is 
 in a woodless country. His horse hobbles he either 
 ties at his saddle or flings into the cook wagon while 
 on the march. These hobbles, as used in the early 
 days, before buckle and chains were heard of on the 
 range, were made of rawhide, that staple of the cow 
 country. A wide band of rawhide was passed around 
 the fore leg of the horse, and the ends twisted to- 
 gether loosely over and over, one end being left a 
 little longer than the other. The shorter end was slit, 
 and upon the longer end there was fastened a long 
 wooden button. This longer end was passed about the 
 other fore leg of the horse, and the loop for this leg 
 secured by passing the wooden button through the 
 slit in the shorter end of the hobble and turning it 
 crosswise of the slit. 
 
 To guard against the restless condition of the cattle, 
 so fatal to the success of a drive, there was put in 
 practice one of the most curious customs of the range, 
 and one in regard to which there exists even to-day 
 something of diversity of opinion. The herd was 
 rarely if ever left out of the hearing of the human 
 voice, and it was considered a necessity at night to 
 " sing to the cattle," as the peculiar process of vocal- 
 ization was termed. The cattle when bedded down 
 were timid and suspicious to a degree, and the sudden 
 appearance of any strange object might set them off 
 in a run. They might take fright at the dim form of 
 one of the herders coming up in the night, though if 
 
THE DRIv. 143 
 
 they knew it was the herder they would not be fright- 
 ened but reassured, through that vague and ill-under- 
 stood feeling of dependence these half-wild creatures 
 certainly had for their human masters. The night 
 herder in riding about the bedding ground always kept 
 up a low humming or singing, to let the cattle know 
 of his presence, and the cowboy who could not or 
 would not sing was inadequate in his profession. The 
 " hymns " were sometimes of sacred air and profane 
 words, and sometimes of compounds of both, but it 
 was certain that some sort of this music was in course 
 of rendition throughout the night. When one watch 
 went in to sleep and another set of men came on duty 
 the new men in riding up to the cattle always prefaced 
 their approach with this odd psalmody of the plains. 
 Let us suppose that our friend the cowpuncher is 
 called from his slumbers at midnight to take his turn 
 at watching the cattle on a bedding ground along the 
 trail. He arouses himself from his hard couch on the 
 ground and goes after the horse which he has kept 
 picketed as close at hand as practicable. If the weath- 
 er has been threatening, he has perhaps, in common 
 with every other man of the outfit, kept his best horse 
 saddled ready for sudden call. If the weather is mild, 
 he cinches up his unwilling and sulky steed and at 
 once starts for the edge of the herd. The air of the 
 high plains 'is chilly, and a tenderfoot would need an 
 overcoat, but the cowboy probably does not even but- 
 ton his loose coat at the neck, and his flannel shirt is 
 hardly caught the tighter at the throat when he rolls 
 out of his blankets to take the saddle. His slicker 
 is tied at the cantle of his saddle. Sleepily but 
 methodically he takes up his round, calling to the cat- 
 tle as he comes up to the herd. He rides slowly around 
 them, sometimes stopping as he moves about the edge 
 
THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 of the herd. Each gully and grassy swale, each bit of 
 broken ground or ragged hillside is scanned closely 
 as he moves about in the dim light. This may be 
 country where there are men quite willing to run off 
 a few head of cattle or to create a stampede. There 
 may be Indians about, whose demands for toll have 
 not been satisfactorily settled, and who are not averse 
 to making a little trouble, even to the extent of a quiet 
 arrow or so. Or there may be wild animals, whose 
 presence will frighten the herd. The s^udden^ajj^ear- 
 ance of a wolf on the outline of a hill may bring a 
 hundred steers to their feet with snorts of terror. The 
 sharp cracking of a twig may cause a sudden fright. 
 It is of record that the appearance of the full moon, 
 rising between the two peaks of a cleft hill and shining 
 red and large over into a little valley that had been 
 quite dark till then, once caused one of the most un- 
 controllable of stampedes. The aim of the cowboy is 
 to prevent any cause of fright which can be prevented, 
 and to give what courage and comfort he can of his 
 own store in case any unusual or terrifying circum- 
 stances arise. Timidity relies on courage always. That 
 thing does not walk the plains which shall terrify this 
 bold soul, born and bred upon the range. The night 
 has no secrets for him, nor the day any terrors. He is 
 not afraid, and the cattle know it. He is the guard 
 and protector, and they know it, even though they 
 may fear him. So on and around he rides slowly, hum- 
 ming his little song, now a sweet one, let us hope, 
 often not a good one, we may fear, and all the time 
 he keeps his eyes open for anything and everything 
 going on about him. Under the moon or the stars or 
 the black sky, he fulfills the requirements of his wild 
 calling, patiently and faithfully, shirking nothing and 
 fearing nothing, doing his duty not more because he 
 
THE DRIVE. 145 
 
 is paid to do it than because he would not feel himself 
 a man up to the standards of his calling if he failed to 
 do his duty in every detail. 
 
 At daybreak the camp is astir, the men rolling out 
 of their blankets to the cook's cry of " Grub pi-i-i-le! " 
 The hot coffee is gulped down and the rude fare goes 
 into stomachs well able to withstand it. Ten minutes 
 later the outfit is in the saddle. The blanket rolls, 
 loose hobbles or such odds and ends are tossed into 
 the cook's wagon; the hobbled horses, which have not 
 wandered far during the night, are caught up, and each 
 rider saddles the horse whose turn he thinks it is to 
 carry him, the others going into the horse herd for 
 the day. The sun is barely up when the long line of 
 cattle is again on the move, slowly working_jo the 
 nortjrward, grazing, walking spasmodically, stopping, 
 or plodding_steadily along^according tojthe conditions 
 of grass and water. Sometimes it is necessary to push 
 the herd sharply along to reach water, for on the trail 
 the cattle need water more regularly and more often 
 than on their feeding range, where the cactus may give 
 them some liquid, and where their blood is not heated 
 by continuous exercise. If water is found often, the 
 cattle will drink with something of regularity of order 
 and in safety, but if there has been a long and thirsty 
 march there may be a horrible crowding stampede to 
 the stream or water hole, and many of the weaker ani- 
 mals may be crushed to death. 
 
 There were no bridges on the trail of the old drives, 
 and all streams had to be crossed by wading or swim- 
 ming, as the case might be. Often it happened that 
 the cattle would not take to the water, and sometimes 
 it was hours or days before a herd could be got across 
 a swollen river. The most difficult thing in such an 
 emergency was to get the leaders of the herd started 
 
146 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 into the water. Once that was done, the rest would 
 follow without further trouble. The line of march 
 for this indomitable cavalcade was the same in the 
 water as upon the land. As upon the land, the cow- 
 boys in the river remained at intervals along the flanks 
 of the herd, their hardy ponies swimming strongly 
 under them. Sometimes in the water, as upon the 
 land, a sudden panic would seize the herd, and they 
 would fall to " milling " in the water, swimming round 
 and round helplessly, to drown in scores if no remedy 
 were found. Then again the hardihood of the range 
 rider was called upon. Without a moment of thought 
 or hesitation the cowboy spurred his swimming horse 
 into the thick of the tossing heads, and by shouts and 
 blows did all he could to break the " mill " and get the 
 cattle headed properly. Often unhorsed and threat- 
 ened with death among the plunging "animals in the 
 water, he was forced to swim out as best he could, 
 sometimes scrambling upon the backs of swimming cat- 
 tle, sometimes catching a floating tail and impressing it 
 into service for a temporary tow. The rope of the cowboy 
 came into full play in these exciting and perilous epi- 
 sodes. With it he pulled cattle out of the water or the 
 quicksands or the mud, whether they wanted to come or 
 not, the fierce little ponies seeming to know as well as 
 their riders what was needed, and exerting a power 
 which, thanks to the heavy and well-cinched saddle, 
 was something remarkable to witness. Both horse and 
 man had enough asked of them at such seasons of 
 stress, and it was with great relief that the trail outfit 
 saw the last of their herd, or at least the last of those 
 left alive and under possession, across the stream and 
 ready for the further march. Sometimes, at such a 
 river as the Platte, on the north drive to the Terri- 
 tories, there wouTcl be a dozen herds piled up on the 
 
THE DRIVE. 147 
 
 river shore in a distressing confusion, from which the 
 heart of a States drover could see no possible extrica- 
 tion; yet patience and courage of the cowpuncher sort 
 certainly brought each herd out in order, with only 
 such loss as the river inflicted. The eye of the cow- 
 boy was keen to detect the brand of his herd, and his 
 pony was swift and the rider was tireless. So the great 
 herd worked on, always to the North, over obstacles of 
 every sort. In course of time the herd, dusty, footsore, 
 perhaps thin of flesh and reduced in numbers, arrived 
 at its destination. This might be far up on the north- 
 ern range, in Wyoming or Montana, or it might be 
 at some of the lurid little cow towns along the new 
 railroad. Perhaps in the latter case the owner of the 
 herd found no buyer to suit him, and very likely he 
 lost money after all his weary effort. Sometimes it 
 was necessary to hold the cattle on the Kansas range 
 over winter, and indeed at the time of the feeling 
 against Southern cattle on account of the dreaded 
 Spanish fever which they brought with them, there 
 was a law forbidding the importing into many of the 
 Northern States anyJTexas cattle which had not been 
 " wintered " on a Northern range, this wintering seem- 
 ing to destroy the germs of that disease, which was so 
 fatal to Northern cattle. All these problems were new 
 ones for the Southern drover, but he and his cow- 
 punchers rapidly adjusted themselves to the new con- 
 ditions, and thus the stocking of the great open ranges 
 of the North went on, the herds bringing with them 
 the guardians who were to become inhabitants and 
 citizens of the widening range. 
 
 It was a curious, colossal, tremendous movement, 
 this migration of the cowmen and their herds, un- 
 doubtedly the greatest pastoral movement in the his- 
 tory of the world. It came with a rush and a surge, 
 
148 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 and in ten years it had subsided. That decade was an 
 epoch in the West. The cities of Cibola began. The 
 strong men of the plains met and clashed and warred 
 and united and pushed on. What a decade that was! 
 What must have been the men who made it what it 
 was! It was an iron country, and upon it came men 
 of iron. Dauntless, indomitable, each time they took 
 a herd North they saw enough of life to fill in vivid 
 pages far more than a single book. They met the 
 ruffians and robbers of the Missouri border, and over- 
 came them. They met the Indians who sought to ex- 
 tort toll from them, and fought and beat them. Worse 
 than all these, they met the desert and the flood, and 
 overcame them also. Worse yet than those, they met 
 the repelling forces of an entire climatic change, the 
 silent enemies of other latitudes. These, too, they 
 overcame. The kings of the range divided the king- 
 dom of free grass. 
 
 It was natural enough that these wild fighting men 
 who now made the great part of the population of 
 the West, coming as they did from all quarters of the 
 land, living in camps or in the saddle, living in a land 
 wherein there had not yet been lit the first fire of a 
 real home, and where the hand of a real woman was 
 not yet known, should make commotion when they came 
 to the end of the trail. It is no wonder there wore 
 wild times on the border in the days of the drive. 
 Never were times wilder anywhere else on earth than 
 they were in the ragged, vicious little cow town of the 
 railroad markets and the upper ranges. There, indeed, 
 it behooved the timid man to hie him elsewhere swiftly 
 as that might be. Trouble came often enough when 
 not sought for, and any one in search of trouble could 
 find it with surprising ease. On the trail the men of 
 an outfit usually got along fairly well together, being 
 
THE DRIVE. 149 
 
 held together with the friendship of common motives 
 and mutual interests; nor did different outfits often 
 go to war, unless there had been infringement upon 
 rights bound to carry respect. Of course, sometimes 
 there would be sudden affrays, and many are the un- 
 marked graves the cattle have trodden flat along the 
 trail. Thus, it is reported that one cowpuncher, who 
 was spoken of as being " too particular to punch cows, 
 anyhow," had trouble with the cook, who was a surly 
 fellow and apt to resent any imputation upon his skill 
 in cookery, though there seemed a general consensus 
 of belief that he could not cook. The cowpuncher 
 made some objection to some trifle at the table, and the 
 cook caught up his gun to kill him for criticising his 
 bread or beans. The cowpuncher then killed the cook 
 promptly, and, standing over him as he lay prone, 
 remarked, " There, d n you, I Jcnowed you couldn't 
 cook! " In this rash act he found soon that he had 
 committed a crime of serious nature and likely to bring 
 serious consequences. It was pointed out to him that 
 had he killed any other man of the outfit it would not 
 have been so bad, but to kill the cook, even though he 
 could not cook, was to strand the entire party out in 
 the middle of the desert. There was a strong disposi- 
 tion to lynch the offender for this; but the foreman, 
 who was a generous-hearted man, overruled the sen- 
 tence of the outfit, and condemned the cowpuncher 
 to cook for the party for the rest of the way up the 
 drive a punishment which is said to have brought 
 remorse not only to the offender but all the rest of the 
 party. 
 
 It was not often that such quarrels arose on the 
 
 cattle drive among men who should have been friends, 
 
 and if there was a hidden grudge it was usually 
 
 kept smouldering for the time. In the railroad town, 
 
 11 
 
150 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 on the other hand, a quarrel offered was a quarrel 
 begun, and once begun it was not far to its ending. 
 Many and many are the border tales one may hear 
 even to-day in the nourishing little Western cities 
 which once had the vivid honour of being cattle towns. 
 Abilene, Kansas, was one of the most famous of these 
 markets of the early days, and at that point alone a 
 whole fund of yellowback literature of a too truthful 
 sort might even now be collected. One story will 
 serve to illustrate the conditions of those times, taken 
 as it is from actual life at the height of the cow trails. 
 It seems that there was a Texas cowpuncher, whose 
 name we need not mention, who had conceived himself 
 injured in honour by another of his profession, and 
 who had spent the day in an ineffectual attempt to find 
 the latter in order to call him to account. Failing in 
 this, he at length concluded to retire for the night, 
 and went to his room in a certain hotel once famous 
 as a cattle men's resort. This hotel was a long building, 
 of pine boards, constructed in the most flimsy manner, 
 the bedrooms being built on each side of a long hall, 
 with partitions between them of thin and ill-fitted 
 lumber, which therefore afforded but little privacy. 
 Everything said in one room was heard in the other 
 rooms. As the aggrieved cowpuncher sat upon the 
 side of his bed, he having disrobed and prepared to go 
 to sleep, he heard voices farther down the hall, in the 
 third room from his, and recognised the voice of his 
 enemy, who may or may not have made some slighting 
 allusion to himself. The offended one at any rate did 
 not pause to consider consequences to others than his 
 enemy. He seems to have remembered that the shape 
 of the little bedrooms was the same throughout the 
 series along the hall, and that the position of the bed 
 was the same in each. He presumed that his enemy 
 
 
THE DRIVE. 151 
 
 was at that moment sitting upon his bed, as he himself 
 was in his own room. Without further thought, he 
 picked up his six-shooter and carefully aimed along 
 what he considered to he the proper line to strike the 
 man whose voice he heard. He fired, and the bullet, 
 after passing through three of the thin partitions, 
 struck the man in the body and killed him instantly. 
 The shooter fled from the building in sudden fear 
 and remorse, and appeared upon the street clad in 
 nothing but his undergarments. He at once struck to 
 the southward, headed for Texas in his blind impulse 
 of seeking safety. He travelled on foot nearly all 
 night clad as he was and barefoot, hardship unspeak- 
 able for a native rider. In the morning he met a man 
 who was riding toward him on the trail. This man he 
 covered with his pistol and forced to dismount and 
 strip. Taking his clothing and his horse from him, 
 the Texan dressed himself, mounted and rode away. 
 From that day to this, so far as known, he has never 
 been heard from again. In some distant corner of the 
 cattle country there may perhaps have been a morose 
 cowpuncher, who never spoke about his past, and whom 
 the etiquette of the range forbade questioning as to 
 his earlier history. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE KOUND-UP. 
 
 SINCE the beginning of mankind's struggle with 
 Nature the harvest season has been a time of victory 
 and rejoicing. At that time man unbends his back 
 and gives thanks for the reaping. Then come the days 
 of final activity, of supreme exertion, the climax of 
 all that has a material, an allegorical, or spectacular 
 interest in the yearly war for existence. The round-up 
 is the harvest of the range. Therefore it is natural that 
 its customs should offer more of interest than those 
 of any other part of the year. It were matter of course, 
 also, that features so singular and stirring in their 
 intense action as those of the cowman's harvest should 
 be known and blazoned about for the knowledge of 
 those living elsewhere than upon the cattle fields. 
 Writers and artists have seized upon this phase of the 
 cattle man's life, and given it so wide a showing that 
 the public might well have at least a general idea of 
 the subject. Yet perhaps this general idea would be 
 a more partial and less accurate notion than is de- 
 served by the complicated and varied business system 
 of the cattle harvest. If we would have a just idea of 
 the life and character of the man who makes the 
 round-up, we should approach the subject rather with 
 a wish to find its fundamental principles than a desire 
 to see its superficial pictures. 
 
 152 
 
THE ROUND-UP. 153 
 
 The system of the round-up, while it retains the 
 same general features over the whole of the cow coun- 
 try, and has done so for years, is none the less subject 
 to considerable local modifications, and it has in many 
 respects changed with the years as other customs of the 
 industry have changed; for not even the ancient and 
 enduring calling of the cowman could be free from the 
 law of progress. The Western traveller who first saw 
 a round-up twenty years ago would not be in position 
 to describe one of to-day. Sectional differences make 
 still other changes which should be regarded. Yet all 
 these round-ups, of the past and of the present, of the 
 North and of the South, ground themselves upon a 
 common principle namely, upon that desire for abso- 
 lute justice which has been earlier mentioned as a dis- 
 tinguishing trait of the cowman and the trade he fol- 
 lows. 
 
 Eeverting, as we must continually do, to the early 
 times of the cattle industry, we shall find ourselves 
 back in the days of water fronts in the dry Southwest. 
 Here the round-up depended upon local conditions, 
 just as it has ever since. If the ranchero had practically 
 all the water near him, he had also practically all the 
 cattle, and the harvest of the calves was merely a large 
 going forth on his part and marking his own increase 
 without being troubled with that of others. This 
 feature would be apt to continue more in a wide and 
 sparsely pastured country than in one where the cat- 
 tle of many owners were mingled together on the 
 range. Again, if we follow up the history of the range 
 until we come upon the time of large individual hold- 
 ings of land under fence, we must see how similar was 
 the round-up then to that of the dry country; for here 
 man had done what Nature had done in the other 
 case, and had separated the owner's cattle from those 
 
154 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 of his neighbours. It remained, therefore, much a 
 matter of an individual and not a community harvest; 
 whereas the community harvest is the one which the 
 average man has in mind when speaking of a round- 
 up. The free-grass round-up is the one where the 
 ingenuity, the energy, and the resources of the cowman 
 are best to be seen, his way of carrying out his funda- 
 mental purpose of justice to all men on the vast, un- 
 fenced, and undefined farm of the range, where the 
 thousands of cattle, belonging to dozens of owners, 
 each animal wild as a deer and half as fleet, are all 
 gathered, counted, separated, and identified with a 
 system and an accuracy little short of the marvellous. 
 "Until one has seen such a round-up on the open plains 
 he has neither seen the cowboy at his best nor seen 
 the fruition of the system that he represents. 
 
 The time of the calf round-up is in the_spring, 
 after the grass has become good'*5ndafterthe calves 
 have grown large enough for the branding, this time 
 being later in the North than in the South by perhaps 
 thirty days. Naturally, upon a country where the 
 open range is common property there can not be a 
 round-up for each man who owns cattle running at 
 large. Naturally, also, there must be more than one 
 round-up to gather all the cattle over the vast extent 
 of a cattle region. Here the system of the cowman 
 is at once in evidence. The State cattle association 
 divides the entire State range into a number of round- 
 up districts let us say into a dozen or two dozen dis- 
 tricts. Each district conducts its own round-up, this 
 under the working supervision of some experienced 
 man who goes by the name of the round-up captain 
 or round-up v^s, QJ?^ who is elected by vote of the 
 cowmen of his district. Under this general officer are 
 all the bosses in charge of the different ranch outfits 
 
THE ROUND-UP. 155 
 
 sent by men having cattle in the round-up. In the 
 very outset of the levy for these troops of the range the 
 idea of justice is apparent. Not all men own equal 
 numbers of the cattle, so it would be obviously unfair 
 to ask all to furnish an equal amount of the expense 
 and labour in the total of the round-up duties. The 
 small outfits send a few men, the large ones more, the 
 aim being that of fairness to all and hardship to none. 
 The wholejorce of a small modern round-up may not 
 exceed thirty men. In one of the large Southern 
 round-ups there^bnce met at the Doul}le_J\)rks of jjic 
 Brazos nearly three hundred_jmen. All these men 
 metlifbne ranch, and it is proof of the largeness of 
 the cattle life and its methods that they were all well 
 fed and entertained by the owner of the ranch. Now- 
 adays perhaps a ranch of ordinary size will send two 
 messes of men of half a dozen or more men each as its 
 pro rata in the round-up, each mess with its own cook, 
 and perhaps with two wagons to each mess to" carry 
 along the tents and supplies. In the old days no tents 
 were taken, and the life was rougher than it is now, 
 but of late years the cowboy has grown sybaritic. With 
 each ranch outfit there must of course be the proper 
 horse herj, " cavoy," or " cavvieyah. Each man 
 will have eight or ten horses forTTis own use, for he 
 has now before him the hardest riding of the year. 
 All these horses, some of them a bit gay and frisky 
 in the air of spring, are driven along with the ranch 
 outfit as its own horse herd, the total usually split 
 into two herds, each under the charge of one or more 
 herders, known as "horse wranglers" an expression 
 confined to the Northern ranges, and bearing a. cer- 
 tain collegiate waggishness of flavour, though the ori- 
 gin of the term is now untraceable. There are, of 
 course, night wranglers and day wranglers, it being the 
 
156 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 duty of these men to see to it that the horse herd is 
 kept together and at hand when wanted for the work. 
 
 Sometime toward the middle of May, let us say, 
 all these different outfits leave their home ranches and 
 head for the rendezvous of the round-up. The open- 
 ing date of the round-up is known, and the different 
 outfits, big and little, move in so as to be on hand a 
 few days tSeftJfe' the beginning of the work. It may 
 be imagined what a scene must be this general gather- 
 ing of the cow clans, how picturesque this assemblage 
 of hardy, rugged men fresh from their wild life and 
 ready for the still wilder scenes of activity which are 
 before them! There may be fifty men, perhaps five 
 hundred horses at the main camp, and of the total there 
 is not one animal which does not boil over with the 
 energy of full-blooded life. The men rejoice as those 
 should rejoice who go forth to the harvest, the horses 
 exult because spring has come, with its mysterious stir- 
 ring airs. The preliminary days are passed in romp 
 and frolic, perhaps at cards and games. Each man, 
 however, has his own work outlined, and makes his 
 preparations for it. His personal outfit is overhauled 
 and put in repair. His rope has a touch to " limber it 
 up," his straps are softened, his clothing put in order. 
 If he has a wild horse in his string, he takes the oppor- 
 tunity of giving it a few lessons of the sort which 
 make up the cow pony's education. Swiftly the grand 
 camp of the round-up settles into the system of vet- 
 erans, and all is rapidly made ready for the exacting 
 duties which are to follow. 
 
 The total country to be covered by the round-up 
 is perhaps a strip forty by one hundred miles in extent. 
 The direction in which the round-up will work will 
 depend upon the habits and the ranging of the cattle 
 at that time, there being no hard and fast rules possi- 
 
THE ROUND-UP. 157 
 
 ble. Local conditions determine also the location of 
 the several round-up camps, which of course must be 
 where grass and water are abundant and where there 
 is room to handle the herds. At times there may per- 
 haps be five thousand or more head of cattle in one 
 body, though the numbers are more likely to run not 
 over fifteen hundred or two thousand at a time. The 
 tendency nowadays is all in favour of smaller round- 
 ups, other herds being gathered after the first is 
 worked, and the size of each assembling depending of 
 course upon local circumstances. It may be better to 
 drive in all the cattle from a large strip of country to 
 a good working ground, or it may be more convenient 
 to make several herds and frequent changes of camp. 
 The round-up captain knows the men who are to 
 work under him, and from among these he appoints 
 lieutenants who shall have each a certain band of men 
 under him while covering the country. Advice is 
 given to each party as to what direction it shall take 
 after the start is made, all these arrangements being 
 made so as not to give special inconvenience to the 
 men of the respective ranch outfits, who will naturally 
 wish to camp with their own mess wagon. On the 
 day before the start the little army of the plains has its 
 campaign all planned and lying out before it, and 
 each man knows about what he is to do. On the night 
 before the opening day the cowpuncher, if he be wise, 
 goes to bed early and gets a full night's sleep, for not 
 another will he have now for many a night to come. 
 The flickerings of the cooks' fires, confined in their 
 trenches so that they may not spread and so that their 
 heat may be well utilized, rise and fall, casting great 
 shadows upon the tent walls where the cowboys unroll 
 their blankets and prepare for rest. The wind sighs 
 and sings in the way the wind has upon the plains. 
 
158 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 The far-off neigh of a restless pony, the stamp of a 
 horse picketed near by, the shrilling yell of the coyote, 
 and all those further vague and nameless noises which 
 pass in the air at night over the wild range come to 
 the cowboy as unneeded and unnoted lullaby. His 
 sleep is deep and untroubled, and to him it seems 
 scarce begun when it is suddenly ended amid the 
 chorus of calls, groans, and shoutings of his compan- 
 ions answering at the gray of dawn the call of the un- 
 easy round-up boss, who sings out his long cry of 
 " Roll out! roll out! " followed by the shrill call of 
 the cook, " Grub pi-i-i-le! " The cook has been up for 
 an hour, and has made his fire perhaps of cottonwood 
 limbs, perhaps of the lois des vaches natural fuel, of 
 the buffalo on the cattle range. This early morning 
 summons the cowpuncher dare not disobey, for the 
 etiquette of the round-up is strict enough in its way. 
 It is but dim daylight at best when the camp has 
 kicked off its blankets and risen up shoutingly. In 
 a few moments it has broken into a scene of wild but 
 methodical activity. In much less than an hour after 
 the first call for boots and saddles the whole strange 
 cavalcade is under way, and behind it the cooks are 
 breaking camp and pitching the plunder into the 
 wagons for the move. 
 
 Through the wet grass at break of dawn come the 
 rush and pounding of many hoofs, and ahead of the 
 swinging ropes of the wranglers gallops the horse herd 
 as it is brought in for the morning saddling. To re- 
 ceive it a hasty corral is made, after the rude but 
 efficient ways of the range. This corral is but a single 
 rope stretched about the sides of an irregular parallelo- 
 gram, or rather it is made of several single ropes united 
 end to end. Sometimes the corral runs out from the 
 wheels of two wagons, the ropes being supported at 
 
THE KOUND-UP. 159 
 
 their outer ends by two men, who swing out and act 
 as living gateposts, leaving open a gap into which 
 the horses are driven. The latter will not attempt 
 to break over this single strand, though they might 
 well do so had they not learned the lesson of not run- 
 ning against rope. Sometimes this strange corral is 
 made by stringing the rope from the saddle horns of 
 several of the laziest and solemnest of the old saddle 
 horses, which thus serve as the fence posts, this way 
 being more common at midday or out in- the open 
 country, where a short pause is made by the outfit. 
 Sometimes a wagon wheel, a horse, and a man or two 
 may all be doing duty as posts for the corral, it being 
 the peculiarity of the cowman to use what means are 
 best and nearest to his hand in all his operations. The 
 handling of the horse herd offers some of the most 
 picturesque features of the round-up, and the first 
 morning of the round-up is apt to furnish some thrill- 
 ing bits of action at the horse corrals when the men 
 are roping their mounts, pulling them unwilling forth 
 and cinching the great saddles firmly upon their bulg- 
 ing and protesting sides. In the early times the cow 
 horse was a wilder animal than he is to-day, but in 
 these degenerate days a wild horse is not thought de- 
 sirable, and indeed many or most of the cow horses 
 are not roped at all for their saddling. The cowboy 
 simply goes into the corral, picks out his horse, and 
 throws his bridle over its neck with a most civilized 
 disregard for the spectacular. 
 
 After the handling of the horse herd and the sad- 
 dling up, the little army swiftly gets into motion and 
 wings out widely over the plains, the men sometimes 
 shouting and running their horses in prodigal waste 
 of energy, for all is exuberance and abounding vigour 
 on these opening days in spring. Each little party 
 
1GO THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 spreads out under its commander until each man be- 
 comes a commander for himself, imposing upon him- 
 self the duty of driving before him to the agreed meet- 
 ing place ahead all the cattle that may come in his 
 line of march. As the cowpuncher thus rides out into 
 his great gray harvest field he sees no great wealth 
 of horned herds about him or before him. It is a big 
 country,, and the many thousands of cattle make but a 
 small showing upon it. Did they seem numerous as in 
 an Eastern pasture, the range must surely be a depas- 
 tured and impoverished one. Here and there, scat- 
 tered about, out beyond where the horse herds have 
 been feeding, there may be a few little groups of cattle. 
 Out farther, upon some hogback or along the side of 
 some coulee, a horned head is lifted high, gazing in 
 astonishment at this strange invasion of the range. 
 The animal may be a grade longhorn, though now the 
 old Texas stock has practically vanished from the range. 
 The shorthorn is valued, the white-faced Hereford 
 still more popular, since it is hardy and quick to ma- 
 ture. All these, one by one, by twos and threes, and 
 finally in fifties and hundreds, the keen-eyed and hard- 
 riding cowpuncher starts out and away from their feed- 
 ing ground and drives on ahead of him toward the 
 meeting place. The string of other animals running 
 ahead, perhaps half a mile to one side, where some 
 other cowpuncher is driving, is sure to be noted by the 
 cattle near to him. He gives a shout and starts to- 
 ward them, and, true to their gregarious habits, they 
 start on the run for their companions on ahead, this 
 being just what it is wished they should do. This 
 herding habit of the range cattle is the basis of many 
 of the operations of handling them. Thus each little 
 coulee and draw, each ridge and little flat is swept of 
 its inhabitants, which all go on forward toward where 
 
THE ROUND-UP. 161 
 
 the long lines of dust are beginning to converge and 
 mingle. As a matter of course, all the cattle, big and 
 little, cows, calves, and steers, are included in the as- 
 sembling, and are driven in together. The driving 
 is not the work of a novice, but yet is not so difficult, 
 for most of the cattle are so wild that they run at the 
 sight of a horseman, more especially if they be of the 
 old longhorn breed, and all the cowboy needs to do 
 is to ride hard to one side and so direct their flight. 
 Other cattle join those running, so that the whole 
 horned populace goes in and along, but a small per 
 cent being missed in the round-up, though of course 
 it is not possible to gather up every individual that 
 may be ranging wild and unobserved in the vast ex- 
 panses of the open plains. 
 
 Thus, later in the day, the gatherings of the indi- 
 viduals and of the separate parties meet in a vast, 
 commingling multitude of cattle. The place is in some 
 valley or upon some plain offering room for handling 
 the herd. Clouds of dust arise. The sun shines hot. 
 Above the immediate shuffle and clacking of the near- 
 by cattle comes a confused and tremendous tumult, 
 the lowing of cows, the bawling of calves, the rum- 
 bling bellows of other animals protesting at this un- 
 usual situation. The whirling flight of the cowboys 
 on their many different quests, the neighing of horses, 
 the shouts of command or of exultation all these 
 wild sounds beat upon the air in a medley apparently 
 arising out of bedlam, and all these sights arise from 
 what seems to the unskilled observer a hopeless and 
 irremediable disorder. Yet as matter of fact each 
 rider of all this little army knows exactly what he is 
 about. Each is working for a definite and common 
 purpose, and the whole is progressing under a system 
 of singular perfection. This confusion is that of chaos 
 
162 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 falling into order. The guiding and controlling mind 
 of man will subject all this mighty disorder to his own 
 ends. These great horned creatures, outnumbering a 
 hundred to one their human guards, are helpless to 
 escape from the living cordon of fearless horse and 
 daring rider. Out of the dust and heat and turmoil 
 one gathers a single definite thought, evolves a single 
 character. The yearly climax of his calling has brought 
 into vivid view the cowboy in that position which shows 
 himself and his profession in their most unique and 
 striking form. 
 
 Perhaps a couple of thousand of cattle are gath- 
 ered in this herd here upon a little flat valley a mile 
 or so across. On the other side of the valley are lines 
 of willows and low trees, and on beyond, in the direc- 
 tion of the sun, runs the shining thread of a river. 
 Toward the shelter of the trees the thin blue smoke 
 of the camp fires is arising. Possibly some of the 
 cowpunchers run over to the camp to snatch a bite 
 to eat, for the work of the cutting out has not yet 
 begun. The milling of the cattle has thrown them into 
 confusion, and the calves are separated from their 
 mothers, so that a little time must be allowed. A calf 
 does not always know its own mother, but no mother 
 mistakes her own offspring. This is the second basis 
 of the cunning handling of the wild herds. The cow- 
 man has the cattle of the range all together now, and 
 knows they will tend to hang together for a time and 
 not separate. He knows also that the calves will run 
 with their mothers, so that the brand of the mother 
 will prove the ownership of the calf. Presently the 
 intense, trying work of the cutting out will begin, in 
 which all these calves will be sorted out and labelled in 
 the great joint inventory of the range. 
 
 At this stage of the round-up operations there 
 
THE ROUND-UP. 163 
 
 again comes into play the question of local conditions. 
 It is all a matter of locality what shall be the descrip- 
 tion of the cattle to be separated, and this again is 
 a matter which has been subject to change of custom 
 in the trade. If this round-up be, for instance, in one 
 of the thickly settled districts of Montana, no atten- 
 tion is paid to any but the calves and unbranded cat- 
 tle. There is no attempt to sort or separate the dif- 
 ferent herds of branded cattle belonging to different 
 owners, or to drive back a given owner's cattle toward 
 his range. All the cows and calves are cut out from 
 the general herd> and are held in a separate body, 
 the rest of the entire herd being allowed to scatter and 
 depart at will over the common range. The calves 
 are then taken indiscriminately from this cow herd and 
 branded duly according to their mothers' brands. 
 
 On yet other portions of the range the ranchmen 
 may not be so numerous or the ranges may be larger. 
 Perhaps there are a few owners whose interests are 
 practically the same, by reason of the ranging habits 
 of their cattle. They know that their cattle are not 
 apt to go off a certain range, and therefore they do 
 not trouble themselves to keep track of them. But 
 they would not like these cattle to wander, say, one 
 hundred miles from home. If in a round-up there 
 should be found cattle, say, of five or six different 
 brands, all pretty well within the country where they 
 belonged, no effort would be made to separate these. 
 But if on the same country there should be found a 
 number of cattle of some outfit, known to be perhaps a 
 hundred miles from the range where they belonged, 
 it would be part of the duty of the round-up to cut out 
 these cattle and "throw them over" to the proper 
 range. In all things the common sense of the cow- 
 man governs. Thus it may happen that the entire 
 
164: THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 herd of a certain outfit is thus cut out and thrown 
 over without a single calf being branded, because the 
 cowman knows it would not be good for these calves 
 to be driven perhaps fifty miles or so immediately 
 after the branding and other operations of the round- 
 up. All the time there are numbers of these round- 
 ups and subround-ups going on, as the necessities of 
 the situation demand. Sometimes the big corrals of 
 a convenient ranch are used. It is a singular fact that 
 corral work was once more common, for instance, in 
 certain parts of Wyoming than it is to-day. It was 
 known that organized bands of cattle thieves, char- 
 acterized by the cowmen as " some boys who were a 
 little on the rustle," had a habit of using these cor- 
 rals at night to hold together the bunches of calves 
 they were running out of the country, the rustlers 
 being shrewd enough to know that they could in no 
 better way render tractable a bunch of calves than by 
 keeping them a few nights away from their mothers, 
 who would surely run them off during the night if all 
 were left out in the open together. It thus seeming 
 that the ranch corrals were being used in the robbery 
 of the men who built them, the latter tore them down 
 and after that relied upon the open round-up. The 
 latter form of the round-up work is, of course, the 
 more interesting, and we shall suppose that the herd 
 is made out on the open range and held together sim- 
 ply by the force of horsemanship. 
 
 It having been agreed, then, what sort of cattle 
 are to be cut out, the work of separation begins, perhaps 
 two or three different " cuts " being in progress at the 
 same time, each of these " cuts " being held at a dis- 
 tance from the main herd. As it is difficult to over- 
 come the disposition of an animal to break back and 
 join its fellows in the main herd when it is singled out 
 
THE ROUND-UP. 165 
 
 and driven, it is customary to start the " cut " with 
 some sober-minded old cattle which are willing to 
 stand where they are placed, and so serve as a nucleus 
 for the growing band, the cowboy here again calling 
 to his aid the habit of gregariousness among the cattle. 
 The caljjjDranding is the chief work of the round- 
 up, and it wouTd be difficult to find work more ex- 
 acting and exhausting. The cowpuncher prepares for 
 this deliberately. When he goes into the herd to cut 
 out calves he mounts a fresh horse, and every few 
 hours he again changes horses, for, though some 
 horses are better than others in cutting out, there is 
 no horse which can long endure the fatigue of the 
 rapid and intense work of cutting. Before the rider 
 stretches a sea of interwoven horns, waving and whirl- 
 ing as the densely packed ranks of cattle close in or 
 sway apart. It is no prospect for a weakling, but 
 into it goes the cowpuncher on his determined little 
 horse, heeding not the plunging and crushing and 
 thrusting of the excited cattle. Down under the heels 
 of the herd, half hid in the whirl of dust, he spies 
 a little curly calf running, dodging, and twisting, al- 
 ways at the heels of its mother. The cowpuncher 
 darts in and after, following the two through the thick 
 of surging and plunging beasts. The sharp-eyed pony 
 sees almost as soon as his rider which cow is wanted, 
 and he needs small guidance from that time on. He 
 follows hard at her heels, edging her constantly to- 
 ward the flank of the herd, at times nipping her hide 
 as a reminder of his own superiority. In spite of her- 
 self the cow gradually turns out toward the edge, and 
 at last is rushed clear of the crush, the calf follow- 
 ing close behind her. Very often two cowpunchers 
 work together in the operation of cutting out, this 
 facilitating matters somewhat. 
 12 
 
166 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 Already preparations have been made for the ani- 
 mals cut out. The branding men have fire and fuel, and 
 irons are heated to a cherry red. All the irons of the 
 outfits represented are on hand at the fire, a great many 
 of them, and easily to be confused withal. A " tally 
 man/' to keep record of the calves branded to each out- 
 fit, has been appointed by the captain to serve as general 
 clerk of the round-up. This man, of course, has oppor- 
 tunity to favour one outfit or another by falsifying his 
 scores, but this contingency is never considered in the 
 rude ethics of the range, where civilized suspicion, 
 known as conservatism, has not yet fully entered. The 
 tally man is usually chosen for his fitness to keep these 
 accounts, or perhaps for his unfitness to do other work 
 at the time. Perhaps there is some oldish cowman, 
 or some one who has been sick, or who has been hurt 
 in the riding of the previous day, and who, though 
 not fit for the saddle, will do for the book. This man 
 acts as the agent of all the outfits, and upon his count 
 depends each owner's estimate of his season's profits. 
 
 As the cowpuncher rushes his first cow and calf 
 clear of the herd, the tally man stands near the fire, 
 sharpening his pencil with a knife disproportionately 
 large. Even as he looks over toward the herd there 
 is a swirl of the long loop which has hung just clear of 
 the ground as the cowpuncher rode out into the open 
 after his quarry. The loop spreads and hisses out 
 into a circle as it flickers and curves about the cow- 
 puncher's head, and then it darts out and down like 
 the stoop of a hawk. The unfortunate calf is laid 
 by the heels. The pony stops and squats, flaring 
 back upon its haunches, its mane falling forward over 
 its gleaming eyes, its sides heaving, its quarters al- 
 ready gray with the dust of the herd. There is a twist 
 of the rope about the horn of the saddle, and all is 
 
THE ROUND-UP. 167 
 
 over with the wild life of the curly, bawling calf. It 
 is flipped lightly upon its side, and away it goes, skat- 
 ing along over the sagebrush, regardless of cuts or 
 bruises, up to the fire where the irons glow and where 
 the tally man now has his pencil sharpened. Two 
 men seize it as it comes into their field of operations. 
 One catches it by the ears and twists its head side- 
 ways, sitting down upon it so that the little creature 
 can not move. Another man casts free the rope and 
 lays hold of its hind legs, pushing one far forward with 
 his own foot, and pulling the other back at full length 
 with both his brawny hands. Helpless, the calf lies 
 still, panting. A man approaches with a glowing iron 
 fresh from the fire, and claps this, hissing and seeth- 
 ing, upon the shrinking hide. A malodorous cloud of 
 smoke arises from the burning hair. The iron cuts 
 quite through the hair and full into the hide, so that 
 the mark shall never grow over again with hair. A 
 piteous bawl arises from the little animal a protest 
 half drowned by the rush of mingled sounds about. 
 Meantime a third man trims out with a sharp knife the 
 required slice, if any, which is to be taken from the 
 ear or dewlap to complete the registered mark of the 
 owner. In a moment the calf is released and shoved 
 to one side to rejoin its mother, who mutters at its 
 injuries, and licks it soothingly. The calf stands with 
 legs spread wide apart, sick and dizzy, indisposed to 
 move, and shorn for many days of much of its f riski- 
 ness. Mother and calf alike are hustled out of the way. 
 The tally man calls out, " Bar Y, one calf." Another 
 calf is by this time coming skating up to the fire, and 
 again the iron is hissing. Meantime the hubbub and 
 the turmoil increase, until all seems again lost to chaos. 
 Taut ropes cross the ground in many directions. The 
 cutting ponies pant and sweat, rear and plunge. The 
 
168 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 garb of the cowpuncher now is one of white alkali, 
 which hangs gray in his eyebrows and mustache. 
 Steers bellow and run to and fro. Cows charge on 
 their persecutors, amid confusion and great laugh- 
 ings. Fleet yearlings and young cows break away 
 and run for the open, pursued by cowboys who care 
 not how or where they ride. The dust and the low- 
 ings and bellowings and runnings wax until all seems 
 hopeless. Yet all the time the irons are busy, all the 
 time the calves are sliding up to the fire, all the time 
 the voice of the tally man is chanting, and all the 
 time the lines of figures are growing longer on his 
 grimy pages. The herd lessens. The number of calves 
 visible among the cattle becomes small. Finally the 
 last calf is cut out and branded. The cowpunchers 
 pull up their heaving ponies. The branding men 
 wipe their faces. The tally man again sharpens his 
 pencil. The herd is " worked." It may scatter now 
 as it wills. This field has been reaped. It remains 
 now to go on to other fields. 
 
 At the close of the day's work the men have less 
 disposition to romp and play pranks than they had 
 at the start in the morning. They are weary, but 
 weary with that fatigue readily shaken off by a man 
 in fine health and good condition. The cooks and 
 teamsters have prepared the camp, and the professional 
 duties of the cowpuncher close when he takes off his 
 saddle. Until bedtime, which comes soon after the 
 evening meal, he may lounge and smoke. The cook 
 has prepared abundance of food for these hard-work- 
 ing men, whose constant exercise in the fresh air gives 
 them good appetites. In the menu of the round-up 
 fresh beef is sure to figure, and beef of the best sort 
 running in the herd. It makes no difference whose 
 brand is on the animal desired for the mess; if 
 
THE ROUND-UP. 169 
 
 wanted, it is forthwith roped, thrown, and butchered. 
 In the old days no account was kept of the round-up 
 beef, but of later days the owner of an animal killed 
 for beef is usually credited with it on the round-up 
 books. Sometimes, when time and opportunity offer, 
 the cowpuncher has for his dinner a dish probably un- 
 known elsewhere than on the range, and not common 
 there. A choice bit of " porterhouse " steak, cut thick, 
 is placed between two steaks of similar size and excel- 
 lence, and the whole buried under a bed of hot coals. 
 In this way the middle steak retains all the juices of its 
 double envelope, and offers a morsel which might well 
 be appreciated by a man less hungry or more particu- 
 lar than the tired cowpuncher. A pound or so of 
 beef, with some tinned vegetables, taken with a quart 
 or so of coffee, and the cowpuncher is ready to hunt 
 his blankets and make ready for another day. He 
 does not work on the eight hours a day schedule, but 
 works during the hours when it is light enough to see. 
 The end of the day may find him some miles from 
 where the cooks' fires are gleaming, and the swift chill 
 of the night of the plains may have fallen before his 
 jogging pony, which trots now with head and ears 
 down, brings him up to the camp which for him, as 
 much as any place on earth, is home. 
 
 Such is something of the routine of the round-up, 
 and one day, barring the weather conditions, is like 
 another throughout the long and burning summer, 
 one round-up following another closely all through 
 the season. The work is a trifle monotonous to the 
 cowboy, perhaps, in spite of its exciting features, and 
 is to-day more monotonous than it was in the past, 
 before the good old days had left the plains forever. 
 In those times the country was wilder, and there was 
 more of novelty and interest in the operations of the 
 
170 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 range. To-day the great plains are but a vast pasture 
 ground for the cattle belonging to the community of 
 cowmen, and the highly differentiated system of the 
 round-up progresses as a purely business operation, 
 whose essential object is the establishment of the in- 
 dividual rights of each member of that community. 
 The methods of the round-up seem of necessity rude 
 and inaccurate, but really they are singularly efficient 
 and precise. The skilled labour of the cowpuncher 
 gives to each man that which belongs to him, and 
 nothing more. 
 
 It is a curious review, that which passes under the 
 eyes of the tally men and branders during the calf 
 harvesting. Sometimes a calf comes up with a cow 
 whose hide is a network of confused and conflicting 
 brands, so that it is impossible to tell justly whose 
 property she is. In such a case the calf is not branded 
 at all to any owner, but is thrown into the association 
 credit, where it belongs equally to all, and where its 
 value will be equally divided. Sometimes in the hurry 
 of the work a calf is branded with the wrong iron, 
 and is thus given the sign of a man to whom it does 
 not belong. This would seem to be a puzzling proposi- 
 tion to the cowpuncher, for the brand is something 
 which, to use the cowpuncher's phrase, does not " come 
 out in the washin'." Yet the remedy is very simple. 
 Another calf is " traded back " for the calf wrongly 
 branded, the proper brand of the former calf being 
 placed upon the " traded " calf. Of course, this leaves 
 two mismatched calves on the range, whose brands 
 do not tally with those of their mothers, but within 
 the year time will have equalized the error, for the 
 calves will have left their mothers, and the one will 
 probably be worth about as much as the other. 
 
 Mingled with such questions as these during the 
 
THE ROUND-UP. 171 
 
 branding operations are always the complex ones of 
 strays and Mavericks. Sometimes a stray cow is found 
 during the round-up bearing the brand of a m^n for- 
 eign to that round-up district, or one not represented 
 in the round-up. The increase of this animal is 
 branded with the brand of its owner, who has been 
 no party to the transaction at all, but who has been 
 safe under the system .of the round-up. In the case 
 of Mavericks found during the round-up, a like intelli- 
 gent and just method obtains. Eoughly speaking, an 
 animal must be a yearling to be a Maverick, and on 
 some ranges this rule is laid down, though really a 
 Maverick becomes such at the time when it ceases to 
 follow the cow and begins to shift for itself. If it is 
 missed in the first round-up of its life, it falls under 
 the rules or laws governing the handling of Maver- 
 icks, such rules offering considerable local variations. 
 On some ranges of Wyoming, for instance, the cowmen 
 have agreed lines establishing the borders of their 
 respective ranges, and a cowman may brand for his 
 own a calf running on his range and not following 
 any cow. This right is merely one of comity among 
 the local ranchers, and one which it is not expected 
 will be abused. Indeed, the comity goes still further, 
 showing yet more clearly the interdependence and 
 mutual confidence of the cowmen. If after the round- 
 up a rancher finds a neighbour's calf unbranded, but 
 following the cow upon his own range, he brands the 
 calf with the owner's proper brand, and not with his 
 own. This is simply a matter of individual honesty. 
 The cowman knows that his neighbour will do as 
 much for him. Each ranch keeps its own separate 
 tally-book in this way, and these are exchanged at 
 the end of the season, so that each man gets what 
 belongs to him, no matter where it may have wan- 
 
172 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 dered, and no matter whether he ever sees it again 
 or not. It has been elsewhere mentioned that on 
 some parts of the range all the Mavericks are sold at 
 auction before the beginning of the round-up (always 
 to some resident cowman who is known to be responsi- 
 ble). In this case, when a Maverick is found in the 
 round-up it is dragged to the fire perhaps by two 
 ropes, for it is big and lusty and has put upon it the 
 " vent brand " of the association, thus securing an 
 abstract of title which it is to carry with it through 
 life, and which will hold good in any cattle market 
 of the land. 
 
 It may readily be seen how honest and how ex- 
 pert must be the men who carry out so intricate a sys- 
 tem. It should be borne in mind that brands do not 
 show so distinctly upon hide as they do upon paper, 
 and, of course, it must be remembered that a range 
 cow may carry more than one brand, and perhaps a 
 " vent brand " or so, if she has changed ownership 
 before. Here again there may be exceptions arising 
 out of local conditions. For instance, if a herd of 
 cattle is brought from a far Southern range to one in 
 the North, where that brand is not met and is not re- 
 corded, it is not always the case that the owner will 
 have these animals counterbranded; for it is known 
 that no confusion will arise if they are left as they 
 are, and, of course, the fewer brands an animal car- 
 ries the easier it is to tell whose it is. It is justice, 
 and justice by the shortest and most practical route, 
 which is the desire of the cowman, whether that imply 
 the branding of a Maverick or the hanging of a cattle 
 thief. 
 
 After the calf round-up comes the beef round-up, 
 and this, too, may be called the cowman's harvest, or 
 his final harvest. The beef round-up may begin in 
 

 J5 
 
 c3 
 g) 
 
THB y 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 OF 
 
THE ROUND-UP. 173 
 
 July or August, and perhaps it may be conducted by 
 the joint efforts of two districts instead of one. The 
 joint outfit acts under much the same system of gath- 
 ering up the cattle as has been described for the calf 
 round-up. All the cattle of the range are gathered in 
 great herds, and the latter are handled as during the 
 calf round-up, though -the operation is somewhat sim- 
 pler. Only the mature or fatted animals are cut out 
 from the herd, the rest being left to scatter as they 
 like. The separated number goes under the name 
 of the " beef cut/' and this " cut " is held apart and 
 driven on ahead from place to place as the round-up 
 progresses, the beef herd thus growing from day to 
 day until all the range has been worked. The herd is 
 then driven in by easy stages to the shipping point on 
 the railroad, where it is perhaps held until the arrival 
 of the herd from the adjoining district, so that the 
 shippers may be reasonably sure they have in all the 
 beef fit for shipment from their ranges. Then the 
 long train loads of cattle go on to the great markets, 
 and the work of the ranchman proper is done for the 
 season. Perhaps in the shipment of beef there may 
 be a few animals picked up on the range during the 
 beef drive which belong to some owner or owners not 
 represented in the outfits. Such animals, if fit for 
 shipment as beef, are driven along with the main 
 herd and shipped and sold without the owners' knowl- 
 edge, the money being returned to the owners in due 
 time through the inspectors at the markets. Obviously 
 this is better than allowing these animals to run wild 
 and unutilized as strays upon the range, of no profit 
 to the owners or any one else. The common sense 
 and the fairness of the cowman's system prevail on 
 the beef round-up as in the harvesting of the calves. 
 So perfect is this great interdependent system of the 
 
174 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 round-up on the main cattle ranges of to-day that the 
 ranchmen trust to it almost entirely for the determin- 
 ing and the handling of their yearly product, llange 
 riding is now nearly done away with in some of the 
 more populous districts, the cattle ranging in common 
 over the country as they like, with no efforts made 
 to confine them to any given range. All these things 
 are modified by local conditions, and the whole sys- 
 tem of ranching cattle is becoming modified by the 
 advance of time. To-day the rancher uses more and 
 more feed about his ranch. He raises hay for his 
 stock, a bit of grain for his horses in winter time, or 
 perhaps he buys hay or grain of the " grangers " who 
 are moving in about him. Speaking in the original 
 and primitive sense, this is not range work at all. 
 The cowman proper depended solely upon the stand- 
 ing grass for his cattle food, upon the saddle for the 
 assembling of his wealth, upon his own iron for the 
 marking of it. 
 
 If it be now obvious what is the intention of the 
 cowman in the round-up and what the method by 
 which he obtains his purposes, we shall none the less 
 fail of a fair review of this business system if we lose 
 sight of the chief actor in all these operations, the 
 cowpuncher himself. His is the tireless form that rides 
 day after day in rain or shine throughout the long 
 season, collecting the cattle upon their wild pasture 
 ground, and his the undaunted heart to meet all the 
 hardships of one of the hardest callings known to men. 
 From May until November he may be in the saddle, 
 each week growing gaunter and grimmer and more 
 bronzed, his hair and mustache becoming more and 
 more bleached and burned, his eye perhaps more hol- 
 low though not less bright and keen. If he be tired, 
 none may know it; if he be sick, it shall not appear; 
 
THE ROUND-UP. 1Y5 
 
 if he be injured, it must not be confessed until con- 
 fession is unnecessary. His creed is one of hardi- 
 hood, his shibboleth is to dare, his etiquette is not to 
 complain. Such doctrine is not for the weak. It is 
 no place for a timid man, this grinding crush in the 
 middle of the herd, and the cowardly or considerate 
 horseman would better ride elsewhere than in the mad 
 and headlong cross-country chases of the round-up. 
 The goring of a steer, the fall from a pitching horse, 
 the plunge over a cut bank, the crushing of a limb 
 in the press, or the trampling under a thousand hoofs 
 such possibilities face the cowpuncher on the round- 
 up not part of the time, but all the time. He accepts 
 them as matter of course and matter of necessity, and 
 with the ease of custom. Yet he is mortal and may 
 suffer injury. If the injury be not fatal, he accepts 
 it calmly, and waits till he is well again. If a round- 
 up knows a burial, it is not the first one which has been 
 known. Men of action must meet fatality at times, 
 and other men of action will have small time to mourn 
 them. The conditions of life upon the range are se- 
 vere, so severe that had they been known in advance 
 they would have been shunned by hundreds of men 
 who in their ignorance thought themselves fit for cow- 
 boys and learned later that they were not. 
 
 It goes without saying that so hardy and healthy 
 a creature as this cowpuncher must have his amuse- 
 ments, even at his times of hardest work. The round- 
 up is by no means a succession of dreary experiences, 
 for it is there that one will find the most grotesque 
 exhibitions of cowpuncher vitality and cowpuncher 
 merriment. There probably never was a round-up 
 where the boys did not rope a steer for some ambitious 
 cowpuncher to ride bareback for a wager. This feat 
 is not so easy as it looks, for the hide of a steer, or, 
 
176 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 worse yet, the hide of a big fat bull, is loose and roll- 
 ing, so that, as the cowpuncher would say, it "turns 
 plum over between a feller's legs." Sometimes a 
 yearling or a runty little " dogy " is roped for this 
 form of sport, the cowpuncher wreathing his long legs 
 under its belly to its intense disgust and fright, though 
 he probably sits it safely when the ropes are " turned 
 loose " in spite of its antics, for it is the boast of a 
 first-class cowpuncher that he can " ride ary thing 
 that wears ha'r." Sometimes the cowboys enter into 
 competitive tests of skill, trying to see which man can, 
 alone and unassisted, in the shortest space of time, 
 " rope, throw, and tie " a full-grown steer. It would 
 seem almost impossible for one man to perform this 
 feat, yet a good cowpuncher will do it so smoothly 
 and swiftly that neither the steer nor the spectator 
 can tell just how it happened. Yet another little sport 
 on the round-up is sometimes to hitch up a cow and 
 a broncho or " mean " horse together to a wagon, the 
 horse jumping and plunging over the cow to the in- 
 tense delight of these rough souls, to whom the wild- 
 est form of action is the most congenial. 
 
 It is taken for granted that all the men engaging 
 in a round-up are good riders, and if it should chance 
 that any one becomes entangled in an argument with 
 a pitching pony, the event is one of great pleasure to 
 his friends, who gather about him and give him en- 
 couragement of the cowpuncher sort, with abundant 
 suggestions as to how he shall ride and much insist- 
 ence that he must " ride him fair." If the cowpuncher 
 is thrown, he is sure to get more jeers than sympathy, 
 but it is his business not to be thrown. Nowadays the 
 horse herd, always one of the picturesque features 
 about the round-up, is losing some of its old interest 
 with the gradual passing away of the habit of bucking 
 
THE ROUND-UP. 177 
 
 or pitching among the range horses. The horse herd 
 is to-day much graded up, as are the herds of cattle, 
 and the modern cow pony may be quite a respectable 
 bit of horseflesh. It is apt to be a more solid and 
 " chunky " animal than the old Spanish pony, ' just 
 as the cowboy himself is apt to be a more bulky man 
 than the first cowpunchers who came up the Trail. 
 One may note yet other changes. At the strictly mod- 
 ern round-up of to-day one will see few leather 
 " chaps," few heavy hats with wide leather bands, few 
 bucking horses, and no "guns." If we would study 
 the cowpuncher we must do so soon, if we wish ever 
 to see him as he once was at his best; and if we would 
 see a round-up on the range we should not tarry too 
 long, for yearly it becomes more and more restricted, 
 modified, and confined, less and less a wild gathering 
 of the plains, more and more a mere barnyard fixture. 
 The days of the commonplace have come, and well may 
 we mourn the past that has gone by. 
 
 The stirring scenes of the round-up, the rush and 
 whirl of the cutting out, the hurry and noise of the 
 branding, the milling of the main herds, and all 
 the gusty life of the wild melee are things to remem- 
 ber as long as one lives, and they readily invite the 
 multifold descriptive efforts that have been given 
 them. Yet aside from the common or conventional 
 pictures there may arise detached ones, some perhaps 
 from out of the past, perhaps wilder and more pic- 
 turesque than those we may easily find to-day at the 
 focus of affairs upon the range. Memory brings up a 
 little scene far down in the dry and desert region of 
 the Neutral Strip, where once our party of antelope 
 hunters crossed the range where a round-up was in 
 progress. We had noticed the many hoof prints of 
 cattle and horses, all trending in a certain direction, 
 
178 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 and guessed the cause when we saw the long lines of 
 dust rising and stringing out on the hazy and . trem- 
 bling horizon. In that barren and flinty-soiled region 
 water is a rare thing, and he who does not know the 
 water holes for the country a hundred miles about 
 would far better do his antelope hunting elsewhere. 
 Yet we knew we were near the line of the old cattle 
 trails,, and indeed just before noon one day fell upon 
 the wide parallel lines ground out of the hard, gray 
 soil by the thousands of hoofs that had crossed the 
 country in earlier years. Thinking that we should 
 thus come upon water at some time either that day 
 or the next, we followed along the trail, and, as luck 
 had it, within a couple of hours we fell upon a little 
 pool of water by the wayside. It was a very badclish 
 bit of water, muddy, discoloured, trampled, shallow 
 at best, and now hardly sufficient to fill the hoof marks 
 with its greenish-yellow fluid that fairly boiled under 
 the downright rays of the sun. Yet it was water, and 
 such as it was we were glad to find it, since it was the 
 first for more than twenty-four hours. We camped 
 beside it joyfully, feeling that now all the trials of life 
 were past. As we lay there, under such shade as the 
 wagon offered on the blindingly hot day, we saw a 
 trail of dust coming from the line of hills about us, 
 and with the glasses soon made out a squad of mounted 
 men. These came on down to the water hole, and in 
 time were joined there by other men who came from 
 various directions. The party was the mess of a Strip 
 outfit that had been out all day rounding up cattle 
 back of the watering place. The men were hot and 
 tired and covered with dust, but if any one was dis- 
 posed to grumble he kept it to himself. The cook 
 unfastened the tail-gate of his wagon, and in a twin- 
 kling had a kitchen table and pantry right at hand, 
 
^N 
 
 SITYJ 
 
 THE KOUND-UP. 179 
 
 with flour and meat within reach. Some of the boys 
 kicked together enough of the abundant prairie chips 
 the only fuel within sixty miles of that point and 
 soon the preparations for the hurried meal were in 
 progress. When the cook wanted water for his coffee 
 he walked to the pool in which, by the way, several 
 dead carcasses were lying and, picking out the point 
 where the water seemed clearest, he calmly dipped up 
 his coffeepot full and returned without comment to 
 the fire. No one said a word about the quality of the 
 water, which really was of a sort to make one shudder 
 at the memory years later, and if the coffee was not 
 good no one complained of it. From the mess box the 
 cook produced his tin dishes, his knives and forks, and 
 table was spread without cloth flat on the dusty and 
 hoof-beaten soil. The heat was glaring, and in it, 
 without suspicion of shade, the men sat, their flannel 
 shirts covered over the shoulders with the white dust 
 of the plains, their broad hats pushed back upon their 
 foreheads as they ate. It was a scene for some better 
 painter or writer than has yet appeared, this dusty, 
 weather-beaten, self-reliant little body of men. Each 
 face of the circle comes to mind clearly even after 
 years of time. They were silent, dignified fellows, 
 these men, not talking much among themselves or with 
 us, though they offered us of what they had, we hav- 
 ing apparently convinced them that we were not " on 
 the rustle/' we in turn sharing with them what our 
 mess box offered, as it happened some fresh game, 
 which was much appreciated. 
 
 Before the meal began each man unsaddled his horse 
 and turned it loose upon the prairie, where it first went 
 to water and then set to feeding on the short sun-burned 
 grass. When it came time to leave camp, the horses 
 were rounded up by the herder, a young boy not over fif- 
 
180 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 teen years of age, whom all the men called " Kid." In 
 their rough way they seemed fond of the boy, who had 
 evidently shown the quality demanded on the plains, 
 and as the boy gathered up his horses into the rope 
 corral made by two or three cow ponies and a couple 
 of men as supports, the round-up boss looked on at 
 his businesslike movements with approval, and re- 
 marked aside to one of the men, " That's a d n good 
 kid all right." To which the other replied with an ap- 
 proving grunt. The Kid rounded up his charges 
 swiftly, and got them into a many-coloured mass of 
 mingling heads and tossing manes within the confines 
 of the rope corral, after which the work of roping 
 the mounts followed. The Kid begged of the foreman 
 the privilege of doing the roping, and the latter, smil- 
 ing in rough fashion, gave him what he asked, not 
 laughing at his failures, but giving him a bit of ad- 
 vice about his work now and then when he had a spe- 
 cially wily pony to capture from out the moving and 
 plunging bunch of wild range horses. It was a good 
 instance of the chivalry sometimes shown by stronger 
 natures to ones weaker or less skilled, and it afforded 
 also a good example of the development of the cowboy 
 from youth to manhood, from inexperience to skill. 
 
 Presently each man had out his mount, and had 
 saddled the grunting and complaining beast in the 
 effective fashion of the plains. There was a little mild 
 pitching, but not enough to interest the tired cow- 
 punchers. In a trice the rope corral was down and 
 the ropes coiled at the saddle horns of their owners. 
 The cook had his mess wagon slapped shut, and the 
 teamster his team " hooked up." The men rode away 
 as silent as they came, the foreman and some of those 
 passing most closely to us saying as they rode by, 
 "So long, fellers." JSTo one looked back as he rode 
 
THE ROUND-UP. 181 
 
 away, for this would have been a bit of curiosity not 
 in good form on the range. They passed away into 
 the edge of the rim of hills, and we saw them no more. 
 Such is one picture of the range, and it shows the 
 cowboy not as a devil-may-care, roistering fellow, full of 
 strange oaths and uncouth conduct, but, as he should 
 perhaps better be seen, as a steady, hard-working, 
 methodical man, able in his calling, faithful in his 
 duties, and prompt in their fulfilment. These men 
 were grimy with toil of a most exacting sort. Their 
 fare was coarse and common, and even the first neces- 
 sary of comfort was denied them. They were rudely 
 clad, and all armed to the last item, for that was a 
 country where arms were at times needful. Yet hard 
 as was their apparent lot, and rude as they who shared 
 it, their simple and uncomplaining hardihood and 
 self-control, their dignity, and their generous conduct 
 to the younger member of the party left a lasting im- 
 pression perhaps a good one of its kind of the cow- 
 boy as he is in actual life upon the range. 
 
 13 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 DEIFTS AND STAMPEDES. 
 
 THE life of the cowboy in the early days of the 
 West was a series of pictures of unusual and striking 
 themes. The panorama of the plains dealt with no 
 small things for subjects, not the turn of a gown nor 
 the poise of a fan nor the cast of a gesture, but with 
 things of gravity and import. The wars of man with 
 brute, of brute with Nature, of man with brute and 
 Nature both, such were the topics of that vivid canvas. 
 It was a time of large actions, large pictures. 
 
 One can see it now, the great cold landscape of the 
 cattle range in winter. It is a picture of scant lighting 
 and low values. The monochrome of winter, the blue- 
 gray of cold desolation, oppresses it all. The white 
 hills set on the farther edge are cold and bluish. The 
 sky above is forbidding with its sunless gray. The 
 dust-grimed snow in the coulees is gray, and the un- 
 covered soil of the wind-swept hill is gray and cheer- 
 less. Not a rift of light falls anywhere, . not a touch 
 of sun to soften the hard, metallic composition. All 
 the greens were gone long ago. The ragged and 
 clutching hand of a sagebush reaches up in despair 
 from the uncompromising desert, but it, too, is gray 
 gray with the withered spirit of the iron earth and 
 icy air. The sky is even in its colours, except that 
 now and then there scuds across it a strange and 
 
 182 
 
DRIFTS AND STAMPEDES. 183 
 
 ominous thing, a wisp of flying white, misplaced and 
 unregulated. For the air is altogether still. No 
 breath waves the mane of this pony which stands on 
 the little ridge, its head up and its gaze bent fixedly 
 upon the far horizon. There is something strange in 
 the air. It is not so extremely cold, but the silence 
 is so deep, so startling. Back of the very Gilence there 
 is something, something of portent, of warning. Now 
 and again a long shivering moan goes across the plain, 
 borne from no one knows what origin. The image 
 of dread is stalking forth this day. All animate nature 
 feels it. Whither are going these great gray wolves, 
 slouching along, their tails low, their heads over their 
 shoulders, looking backward at this unseen pursuing 
 thing? They do not trouble the cattle now, nor do 
 the cattle fear them as they pass through. What, then, 
 is it that the cattle dread, so that they sniff and snort 
 and toss their heads, looking wildly toward the north 
 as did this pony now? Written on this inscrutable dull 
 sky there must be some awful sight invisible to human 
 eyes. These wild creatures of the plains see it. They 
 feel the dread. They know their weakness to meet 
 this coming thing. They moan, the note of despair 
 in their voices. They start now and then and run 
 swiftly for a short distance, then turn and come back, 
 pitching their heads high and bellowing. They lower 
 their heads and shake them, and mutter hoarsely, 
 with their muzzles near the ground, emitting their 
 breath in sharp puffs. 
 
 Look! The breath of the cattle has grown white. 
 It shines like fresh steam in the air. A moment ago 
 the air was warm. And now that weird white scud 
 flitted again across the sky, across the earth rather, 
 low down, flying like some wraith of the mountains. 
 Back there, upon the horizon where the cattle have 
 
THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 looked so long, there arises a tiny cloud of white, 
 soft, fleecy, innocent as the garb of a babe. Alas! it 
 is the shroud of the range. It is the vestment of death 
 for thousands of these creatures here! 
 
 It comes, this little cloud, rising and growing and 
 spreading as though it were some vast curtain drawn 
 quickly up and forward. Before it run long, ragged 
 hissings in the air, and on the edge of these hissings 
 fly always these scuds of the sky, little venomous spirits 
 of fury, as they may now plainly be seen to be. With 
 the mutterings of the gathering cattle, which now 
 crowd together in the blind wish for aid and comfort, 
 there blends the first low voice of the storm, a far-off 
 sighing wail, of cadence at first indicative of anything 
 but malice. This voice rises and then falls and is silent 
 for a moment. It rises again, nearer and changed in 
 import. It dominates the mingled voices of the herd, 
 now crowded together, their feet scuffling, their heads 
 thrown high and confusedly. Again the storm speaks, 
 this time very near, and as it falls a great sigh goes 
 over the breast of Nature, the sigh for that which is 
 to happen. It is the last warning, as useless as the 
 others. The storm has crept on until it is sure of its 
 prey. There is a whirring, rasping crash as the blades 
 of the wind meet and sweep on, and then a wall of icy 
 white smites the shivering beasts as they stand hud- 
 dled and waiting for that which they know is doom! 
 
 On the narrowed horizon, leaning forward as they 
 ride and coming to the herd as fast as their horses 
 can bear them, are two figures, the men of the line 
 camp nearest to this spot. If they can head the cattle 
 into the broken country beyond perhaps they can find 
 shelter enough to stop the drift. If they start straight 
 down before the wind, nothing can stop them till they 
 reach the first fences many miles below. It will be 
 
DRIFTS AND STAMPEDES. 185 
 
 the emptying of the range! Once under the hills be- 
 fore the drift begins, and perhaps there will be shelter 
 enough to enable the cattle to live through the storm. 
 Perhaps they, too, can live through it in some way; 
 they have not paused to ponder how. Well enough 
 they know that anything they do must be done at once. 
 Well enough they know, perhaps, that every human re- 
 gard for their own safety would take them just the 
 other way, back to the little dugout in the bank which 
 they have left. But at least they will try to save a part 
 of the herd which has formed here. They must be 
 young men. Old hands would know that when the bliz- 
 zard has set in there is no power on earth that can stop 
 the drifting of the cattle. 
 
 And now the storm bursts with a blinding, smoth- 
 ering wave of white, fine snow, driven to atoms by 
 the flat wind that hurls it on. This poudre of the 
 north cuts like a set of knives revolving on the skin. 
 No man, no creature can face it. The stings of the 
 thousands of whips smite unceasingly, all this under 
 the exhaust of the storm, which steals away the breath 
 so that one must turn down wind to live. The air has 
 grown icy cold at once. All around the world is now 
 blotted out. The eye strikes a continuous dancing, 
 glittering whirl of particles of ice, which confuse and 
 bewilder with their incessant glinting flight. All 
 sense of direction is lost at once. There is but one 
 direction, and that is with the wind. The ground 
 itself is almost gone. The mountains, the hills, the 
 ridges, the coulees have all disappeared. Only close at 
 the feet of the horses and cattle can one see a bit of 
 earth, this veiled by the suffusing white breath of the 
 animals, turned into vapour on the instant that it 
 strikes the arctic air. 
 
 At first the cattle turn their backs 'to the wind, 
 
186 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 and so stand huddled and motionless, the little calves 
 pressing deep into the mass of the shivering creatures 
 and bleating piteously. In a few moments the whole 
 herd is covered with a blanket of white. The two 
 men who are now up with the herd strive to break 
 apart this blanket of white, riding along the edges 
 with bent heads, seeking to open out the cattle so that, 
 they can get them moving. It is useless! The white 
 veil shuts down too sternly. The men can no longer 
 breathe. Their eyes are blinded by the stinging riffs 
 of fine ice. They are separated in the storm. A shout 
 is answered by a shout, but though the one ride to- 
 ward the other as best he may he can not find him 
 now, for ever the voice calling seems to shift and evade 
 as though the spirits used it mockingly. Crack! crack! 
 comes the note of the six-shooter, but how small, how 
 far away it is! Again and again, and again also the an- 
 swer! These two men have not lost their heart. They 
 will yet find each other. They will turn the herd, they 
 two alone, here on the wide, white plain, in this mys- 
 tery of moving white! But where was the last shot? 
 It sounded half a mile away. It might have been a 
 hundred yards. 
 
 There comes a mightier wail of the wind, a more 
 vindictive rush of the powdery snow. All trace of 
 the landscape is now absolutely gone. The cowboy 
 has wheeled his horse, but he knows not now which 
 way he heads. The hills may be this way or that. A 
 strange, numb, confused mental condition comes to 
 him. He crouches down in the saddle, his head droop- 
 ing, as he raises his arm yet again and fires another 
 shot, almost his last. He dreams he hears an answer, 
 and he calls again hoarsely. The scream of the wind 
 and the rumbling of the voices of the cattle drown 
 out all other sounds. He is in with the herd. His 
 
DRIFTS AND STAMPEDES. 187 
 
 partner is in with it too. But neither he nor they both 
 will ever turn or direct this herd. This he knows with 
 sinking heart. They are lost, all lost together, out 
 here upon the pitiless plains. And there are firesides 
 of which these men may think! 
 
 The herd moves! It recks not human guidance 
 now, for the storm alone is its final guide and master. 
 The storm orders it to move, and it obeys. With low 
 moans and groanings of suffering and of fear there 
 ensues a waving movement of the long blanket of 
 white which has enshrouded the close-packed mass 
 of cattle. They stagger and stop, doubting and dread- 
 ing. They go on again and stop, and again they 
 sway and swing forward, the horns rattling close upon 
 each other, the heads drooping, the gait one of misery 
 and despair. The drift has begun! 
 
 Lost in the drift are the two boys, and they know 
 they may as well follow as stop. Indeed, they dare 
 not stop, for to stop is to die. Down from their horses 
 they go and battle on foot among the dull-eyed cattle. 
 Over their hearts creeps always that heavy, wondering, 
 helpless feeling. They freeze, but soon cease to know 
 they freeze. Their stiff legs stumble, and they wonder 
 why. Their mouths are shut fast by the ice. The 
 eyes of the cattle are frozen over entirely by the ice 
 that gathers on their eyelids, and their hair, long and 
 staring, shows in frosty filaments about their heads 
 and necks. Icicles hang upon their jaws. They moan 
 and sigh, now and then a deep rumbling bellow com- 
 ing from the herd. The cows low sadly. The little 
 calves bawl piteously. But on and on goes the drift, 
 all keeping together for a time. And with it some- 
 where are the two cowboys, who should have known 
 the import of the blizzard on the plains. 
 
 This horrible icy air can not long be endured by 
 
188 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 any living being, and soon the herd begins to string 
 out into a long line, the weaker ones falling to the 
 rear. If the cattle be strong and well-fed, they can 
 endure any cold, but starvation has here been long 
 at work. The horrible and inexorable law of Nature 
 is going on. The strongest alone may survive. Those 
 which fall back do not at first stop. They stagger on 
 as far as they can. A little calf falls down, sinking 
 first to its knees, and then dropping stiffly, its head still 
 down the wind. Its mother stays with it, pushing at 
 it with her own frozen muzzle. It can not get to its 
 feet. The mother looks after the indistinct forms 
 slowly disappearing in the driving mist of white, but 
 goes no farther on. In the spring they will find the 
 mother and calf together. Farther to the south are 
 the bunches of yearlings which were weak and thin 
 of flesh. Then come the heifers and. cows and steers 
 as they fell out and back in order in this white cold 
 mist of the great drift that cleared the range from the 
 foothills to the railroad fences. In places the follow- 
 ers of the drift may find gullies or deep ravines packed 
 with carcasses of animals which here met their death. 
 When the wind had swept the coulees full of snow the 
 treacherous white surface looked all alike to the dull 
 eyes of the drifting cattle. They walked into the 
 yielding snow and fell one above the other in a horri- 
 ble confusion, those above trampling to death those 
 beneath until all was mingled in a smother and crush 
 of passing life. Again there may be noted a spot 
 where, under the lee of some cut bank or bluff, the 
 cattle paused for shelter from the storm. Here the 
 snow piled up about them, drifting high around into 
 an icy barricade, until they had left but a tiny feeding 
 ground, swept bare by the eddying winds. Here, 
 hemmed in and soon without food, they stood and 
 
DRIFTS AND STAMPEDES. 189 
 
 starved by inches, perhaps living for days or weeks 
 before the end came. Here, had rescue been attempted, 
 they would have charged furiously, with such strength 
 as they had left, any human being daring to come near, 
 for the greater the strait of the range animal the 
 greater the unreasoning rage with which it resists all 
 effort at its succour. 
 
 All day and all night and into the next day, per- 
 haps, the cattle drift, their numbers less and less with 
 each passing hour, leaving behind a trail of shapeless 
 heaps, thick and thicker as the long hours drag by, 
 the numbers of the survivors growing still fewer and 
 fewer, weaker and more weak. Out of the whole herd 
 which started there are but a few hundreds or thou- 
 sands which come to the fences of the railroad, seventy 
 miles from where the drift began. Here it ends 
 ends in a row of heaped-up carcasses along the wires 
 that held the remnants of the herd from further 
 travel; ends as you may see as you gaze from the car 
 window in the spring as you are whirled across the 
 great plains ends in a blanket of hide a hundred 
 miles in length. The skinning parties which follow 
 the drift when the weather has grown warmer use the 
 wire fences as their drying racks. 
 
 And of the men who were caught in the storm? 
 One they found in a coulee back toward the beginning 
 of the drift, where he crawled under a little ledge 
 and thought he could weather out the storm. He had 
 no fire nor fuel nor light of any kind, and neither 
 had he any food. He cared nothing for these things. 
 He felt cheerful, and he fell asleep, dreaming. The 
 other man went much farther Before he lay down. 
 Then, resourceful to the last, he shot and killed a 
 steer in a little hollow where the wind was least. They 
 found him crouched up close to the body of the ani- 
 
190 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 mal, his arm between its fore legs and partly about 
 its neck, his face hid in the hair of the creature's chest. 
 But the blood of both had turned to ice before they fell. 
 In the spring the sky is blue and repentant, and 
 the wind sings softly in the prairie grasses. But one 
 can not forget that awful picture of the blue-gray time, 
 and ever he hears the death songs of the legions of 
 the air which urged on the herds in their solemn march 
 into annihilation. Such is one picture of the range. 
 
 There is another picture of a strenuous sort. This 
 time it is summer, and it is at night. At evening, when 
 the great herd of trail cattle bedded down on the hill- 
 side, the sky was clear and the stars were shining 
 luminously large in the pure air of the plains. It 
 needed an old plainsman to know what this foreboding 
 quiet meant, this ominous hush, and he alone would 
 have noted anxiously the dark line of cloud along the 
 horizon. Any of these hardy riders could tell you a 
 storm was breeding, but they have seen many storms 
 and do not fear them. The cook whistles as steadily 
 and discordantly as ever as he washes his dishes in 
 the dusk, swearing fluently when a stray whisk of air 
 blows the ashes out of his fire pit into his eyes. The 
 cook pulls the wagon sheet tight to-night, however, 
 and he makes his own bed inside the wagon. The 
 night herder turns up his collar as he goes on watch 
 with the horse herd. The drive boss sits with his 
 knees between his hands smoking a pipe, which glows 
 dully in the darkening night. The camp is quiet. 
 All about come up the faint night sounds of the plains. 
 The men are tired, and one by one they unroll their 
 blankets and lie out in huge cocoons, each with his 
 head in the hollow of his saddle and his hat pulled 
 down over his face. Jim, the foreman of the drive, 
 
DRIFTS AND STAMPEDES. 191 
 
 does not go to sleep just yet. He sits smoking and 
 watching. Now and then a wandering whiff of wind 
 blows the ashes in a fiery little stream out of his pipe 
 bowl. Jim puts an extra man on the night watch, 
 who departs into the dark, singing softly to himself. 
 
 Jim sits thus for some time with his knees up be- 
 tween his hands, perhaps nodding now and then, but 
 afraid to go to sleep. He notes the steady play of the 
 lightning on the rising bank of clouds, and before an 
 hour has passed he begins to hear the low, incessant 
 muttering of the thunder. In half an hour more he 
 is going down the line, kicking the long cocoons with 
 the toe of his boot and calling out: 
 
 " Tumble out, fellers! Git up! There's goin' to be 
 a hell of a storm." 
 
 With grunts of protest the cowpunchers roll out 
 of their blankets and sit up in the night, rubbing 
 their eyes. They see the bank of cloud now reaching 
 over them, and hear the steady roar of the thunder 
 approaching. The wind begins to sob in the grass, 
 and little particles of dust go whirling by. The head 
 of the cook pokes itself out from the wagon. 
 
 " What in hell! " says the cook. 
 
 " She's goin' to be hell all right, cookie," says a 
 voice cheerfully. " You better picket your dough- 
 pan." 
 
 " I would not live al-1-lwa-y," comes the faint voice 
 of the night herder as he makes his rounds. 
 
 " Saddle up, fellers! " says Jim. " There's shore 
 goin' to be hell a-poppin' here before long. If they 
 ever break out of here they'll run to hell an' gone with 
 us to-night." 
 
 " That's right, pitch, you wall-eyed son of misery! " 
 says an injured voice in the dark, from where some 
 cowpuncher is having an argument with his pony, 
 
192 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 which resents the saddle thrown across its back in the 
 dark. 
 
 " Oh, then, Susannah, don't yer cry fer me! " sings 
 another voice, as the owner of it, wrapped in his yel- 
 low slicker, gets into his saddle and turns toward the 
 herd. 
 
 " Good-bye, cookie! " calls another. " You can git 
 breakfast fer us on the Cimarron, I reckon/' 
 
 They all take up their round about the herd, fall- 
 ing into their work with the philosophy of their call- 
 ing, which accepts things as they come. As they ride 
 in line along the edge of the herd the thunder is 
 booming loudly, and the rain begins to fall in heavy, 
 irregular drops. Then suddenly with a gusty rush 
 the torrents of the air break loose, and a solid wall of 
 rain sweeps over the place, hiding in a whirling mist 
 the outlines of men and animals. The thunder now 
 bursts with deafening volume. The cattle have sprung 
 to their feet and now push about among themselves 
 uneasily, their long horns clanking together in the 
 darkness. They are wet, but the rain is not chilling, 
 and in a moment the cloud-burst is over and gone, and 
 nothing remains of the storm but the lightning and 
 the wind. The sky lightens queerly, so that objects 
 may be faintly seen, men riding along the edge of the 
 herd, keeping the cattle back and closing them up. 
 Sounds of confused sort come from among the cattle, 
 grumblings and mutterings, mingling with the chant- 
 ing of the cowboys riding. The storm is nearly past, 
 but the whole air is alive with electricity. The dis- 
 charge of the thunder is as the noise of cannon. The 
 lightning falls not in jagged lines, but in burst ing 
 balls of flame, which detonate with terrible reports. 
 Along the tips of the horns of the cattle the faint 
 flames play in weird way, as the fires of St. Elmo upon 
 
DRIFTS AND STAMPEDES. 193 
 
 the spars of a ship caught in a storm at sea. The men 
 still hold the line, calling to the cattle, which are now 
 clattering and shuffling about in a way not pleasant 
 to hear, though still they do not break into any con- 
 certed rush. Now and again a start is made by some 
 frightened animal, but the nearest cowboy turns it 
 back, riding against the head of each break showing 
 toward the edge. The herd is shifting ground a little, 
 edging a trifle down wind. This brings it nearer to 
 the camping place, nearer also to the wagon of the 
 cook, which stands with its white cover broken loose 
 and napping upon the gale. There is a call of a voice, 
 which begins to shout out something. 
 
 But this voice, and all the voices, and all the other 
 sounds are swallowed in a mighty, dreadful roar. The 
 white cover of the wagon has broken loose at the 
 other end, the rope parting with a crack like the re- 
 port of a gun. The wagon sheet whips madly up and 
 down as though with deliberate intent of malice, and 
 then goes sailing off across the prairie. No studied 
 effort of evil could have been direr at this very mo- 
 ment! The herd, keyed up to the last pitch of nerv- 
 ousness and only held by the utmost efforts of the 
 cowboys, needs only this devil's device to set it off. 
 "Good God A'mighty! " bursts out the foreman. But 
 even as he shouts he, in common with every other 
 man of the outfit, digs in his spurs and rides for the 
 head of the herd, the front of this plunging, rush- 
 ing, stumbling, falling mass of panic-stricken creatures 
 which are off in the curse of the drive the dreaded 
 stampede in the dark! 
 
 The sound of the rushing hoofs of near ten thou- 
 sand cattle is imposing enough at any time, but heard 
 mingled and confused in the running in the dark it is 
 something terrible. A loud cracking of hoofs comes 
 
194: THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 through the fog of sound, and the mad rattling of 
 the great horns swung together in the crush as the 
 cattle struggle to head out of the suffocating press 
 behind them and on all sides. Mad indeed is this 
 chase to-night, and far will be its ending, this ride 
 with the accompaniment of the booming thunder and 
 with the ripping flight of the lightning for its only 
 beacon. Ride, Jim! Ride, Springtime, and Tex., and 
 Curley, and Kid, and Cherokee, and all the rest of 
 you! Now if ever you must be men of proof! Into 
 the rattle of it, up to the head of it, press, spur, 
 crowd! Shoot into their faces, frighten, them back, 
 turn them aside, ride into them, over them, but ride 
 fast and thoughtless of yourself! There is no possi- 
 bility of taking care. The pony must do it all. The 
 pony knows what a stumble means. The herd will 
 roll over horse and man and crush them as if they 
 were but prairie flowers. The ground is rough, but 
 there must be no blunder. Ah, but there was! Some- 
 thing happened there! There was a stumble! There 
 was a cry, smothered; but all that was half a mile 
 back. The herd sweeps on. 
 
 Into the thick of the leaders of the herd the cow- 
 punchers crowd in from the flanks, meeting there the 
 men who were swept away in the first mad rush of the 
 cattle. They can not now escape from this position, 
 nor do they seek to do so, but ride with the stampede, 
 their horses with ears flat, struggling on at top speed, 
 bounding from side to side to escape the jostling of 
 a steer, leaping ahead when the press clears in front 
 for a moment. Through the noise of the pounding 
 hoofs comes the panting of the cattle and the sobbing 
 but valiant breath of the brave little horses which 
 carry these wild and reckless men. A faint shout is 
 heard at times or the " Whoa-o-o-ope! " of a voice call- 
 
DEIFTS AND STAMPEDES. 195 
 
 ing to the cattle in attempt at soothing them. Now 
 and then may be seen an arm thrown up and waved 
 in gesture to a near-by rider, or at times may shoot 
 forth the flash of the revolver as some daring man 
 heads across the front and tries to frighten the herd 
 into swinging from its course. 
 
 The thundering hoofs now seem to pound upon 
 harder ground. The broken country near the bluffs 
 of the river is at hand. Down into gully and ravine 
 go men and horses and cattle in the dark, and welter 
 out of it upon the other side as best they may. Many 
 an animal goes headlong in the dark, but it is not 
 noticed or deplored. Each object makes a tiny rock 
 to stem the flood of pouring cattle. But suddenly, 
 without warning, the whole front of the herd plunges 
 down utterly out of view! It has dropped down into 
 the earth, has been swallowed up bodily! Some of the 
 cowpunchers went down too. At the brink of the 
 bluff the following numbers of the cattle pile up and 
 back in a horrid mass, seeking to crowd back, but yet 
 pushed on by the herd behind. The remnant of the 
 herd splits, and turns along the side of the bluff. 
 The remaining cowboys follow, pressing and crowding 
 in, still spurring up to the heads of the panting cattle 
 and seeking to turn them. The head of the herd 
 finally swerves, it turns gradually more and more. 
 The cowboys are still in front, shouting, crowding, 
 firing their revolvers across the faces of the cattle, and 
 urging them back and away from the bluffs. The 
 cattle turn now and traverse a circle. A moment later 
 and they round the same circle, their ranks now closer 
 together. The circle grows smaller and smaller. The 
 mill is begun. Round and round they go until they 
 no longer seek to break away, but stand and clatter 
 and shuffle and pant. Round and round the mill the 
 
196 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 cowboys ride., talking to the cattle now in proficient 
 profanity, but doing nothing to startle the terrorized 
 animals into a further flight. Gradually the panic 
 passes. At length the cowpuncher takes a chew of 
 tobacco and pulls up his pony even from the walk in 
 which he has been going about the herd. 
 
 The men who were at the head of the herd at the 
 place where it went over the cut bank had no warning 
 and no alternative. The ponies leaped with the cattle,, 
 and all took their chances together at the foot of the 
 bank, a dozen feet in height. But here the ground 
 was soft, and it was but a few steps to the water. In 
 a moment the river was full of struggling, frantic crea- 
 tures, all swimming for their lives, and all acting 
 blindly except the cowpunchers, who retained their 
 grim energy and had no thought of giving up their 
 lives. These swam clear of the crush of cattle and 
 dropped down to a bar below. Scattered animals came 
 drifting down stream and took the shore as they had 
 done. Many dead cattle floated past the bar, and at 
 the foot of the bank a heap of dead and crippled ones 
 lay tangled. Not till morning, of course, could the 
 task of roping and pulling out the cattle from the 
 water and from under the banks begin. These cow- 
 punchers as well as they were able rode back to the 
 path of the "split," and so found the main mill and 
 joined their companions. 
 
 " I shore thought I was a angel when we took the 
 bmik," says Curley, wiping his face with his wet neck- 
 erchief. 
 
 "Where's the Kid?" asks Jim gruffly. 
 
 " Dunno," is the answer. " I ain't seen him no- 
 wheres near me." 
 
 It is hard to tell where any one may be at this time, 
 past midnight, with the storm just muttering it 
 
DRIFTS AND STAMPEDES. 197 
 
 away. Some of the cattle may be running yet, and 
 some of the cowboys may be with them. It may be 
 twenty miles away that the last cowpuncher will pull 
 up. The cattle will be scattered over miles and miles 
 of country, and it will take days to get them together, 
 less the losses which are sure to ensue upon the stam- 
 pede. Nothing remains to be done now by those who 
 are assembled but to hold their remnant of the herd till 
 morning. And morning finds the men still holding 
 the herd, their eyes now heavy and red, their faces 
 haggard, their clothing covered with the mud of the 
 mad ride in the night. A detail is made to keep watch 
 here, while the rest of the men go back to camp to 
 bring on the cook wagon and pick up the frayed ends 
 of the rout. As these men ride in they see occasional 
 scattered groups of cattle, which are turned back to- 
 ward the main body. No one says much, for all are 
 tired. As they pass on toward camp, or rather toward 
 where camp was, a draggled figure rides up from out 
 a little gully one of the boys who has followed off 
 a bunch of cattle by himself, and so been widely sep- 
 arated from the others. 
 
 " Hello, Cherokee! " says Jim. " Where's the Kid? 
 We can't none of us find him nowhere." 
 
 " I ain't seen him neither," says Cherokee. " There 
 ain't nobody at all been with me." 
 
 But as they ride on along the torn and trampled 
 trail left by the cattle in their flight of the night be- 
 fore, they all see the Kid see him, every one of them, 
 before any one of them dares to say a word. They 
 know what is this dark mass lying on the ground on 
 ahead. Something strange chokes every throat, and 
 each man adds an oath to the heap of pity as they 
 draw up by the body. The boy's face, washed white 
 and clean by the drenching rain which has taken away 
 U 
 
198 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 the grime of the ride, lies upturned in the morning 
 sunlight, which kisses it gently. His hair, sodden with 
 the flood, trails off into the miry earth, of which he 
 was a part, and into which he is now to return. His 
 pony, with its fore legs broken, lifts its head as high 
 as it can and whinnies. 
 
 " Kill the horse, Bud! " says Jim at last, as they 
 stand about the straightened figure of the boy. A 
 shot is given the pony, and the saddle stripped from 
 its back. Jim mounts his horse, and reaches down to 
 the burden which Springtime hands up to him from 
 the ground. He takes the dead boy in his arms, riding 
 with his reins loose over the horn of his saddle and 
 holding up his burden carefully across his lap. He 
 says nothing till he gets near camp, muttering then 
 only, "It's too dd bad!" 
 
 When they get to camp the cook has breakfast 
 ready, such as it is. The flour and sugar and every- 
 thing else is wetted to the point of dissolution by the 
 rain. More talkative than his fellows of the saddle, 
 the cook breaks into loud exclamations of lamentation 
 when he sees what is this strange burden the foreman 
 is carrying. 
 
 " Shut up, d n you! " says Jim to the cook. He 
 knows that it was not the fault of the cook that all 
 this trouble occurred, but he feels that he has to blame 
 somebody for something, in order to relieve his own 
 overburdened heart. " It's yore own fault," he says to 
 the cook, "lettin' that wagon cover blow off. You 
 do it again, an', d n you, I'll kill you! " 
 
 It is primitive, crude, and hard enough, this lit lie 
 group here on the muddy plains this morning. For 
 them there is not a voice of comfort, not a sign of hoi]), 
 not a token of hope. The tired, worn faces show hard 
 and grim in the unflattering light of morning as they 
 
DRIFTS AND STAMPEDES. 199 
 
 stand about, some holding the bridles of their horses, 
 some leaning against the wagon or sitting on the wagon 
 tongue. There is no house nor home here nor any- 
 where near here. It is a hundred miles to a ranch, 
 two hundred to a town. There is no church nor 
 minister. Not one hypocrite is to be found in this knot 
 of rude men, and as none has professed any religion 
 before, so none does so now. Jim, who is the leader, 
 straightens out the boy's limbs as he lays him upon 
 the ground and spreads a blanket over him. 
 
 " Git breakfast over! " he says grimly. And after 
 breakfast the shovel of the cook which dug the trench 
 for the fire digs the grave for the boy. There is no 
 funeral service. He is buried in his blankets, with 
 his hat over his face and his boots and spurs in place, 
 as he slept when he was alive. A soldier of the plains, 
 he dared the risks of his calling, and met them like 
 a man. Such is another picture of the plains. 
 
CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 A DAY AT THE RANCH. 
 
 DURING days, or perhaps weeks, of the busy season, 
 when most of the men are absent on the round-ups, 
 the door of the home ranch may be closed. It may 
 be closed, but it is not locked, for on the frontier 
 locks and bars are unknown. The necessities of a 
 country make its customs, and in the remote parts of 
 the plains and mountains hospitality is practically a 
 necessity. The traveller is perhaps far from home, 
 and is hungry or athirst when he falls upon the cabin 
 of some man to whom he is a stranger. When that 
 occurs the stranger goes into the unlocked house, helps 
 himself to the bacon and flour, cooks his meal, and 
 departs as he came. In time he may repay the cour- 
 tesy himself at his own cabin and perhaps in the same 
 way. There was a touch of feudal largeness and lib- 
 erality in some of the customs of the earlier cattle 
 days, and the fact that they were necessary rendered 
 them none the less beautiful. Perhaps the state of 
 Ihe social relations among the cattle men of the early 
 range was approached most closely by the life of the 
 great Southern plantations in ante le/ltini days, from 
 which, indeed, it may in part have had its origin. 
 The ways of the South always flavoured the life of 
 the cattle country, whether in Texas or Wyoming, far 
 more than the ways of the North and East. Perhaps 
 
 200 
 
A DAY AT THE RANCH. 201 
 
 the zest which many Eastern men found in ranch life 
 was the zest of novelty, and this a novelty to be meas- 
 ured by degrees of latitude and not of longitude. We 
 must credit the South with the origin and establish- 
 ment of the cattle trade, and with many of its most 
 interesting, its broadest, and most beautiful features. 
 The more exact methods, the better system, the per- 
 fection of detail, and utilization of things once neg- 
 lected came from the North, and came, alas! with a 
 shock fatal to some of the customs of the good old 
 days. In the past the lock of the ranch door was 
 nothing but a rude wooden latch, as easily opened 
 from without as from within. To-day there may be 
 iron padlocks upon some of the doors of the houses on 
 the range. 
 
 There is no lock upon the door of our ranch house, 
 whether it be empty or occupied. Such as it is, it con- 
 stitutes the only home the cowboy has. Hither he 
 returns from the more active duties of the round-up 
 or the drive, and takes up the less exacting routine 
 of everyday ranch life. Of work proper, as a farm 
 labourer would consider it, the cowboy has little real 
 conception. He is a horseman and nothing more, 
 and has little inclination for any work that can not 
 be done in the saddle. Thus, if he feels obliged to 
 go out for wood, he goes out on horseback, and his idea 
 of the correct way to get a log of wood to camp is to 
 drag it at the end of his lariat. If a wagon is mired 
 down in the quicksands of a soft crossing, the cowboy 
 who comes to the aid of the driver does not dismount 
 and get himself muddy in the labour of getting the 
 wagon out, but makes fast his rope to some holding 
 place on the wagon and trusts to his saddle girths for 
 the rest, knowing that his plucky little pony will in 
 this way pull a considerable load, though it would 
 
202 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 break its neck in rebellion if hitched up to the wagon. 
 The cowboy has a mild contempt for all walking and 
 driving men. In his own line of work he can be a 
 miracle of tireless energy. Out of that line he is a 
 prodigy of more or less good-natured laziness. 
 
 We may suppose, then, that a day of ordinary 
 ranch life is not one of great activity or haste. The 
 chores which the cowpuncher considers within his 
 province are very few and simple. If in the winter 
 some horses are kept up under feed in the ranch sta- 
 bles, he may feed his own horse, but no other man's. 
 In the later days of ranch life the cowboy has come to 
 be more of a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, 
 more interested in the haying operations and other 
 portions of the ranch economy, but primarily and prop- 
 erly the genuine cowpuncher had to do, as he under- 
 stood it, only with cows, which were to be handled 
 by himself only while he was in the saddle. It was 
 the chief concern of the rancher in the early days to 
 see that his cattle had a fair show in the struggle with 
 Nature. Efforts toward ameliorating the conditions 
 of the animals were very crude and little considered. 
 Food and shelter were things which the cattle were 
 supposed to find for themselves. The ranch proper 
 has none of the grinding detail of the farm, and the 
 cowboy proper is as different from the farm labourer 
 as a wild hawk from a domestic fowl. 
 
 The day at the ranch begins early, for by daybreak 
 the men have slept enough. There is little to induce 
 them to sit up late at night. Sometimes a trapper or 
 wolfer stops at the ranch, and there may be spirited 
 games inaugurated over the well-worn and greasy pack 
 of cards, the currency being what money the cow- 
 punchers may have, together with due bills against 
 their coming pay day, these perhaps staked against 
 
A DAY AT THE RANCH. 203 
 
 strings of coyote feet and wolf scalps which are good 
 for so much bounty at the county seat. Of reading 
 the cowpuncher does but little, and his facilities for 
 obtaining literature are very limited. The periodicals 
 reaching the cow camp are apt to be of the sensational, 
 pink-tinted sort, with crude pictures and lurid letter- 
 text. His books are too often of much the same type, 
 though at some of the ranches there may be some few 
 works of fiction of a better sort. Whatever the books 
 at the ranch may be, from society novel to farrier's 
 guide, the cowpuncher reads them all over and over 
 again until he is tired of seeing them. Not having 
 much more to do of an evening, he goes to bed. It is 
 supposed by some misguided souls that when the so- 
 called wild cowboys of a ranch have met at night 
 after the close of their exciting duties the scene at the 
 ranch house is one of rude hilarity and confusion. 
 Really quite the opposite of this is true. The interior 
 of a ranch house of an evening offers rather a quiet and 
 orderly appearance. Liquor is something rarely seen 
 there, because it comes very rarely, and does not last 
 long when it comes. As a rule, the cowpuncher is 
 rather a silent man, though not so silent as the melan- 
 choly sheep herder, who rarely endures the terrible 
 monotony of his calling for more than seven years 
 without becoming insane. A cowboy who is very 
 " mouthy " is not usually in high repute at a cow 
 camp, and one disposed to personal brilliance or sar- 
 castic comment on the peculiarities of his fellow-men 
 is apt to meet with swift and effectual discouragement. 
 Rude and unlettered though he be, and treating his 
 companions with a rough and ready familiarity, the 
 cowpuncher yet accords to his neighbour the right to 
 live the life and go the gait which seems most pleasing 
 to himself. One does not intrude upon the rights of 
 
204: THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 others in the cow country, and he looks to it very 
 promptly that no one shall intrude upon his. In the 
 cow towns or at the cow camps one never hears the 
 abusiveness or rude speech common in the older set- 
 tlements. On the range, especially in the earlier days, 
 if a man applied to another an epithet which in the 
 States would be taken as something to be endured or 
 returned in kind, the result would have been the essen- 
 tial and immediate preparations for a funeral. 
 
 In all countries where the home is unknown and 
 the society is made up of males altogether, the men 
 grow very morose and surly, and all the natural ugli- 
 ness of their dispositions comes out. They are more 
 apt to magnify small slights and slips, and more apt 
 to get into trouble over small matters of personal 
 honour. Upon the other hand, the best possible cor- 
 rection for this tendency is the acknowledged fact that 
 it is not personally safe to go into a quarrel. It was 
 never safe to quarrel on the cow range. 
 
 The cook, of course, is the first one up about the 
 camp, and he " makes the breakfast " in his own room. 
 The toilet of the cowpuncher is simple, and, after he 
 has kicked off his blankets, it is but a few moments 
 before he is at the table eating his plateful of beef or 
 bacon and beans. The meal does not last long, and 
 those which follow it later in the day are much the 
 same. The city club man is fond of wild game as an 
 adjunct to a good dinner. The " granger " sets oysters 
 and ice cream as the highest possible luxuries of life. 
 The cowboy thinks of fresh green vegetables in his 
 epicurean dreams, and he longs for the indigestible pie 
 of civilization. Any pure cowpuncher would sell his 
 birthright for half a dozen pies. The cow cook en n 
 not make actual pies, only leathery imitations encasing 
 stewed dried apples. One remembers very well a cer- 
 
A DAY AT THE RANCH. 205 
 
 tain Christmas dinner in a little far-away Western 
 plains town which cost two men twenty-five dollars, 
 and which consisted of some badly cooked beef, one 
 can of oysters, a frosted cake, and five green onions, 
 the latter obtained from somewhere by a hothouse 
 miracle. This dinner was voted a very extraordinary 
 and successful affair. The men at the ranch house are 
 not averse to an occasional change in their diet, and 
 fresh game is appreciated. Deer, antelope, wild tur- 
 key, and sometimes smaller game often appeared on 
 the menu of the ranch in the old days, but big game 
 is scarce now over most of the range, and small game 
 has rarely had much attention from the cowboys, who, 
 as a rule, do not at best do a great deal of hunting. 
 
 After breakfast, if this be in the winter season 
 and in a cold Northern country, the first work is at- 
 tending to the riding horses kept in the stables, which 
 are in such a country a necessity. Behind each horse 
 in the stable is a long wooden peg, upon which hang 
 the bridle and saddle. Each man has his own place 
 reserved, and resents any intrusion upon his rights 
 as to saddle, bridle, and rope. One man may use freely 
 the tobacco or whisky of a fellow-cowpuncher, but he 
 may not touch his rope, quirt, or other parts of his 
 riding outfit. Of course, one man will not want to 
 use another's saddle. " I wouldn't ride a mile in that 
 thing o' yourn fer the best heifer that runs the range/' 
 says the cowpuncher, referring contemptuously to the 
 prized saddle of another. " I'd plum have a misery 
 if I had to ride yourn," is the reply. 
 
 Part or all of the horse herd will not be kept up 
 at the ranch house, but will be watched, so that their 
 whereabouts will be known. A man may be sent out 
 in the morning to bring in the horse herd, and then 
 ensues one of the most picturesque events of the day. 
 
206 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 The bunch of horses comes up on a gallop, urged by 
 the cowpuncher behind them. All sorts of horses are 
 in the collection, all of them rough of coat and hard 
 of form, and not one of them has a pleasant expres- 
 sion of countenance as he turns into the ranch corral, 
 with his ears drooping and his eye rolling about in 
 search of trouble. Inside the corral each horse runs 
 about and dodges behind his fellows when he fancies 
 himself wanted, doing his best to escape till he actually 
 feels the circle of the rope, when he falls into meek 
 but mutinous quiet. The cowpuncher leads him out, 
 and throws on his back the heavy saddle, the pony 
 meanwhile standing the picture of forlornness and 
 despair, apparently upon his very last legs and quite 
 unfit for travel. To his airs and attitudes the cow- 
 puncher gives no attention, but proceeds to cinch up 
 the saddle. As he begins this the pony heaves a deep, 
 long breath, which converts him temporarily into some- 
 thing of the figure of a balloon. The cowpuncher 
 knows what this means, and, putting his foot against 
 the side of the pony, he gives a quick, strong pull on 
 the girth, which causes the pony to grunt in a grieved 
 way and to lessen his size abruptly. The hind cinch 
 is not drawn tight, for in regard to that a cow horse 
 feels that it has certain rights to breathing room which 
 even a cowpuncher is bound to respect. In any case, 
 the pony may pitch a little when the cowboy swings 
 into the saddle, especially if it has not been ridden for 
 some time. It may do this because it is happy or 
 because it is not happy, but the cowpuncher does not 
 pay much attention to it unless it be very violent, in 
 which case he may join the yells of his companions as 
 the pony goes thumping stiff-legged over a dozen yards 
 or so before it settles down. 
 
 The conventional picture of a cowboy shows him 
 
 
A DAY AT THE RANCH. 207 
 
 going at a sweeping gallop over the plains, his hair 
 flying wildly and his horse venire a terre, its eyes bulg- 
 ing out in the exultation of speed. Sometimes the 
 cowboy rides hard on the round-up or when he comes 
 to town, but when he sets out across the range on his 
 day's work at the ranch he does not spur and gallop 
 his horse. He goes at a steady, ceaseless, choppy little 
 trot, which it tires the life out of a tenderfoot to follow 
 all day. This short trot is a natural gait for the cow 
 pony, and it will maintain it for a long time if not 
 crowded too hard. These little horses make very en- 
 during driving horses when broken to that work, and 
 a team of them has been known to pull a light wagon 
 eighty miles in a day's drive a feat which would 
 be impossible upon Eastern roads and in the Eastern 
 atmosphere. 
 
 As Jim, our cowpuncher, rides along on his day's 
 work, quite alone, of course, he sees many things which 
 the tenderfoot would not notice. He notes where a 
 deer has crossed the ranch road, where the wolves have 
 been playing in the sand, where the " bob cat " has 
 walked along the muddy bank. He sees the track of 
 the horse which crossed, and can tell whether or not it 
 is a fresh track. Perhaps it is part of his day's work to 
 look up some of the ranch horses which have strayed 
 away. Perhaps his ranch is under fence, and if so he 
 must ride the line to see that the fence is not down 
 at any point. In the early days no man needed to 
 worry about fences, but of later times the faithful 
 cowboy who works on a fenced ranch is sometimes 
 called contemptuously a " pliers man " by the rus- 
 tlers" who have no fences of their own, this name 
 coming from the tools which the cowboy carries in 
 order to mend a break if he finds one in the wire fence. 
 The cowpuncher's eye, from force of habit, is keen to 
 
208 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 note any unbranded animal that may be running on 
 his range. If the law or his conscience in regard to 
 Mavericks permit it and as to Mavericks the con- 
 science of all good cowpunchers is wide our solitary 
 rider may forthwith set about correcting the deficiency 
 in the unbranded calf running with or without the 
 company of the cow. It is not unknown that a cow- 
 puncher has built a fire, heated his iron, taken his 
 place again in. the saddle, roped and thrown his calf, 
 and then dragged it up to him as he sat in the saddle, 
 finishing the branding without dismounting. This, 
 however, is the act of a stylist in cowpunching. 
 
 The range in summer time is a breezy and not un- 
 pleasant place to be, in spite of the brilliant sun. The 
 cowpuncher has the equanimity of good digestion and 
 well-oxygenated blood as he goes on his morning ride 
 across the country. Always his eye roams over the 
 expanse ahead. He can tell farther than the tender- 
 foot can see what is going on out on the horizon. He 
 knows what is this distant horseman crossing the flat 
 ahead. If it is a cowboy, he knows him because he 
 rides straight up in his stirrups, with no crooking-baek 
 of the leg. If it is an Indian, he will be sitting hunched 
 up, with his stirrups very short and his leg bent back 
 under the horse's belly, riding with the calf of his leg 
 rather than with the thigh or knee, and, moreover, 
 kicking his horse all the time. If Jim, the cowboy, 
 does not think this horseman should be there at this 
 part of the range, he may stop and unsling the big 
 field glasses which he sometimes carries with him as an 
 aid in his work. "With these glasses he swings his <rnze 
 across the whole sweep of country steadily, seeing; a 
 strange panorama, not all of which would be visible 
 if he waited to ride up close enough to see with the 
 unaided eye. He sees a little bunch of young cows 
 
A DAY AT THE RANCH. 209 
 
 running up out of a draw, and suspects that the gray 
 wolves may have pulled down a calf there. He sees 
 the coyotes, reddish in the warm sun, sneaking off 
 across the plain. He notes the low swoop of a big 
 eagle, and he watches a long time the actions of a 
 bunch of antelope. A little cloud of dust arising 
 steadily from one spot attracts his attention, and, look- 
 ing for a long time at this, he sees it is caused by two 
 big bulls which are waging one of the stubborn and 
 exciting combats of the cattle plains. Interested in 
 this, he closes the glasses and rides over to " see the 
 fun " ; for a fight of any kind is not foreign to his pref- 
 erences. He draws up by the side of the intent fight- 
 ers, not close enough to disturb them, and, taking a 
 chew of tobacco, throws his leg over the horn of his 
 saddle as he sits, offering mental wagers on the winner. 
 The two great animals charge and charge again, their 
 solid foreheads meeting with dull thumps, their backs 
 bowing up strongly, their muscles cording out in re- 
 lief as they thrust and shove, each trying to get at the 
 side of the other, their hind legs going fairly up on 
 their toes as they clash in the encounter. The herd 
 stands near by, watching the contest with eager inter- 
 est, the heads of the cows thrown high, occasionally 
 an animal running away a bit in fright, only to return 
 to the fascination of the spectacle. The eyes of the 
 fighting bulls glare, and foam hangs from their 
 mouths. They pant and grumble, their sides mo- 
 mentarily growing more densely covered with the 
 white dust. Thus they fight till at length one tires 
 and can no longer withstand the steady shove of his 
 antagonist. He weakens, turns swiftly to one side, 
 swerving cunningly clear of the rapid thrust at his 
 side which follows, and runs off discomfited, the other 
 retiring pawing, shaking his head, and bellowing. This 
 
210 THE STORY Of THE COWBOY. 
 
 * 
 
 will give the cowpuncher something to talk about to- 
 night. 
 
 As he rides on over the range, the cowpuncher 
 keeps out an eye along the watering-places to note any 
 animal that may have become mired down. When he 
 sees a big steer thus entrapped, and with life enough 
 left in it to warrant an attempt at its rescue, Jim rides 
 up to the edge of the boggy place and sets about pull- 
 ing out the animal. He does not like to get his rope 
 muddy for the sake of a Texas steer, but still he may 
 do so upon occasion. With a sweep of the wrist he 
 lands the rope about the horns of the creature, the 
 latter meantime snorting and shaking its head in re- 
 sentment, and having no understanding of the inten- 
 tion of it all. Heading the pony up the bank, Jim 
 sets in the spurs, and the sturdy little horse, which 
 takes as much delight as its master in showing its 
 superiority over all horned things, stiffens its muscles 
 and strains at the rope. If the steer's neck holds to- 
 gether, it comes out of the mud. Then, if it has not 
 been bogged down for very long, and still has most 
 of its quota of original sin, the steer is extremely apt 
 to reward its rescuers with a sudden and determined 
 charge as quickly as it gets on its feet, for it knows 
 nothing about the service that has been rendered, and 
 feels only that its dignity has been injured by these 
 creatures which it hates. But the charge is not rapid 
 enough to catch the swift-footed little pony. 
 
 Perhaps Jim notes in his rounds a steer that is 
 standing apart by itself, with its head down, dull and 
 stupid. Or perhaps it will so stand for a time, and 
 then run about frantic and crazy, as though intoxi- 
 cated. Jim knows what is the cause of this. The 
 animal has been eating the " loco weed," against which 
 instinct gives it apparently no protection. The effect 
 
 
A DAY AT TIE KANCH. 211 
 
 b 
 
 of this herb is to stupefy or render crazed the animal 
 eating of it. From the Spanish word loco "mad, crazy" 
 comes the expression common on the range, " lo- 
 coed." To say thart; a man is " locoed " means that he 
 is foolish, absurd, crazy. If Jim sees too much loco 
 weed about, he may drive the cattle away from that 
 part of the range. 
 
 Jim does not love a rattlesnake, nor does his pony, 
 and the latter can smell one a long way, turning its 
 head to where it lies curled up under the shade of 
 the Spanish bayonet. Jim takes a shot or so at the 
 snake with his six-shooter, not heeding the objections 
 of the pony to the gun. A cow horse has to get used 
 to a great many strange things that go on upon its 
 back. Or Jim may dismount and kill the snake with 
 his quirt, rather a short-range weapon for such a case, 
 though this does not seem to trouble him. He may 
 skin the snake if it be a very large one, turning the 
 skin back from the neck, and pulling it free as he 
 holds the head down with his foot. Snake fat is good 
 for softening leather, and so is the fat of the prairie 
 dog, at which Jim occasionally tries a shot, just to 
 " keep his hand in." 
 
 Thus on the cowpuncher rides in the course of his 
 day's work, across wide flats and around high, red 
 buttes, over rough gullies and coulees (" arroyos " these 
 would be called in the Southwest), and all the time 
 he is observant of all that transpires about him, near 
 at hand or at a distance. Perhaps he takes a straight 
 course across country, on his way out to one of the 
 " line camps " of the ranch, to see how matters are 
 progressing there. He may take out a letter to one 
 of the boys at that camp, a letter which has perhaps 
 lain at the nearest post office for a month before the 
 ranch wagon went to town, and which has been at 
 
212 THE STOEY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 the ranch a couple of weeks or more in addition, but 
 which none the less seems fresh to the cowboy receiv- 
 ing it. It may be from his " girl," as he calls it (his 
 " dulce" it would be in the South),, and if so Jim will 
 not take the answer back with him, even though he 
 stay overnight at the line camp, for the composition 
 of the cowpuncher's reply is perhaps a portentous 
 thing, to be accomplished only after long and studious 
 effort. 
 
 As Jim turns back in his course, and rides toward 
 the home ranch again, if it be among his plans to re- 
 turn to the ranch the same day, he may be a trifle 
 hungry, but he does not mind that. It may perhaps 
 rain, and make the going bad over the soft flats, but 
 he does not mind that either. It is a part of his daily 
 training to be calm and philosophical. If he be 
 thirsty, he dismounts at the first water hole and 
 drinks, fearless of the alkali which would nearly kill 
 a tenderfoot, but which does not trouble him any 
 more than it does the hardiest steer. He is fitted 
 to survive in these hard surroundings. He belongs 
 in this landscape of butte and plain and scarp and 
 valley, this rugged, hard-faced man who so confi- 
 dently holds on his way, from his narrowed eyes 
 seeing all the wide sweep of the earth and air about 
 him. 
 
 Perhaps it is night by the time he gets back to the 
 ranch house, coming in after a wide circle in a di- 
 rection opposite to that in which he wont out. Per- 
 haps he does not get back to camp at all that ni;:ht, 
 even though he wishes to do so, for even the cow- 
 puncher can go astray in the labyrinth of the wilder- 
 ness. One occasion comes to mind in which an able 
 cowboy lost his way in a big Texas "pasture," all of 
 which was under fence. He had, almost unbelievable 
 
A DAY AT THE RANCH. 213 
 
 thing, gone out on foot into the chaparral to get his 
 horse, which led him a chase into the heart of the 
 dense thicket, where the blended cover stood higher 
 than his head, matted and almost impenetrable. In 
 spite of the fact that he knew the country perfectly, 
 he got lost and wandered directly away from the ranch 
 house, and spent three days in the chaparral, all the 
 time, it seems, getting farther and farther away from 
 home. He had water but once in that time, and was 
 in a desperate plight. At last he met a bunch of 
 horses, and noticed that one had a bit of rope about 
 its neck, and which he therefore thought might prove 
 gentle. His belief was correct, and he was able to 
 go up to this horse and catch it. Mounting it bare- 
 back, he urged it on and gave it its head, and soon 
 the horse took him to a road, which later led him to 
 a town at the edge of the " pasture," thirty miles from 
 the ranch house. 
 
 Perhaps on some of his daily rides about the range 
 Jim spies one or more cows with calves which have 
 escaped the round-up, and to which the attention of 
 the branding iron should be given. If he does .not 
 have any branding iron with him, which is very likely 
 the case, and if the calves are anywhere near the home 
 ranch, he rounds them up and drives them in ahead 
 of him, perhaps having four or five in his herd by the 
 time he gets to the house. These he turns into the 
 big ranch corral, and soon a miniature branding bee 
 is going on. The fire is built near the mouth of the 
 corral, and .Tim rides into the corral to get the calves. 
 He knows far too much to go in on foot, for a range 
 cow will often charge a footman, not recognising man 
 in that segregated form, and taking him to be some 
 enemy le?s redoubtable. The cows and calves run 
 around the limit of the corral, Jim leisurely follow- 
 
 15 
 
THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 ing, his rope trailing out in the dust behind him. Jim 
 has just eaten his dinner, and is in no hurry. Be- 
 tween his teeth still rests the toothpick which he has 
 whittled for himself from the tough yellow wood of the 
 Palo a Maria, and on this Jim chews meditatively as 
 he lazily follows after the little calf which is with the 
 big dun cow. Jim slowly takes up the slack of the 
 trailing rope, coiling it in his left hand, and then he 
 lets drop the great noose, bending back a few inches 
 of the noose upon the rope, and grasping both to- 
 gether a little way from the eye of the rope. He then 
 rides on a trifle faster, and with a swift whirl the rope 
 now begins to move about his head, the wrist turn- 
 ing smoothly with it, and the noose of the rope wav- 
 ing in its line like the back of a snake, undulating up 
 and down as well as circling about. The cow pony 
 knows all about this, and Jim pays little attention to 
 the horse. The pony takes him to just the right dis- 
 tance from the right calf, and Jim launches the rope 
 with a swirling swoop which rarely fails in its aim. 
 Enjoying this very much, the little cow horse sets 
 back on its hind legs, and the poor calf comes over, 
 to be dragged to the iron and treated as it would have 
 been on the spring round-up if it had not in some way 
 slipped through the lines. And as it staggers away 
 free of the corral, the heartless cowpunchers say 
 blithely, " Did you hear the ten dollars drop in the 
 box?" 
 
 Some day, as the cowpuncher is riding his rounds 
 about the range, his quick eye may note out on the 
 horizon a faint cloud which has not the appearance of 
 a dust trail. This he regards intently, stopping his 
 pony and looking steadfastly toward the spot. The 
 little cloud does not pass away or grow less, but widens 
 and rises, and all at once fans out on the wind, taking 
 
A DAY AT THE RANCH. 215 
 
 on the unmistakable blue of smoke. There is fire! One 
 might think there would be no harm in a simple little 
 fire, but not so impressed seems the usually unper- 
 turbed cowpuncher. There is something in the sight 
 of this little crawling fire which causes him to turn 
 his horse and ride as hard as he can for the ranch 
 house. He knows that the whole range may burn, that 
 the stock may be utterly robbed of their only food, 
 that the ranch is to be ruined and the cattle are to 
 starve unless that little creeping line of blue can be 
 quickly met and conquered. He does not pause to ask 
 how it was started perhaps by accident of some camp 
 fire left uncovered, perhaps by the deliberate act of 
 some malicious rustler, who would be shot like a dog 
 if found in the act of firing the grass. There is no 
 time to think of anything but the remedy, if any still 
 be possible. On parts of the range, especially that 
 where the ground is high and dry and the grass chiefly 
 the short and scattered buffalo grass or gramma grass, 
 the fire will not spread so rapidly, and can be more 
 easily handled, though even there the food of the 
 range can be entirely destroyed by the flames which eat 
 slowly on. If the grass be full and high, as it is on 
 some parts of the cattle country, more especially along 
 the streams and valleys, and if the wind be strong and 
 in the right direction, the prairie fire will soon be a 
 terrible thing. A swift sea of flame will roll across 
 the range, driving forward or destroying everything 
 in its path. Fences and buildings, if there are any, 
 corrals and stables, everything is in danger. If there 
 has been a little hay put up for winter feed, even the 
 ploughed fire guard- may prove insufficient to protect 
 the stacks. There is danger that the entire profit of 
 the season will be destroyed, and all the possibilities, 
 for the ensuing season jeopardized. The cowpuncher 
 
216 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 swears sternly as he rides, and every man who rolls 
 out of the house and into saddle swears also as he rides 
 for the flames. There is excitement, but there is no 
 confusion, for each exigency of the calling is known 
 by these men, and they are ready with the proper 
 expedient to meet it. Some of the men look to the 
 buildings carefully, back-burning a broad strip about 
 them, so that the full sweep of the fire will not need 
 to be met there. This is done by lighting fires, a little 
 at a time, farther and farther back against the wind, 
 not enough grass being allowed to burn at once to 
 make a serious blaze, and the fire being under the 
 control of the men, who stand ready to whip it out 
 with wet blankets, green rawhides, or anything which 
 comes handiest. 
 
 If the haystacks and the houses be considered safe, 
 all the men unite in fighting the main fire, which is a 
 more serious and difficult matter, a dangerous one if 
 the grass be heavy and the wind high. Eiding along the 
 edge of the line of the flame, two cowpunchers drag at 
 the ends of their ropes a wet, green hide, a pile of wet 
 blankets, anything which will serve to drag down and 
 beat out the flame which is eating on. The men " strad- 
 dle the fire," one riding on each side the line of fire, so 
 that the hide drags along the burning grass, the two rid- 
 ing along the edge of the burning in this way, back and 
 forth, until they have dragged out and smothered down 
 the flames, or found their attempt a hopeless one. 
 Sometimes this work may go on for hours, and it may 
 be either in the day or the night, as the case may hap- 
 pen. Though they be hot and tired and thirsty from 
 the long hours of work in the withering heat, they do 
 not pause, but keep on until the fire is checked or 
 until it has burst away from them, beyond all human 
 control, and so rolled on across the range in its course 
 
A DAY AT THE RANCH. 217 
 
 of desolation. It must be a bad fire if the cowboys 
 do not check it, for they rush into the work with all 
 that personal carelessness of fatigue or danger which 
 marks them in all their work, and so labour as long 
 as they can sit their saddles, sometimes coming out 
 of the smoke with eyebrows singed off, hands blistered, 
 and faces black and grimed, their eyes small and red 
 from the glare and heat of the battle with this enemy 
 of the range. When they are through the fight they 
 sleep, eat, and vow revenge. Ill fares it with the man 
 who fires the range if his offence be ever traced to him. 
 This disastrous disturbance, which imperils the wel- 
 fare of so many and so much, which sends the cattle 
 in a frightened mass hurrying across the range, min- 
 gled with the antelope and deer and wolves, which 
 must also move before the flames this is something 
 too serious for even the cowman to face with uncon- 
 cern. He dreads nothing more than a fire. But his 
 diligence and skill in fighting the fire usually con- 
 fine it in such way that it will burn itself out without 
 a general destruction of the range. If there is little 
 wind, the fire may be caught and stopped at a road- 
 way, or at a dry creek bed, or on high, hard ground, 
 where the rocks and bare earth give the fighters a 
 better chance to wipe out the flames. Behind the ulti- 
 mate edge of the fire's progress, back to the point 
 where the cowpuncher first saw the tiny line of smoke, 
 there may lie a dozen miles of blackened, smoking 
 prairie, where in the spring the wild plovers will 
 whistle and the big curlews with bent bills will 
 stalk about and utter their wild and shrilly mellow 
 calls. 
 
 Such may be some of the incidents of a day on 
 the ranch in one part or another of the cattle coun- 
 try, local conditions, of course, affecting the daily 
 
218 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 routine and the general features of the work. It may 
 be seen that the cowboy is rather a watchman than a 
 labourer, a guard rather than a workman. His life 
 ;.t the ranch is rather one of alertness than of exer- 
 tion. Yet his is no easy or idle task, as any one may 
 find who, not bred to the work, undertakes to do it 
 for the first time. What seems so easy is really difficult. 
 It would take years of practice to rival the cowboy 
 in some of the simplest features of his daily occupation. 
 He is in a way a skilled labourer, competent only after 
 long and hard years of apprenticeship. To measure 
 the force of this assertion, let us suppose that the 
 affairs of a single ranch district were left for a season 
 in the hands of other than skilled cowboys, the place 
 of the latter being taken by men who could not sit a 
 " mean " horse, who could not rope and throw a 
 steer, and who had had no experience in reading range 
 brands. Would not a round-up conducted by such gen- 
 tleman be a pleasing affair? Would not a drive left 
 to such hands be a reminiscence to dwell upon in after 
 years? How would the season's profits come out if 
 many ranch owners had cowboys about as skilful, let 
 us say, as they themselves in the practical profession 
 of the cowpuncher? No one ever heard of a cowboy's 
 union or of a strike of cowpunchers; yet, if ever a 
 department of labour had capital at its mercy, these 
 riders of the range could have if they chose. Suppose 
 that there was a general walk-out of the cowboys on 
 a round-up just as the herd was formed for the cutting 
 out, it being further added that each cowpuncher had' 
 a gun and a playful way of using it! There is a theme 
 for some writer of short stories on Western life, and 
 sufficiently inaccurate to be inviting. Such a scene 
 could never occur in actual life, because the cow- 
 puncher does not hold himself as a servant, but as his 
 
A DAY AT THE RANCH. 219 
 
 own master. He has no delegates, and belongs to no 
 society save that of the plains, which has time out of 
 mind been a society of the individual,, embraced under 
 no classification and subject to no control beyond that 
 of personal honour. 
 
 Our friend Jim and proud may you be if he calls 
 you friend! is a man able to read brands and ride 
 horses, to follow sign and mark calves, to ride all 
 day and all night, to go hungry and thirsty, to go 
 without shelter or home or guidance, always having in 
 mind the thing he started out to do, the duty that is 
 to be performed. This duty he will do without over- 
 seeing. He is his own overseer. He needs no instruc- 
 tion nor advice. No higher type of employee ever ex- 
 isted, nor one more dependable. The rudest of the 
 rude in some ways, he is the very soul of honour in all 
 the ways of his calling. The very blue of the sky, 
 bending evenly above all men alike, has reflected into 
 his heart the instinct of justice that justice which is 
 at the core of all this wild trade of the range. It is 
 not the ranchman, the man who puts the money into 
 the business, who is the centre of the occupation. It 
 is not he who has made the cattle business. It is the 
 cowpuncher, whom you may be glad to have call you 
 friend. 
 
 The actual life in the saddle of an active cowboy 
 is not a long one upon the average, for the hardships 
 of it are too steady, the accidents too common. Any 
 injury received in the pursuit of his calling he bears 
 stoically, after the fashion of the plains, whose prece- 
 dents were established where there was " lack of wom- 
 an's nursing, there was dearth of woman's tears." 
 Under all the ills of life the cowboy "'quits himself 
 like a man." That is his standard. There are some 
 who ask for the gallop of the cowboy, and not the 
 
220 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 quiet trot, some who think his crudeness and his wild- 
 ness should be made his distinguishing features. 
 Kather let us say that his chief traits are his faithful- 
 ness and manliness. There is his standard to be a 
 " square man." If you called him a hero, he would 
 not know what you meant. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE man who is strong rejoices in his strength. 
 The man who is skilled takes pleasure in the renewed 
 exercise of his skill. The old and staid cowboy might 
 not care to run his horse and rope his friends as the 
 younger members of the ranch staff took delight in 
 doing, and the foreman of the ranch might not take 
 the interest in rifle and pistol practice that the younger 
 men did, because he knew that he could shoot well 
 enough already; but each, young or old, followed 
 the life because he loved it for its freedom and its 
 outdoor quality, the sheer attraction it offered to a 
 vigorous and energetic man who needed outlet for 
 his vitality and exercise for his muscles. It was nat- 
 ural, therefore, that the chief amusements of the cow- 
 boy should be those of the outdoor air and those more 
 or less in line with his employment. 
 
 The cowboy was accustomed to the sight of big 
 game, and so had the edge of his appetite for its pur- 
 suit worn off; moreover, he had his regular duties to 
 perform, so that he had not always time to go hunt- 
 ing. Yet he was a hunter, just as every Western man 
 was a hunter in the times of the Western game. The 
 weapons of the cowboy were the rifle, revolver, and 
 rope; of these, more properly the latter two, as these 
 he had always about him. Of the " scatter gun " he 
 
 221 
 
 S^ ^to^N. 
 
222 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 knew nothing at all, and entertained for it a pro- 
 nounced contempt as a weapon unfit for the use of a 
 man. With the rope the cowboy at times captured 
 the coyote, usually after it had been run hard by the 
 dogs, and under special circumstances he has taken 
 deer and even antelope in this way, though this was, 
 of course, most unusual and only possible under chance 
 conditions of ground and cover. Elk have been roped 
 by cowboys very many times, and it is known that even 
 the mountain sheep has been so taken, almost in- 
 credible as that may seem. The buffalo was frequently 
 the object of the cowpuncher's ambitions, though 
 sometimes such a vaulting ambition overleaped itself. 
 An old cowboy who once roped a full-grown buffalo 
 bull described his emotions as decidedly far from pleas- 
 ant when he found himself attached to such a mon- 
 ster. "I thought I could shore throw ary bull there 
 was," said he, " but that there thing plum run off 
 with me an' the bronch' both, an' the only thing I was 
 thinkin' of was how to turn it loose." 
 
 The young buffalo, especially the calves, were easy 
 prey for the cowboy, and he often roped and made 
 them captive. Many instances are known where these 
 animals were found in the round-ups of the early days, 
 and in such case some of them were sure to fall vic- 
 tims to the cowboys, who often took them home and 
 kept them. Buffalo nearly full-grown have in many 
 instances been roped, thrown, and branded by these 
 enthusiasts, and then turned free again upon the 
 range. The beginnings of all the herds of buffalo now 
 in captivity in this country were in the calves roped 
 and secured by cowboys, and these few scattered in- 
 dividuals of a grand race of animals remain as melan- 
 choly reminders alike of a national shiftlessness and 
 an individual skill and daring. 
 
THE COWBOY'S AMUSEMENTS. 223 
 
 It required an expert man to rope and capture a 
 buffalo,, even a calf but a few weeks old, for the little 
 fellows were incredibly swift, and asked the limit of a 
 horse's speed and staying qualities. On a hunt for 
 bull'alo calves in the Panhandle of Texas, in which 
 our party was so fortunate as to take thirteen buffalo 
 calves, much of the roping was done by a co\vboy not 
 yet twenty years of age, who was very skilful in his 
 calling, and an especially fine roper. He enjoyed to 
 the utmost the exciting sport of the buffalo calf chase, 
 as well he might, for few forms of sport ever had a 
 keener tang than this. At times the calves were run 
 hard for over a mile before the swift horses could be 
 urged up close enough, and, after such a chase, it be- 
 hooved the roper to be sure of his cast. Nor after the 
 successful cast had been made was all the trouble over, 
 for very often the buffalo cow would charge the man 
 thus taking liberties with her calf, and then an inter- 
 esting situation was developed. The cowboy did not 
 like to release his calf after the pains of the long run, 
 and he did not like to lose his horse on the horns of 
 the enraged cow, which pursued him steadily and 
 viciously. There was sure to be a constricted but ex- 
 citing chase about a narrow circle, with the rope as its 
 radius and the calf as the pivotal point. In two in- 
 stances it was necessary to kill the cow to save the 
 cowboy from death or serious injury, but it was rarely 
 he missed his calf if the horse could carry him up, and 
 he never let one free in order to escape the charge of 
 the mother. The offspring of some of these calves live 
 to-day in the largest herd of buffalo now alive in the 
 world. 
 
 The buffalo has for years now been gone from the 
 range, and the cowboy will no more rope the little 
 red calves of the curly cattle. It will be rarely, too, 
 
224: THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 that he will ever again see out on the cow range the 
 great grizzly bear, which once lived far east over the 
 prairie country, but has now gone far back into the 
 mountains. In the past the grizzly was at times seen 
 by the cowboys on the range, and, if it chanced that 
 several cowboys were together, it was not unusual for 
 them to give it chase. Of course, they did not always 
 rope him, for it was rarely that the nature of the coun- 
 try made this possible, and sometimes they roped him 
 and wished they could let him go, for a grizzly bear is 
 uncommonly active and straightforward in his habits 
 at close quarters, and his great power and ferocity 
 make him an almost impossible customer unless all 
 things are favourable. The extreme difficulty of such 
 a combat, however, gave it its chief fascination for the 
 cowboy, and in several recorded cases a party of cow- 
 boys have succeeded in capturing alive a full-grown 
 grizzly bear with no means thereto except their horses 
 and ropes. Of course, no one horse could hold the 
 bear after it was roped, but, as one after another came 
 up, the bear was caught by neck and foot and body, 
 until at last he was tangled and tripped and haled 
 about till he was helpless, strangled, and nearly dead. 
 It is said that cowboys have so brought into camp a 
 grizzly bear, forcing him to half walk and half slide 
 at the end of the ropes. Such a bit of wild life would 
 offer excitement sufficient for any man, it would seem, 
 and if any man would be fit for it, then surely would 
 be the hardy and daring cowboy. No feat better than 
 this could show the courage of the man and of the 
 horse which he so perfectly controlled. 
 
 One of the great pests of the cattle range was the 
 wolves, which annually inflicted a great loss upon the 
 3^ouns: stock, and against which an incessant war was 
 waged by the whole ranch force, this more especially 
 
THE COWBOY'S AMUSEMENTS. 225 
 
 applying to the great gray wolf known as the timber 
 wolf, buffalo wolf, " loper," " loafer," or " lobo " wolf, 
 an animal quite large enough to pull down a yearling 
 or a heifer with the help of not more than one or two 
 of its kind. So great were the ravages of these animals 
 after the buffalo had disappeared and left them no 
 prey but the domestic cattle, that regular campaigns 
 were made against them by a class of men called 
 wolfers, who made an occupation of hunting, trapping, 
 and poisoning them, more especially for the bounty 
 money offered by nearly all the States of the cattle 
 range. It was not possible, however, for the most 
 energetic wolfing operations to clear the range of these 
 pests, for they would drift in again from great dis- 
 tances; so the cowboy throughout the year had more 
 or less opportunity of seeing wolves. Perhaps no wild 
 animal might better be called his staple source of sport. 
 A great many ranches kept good packs of hounds, usu- 
 ally very large and powerful greyhounds, with a few 
 rough-coated staghounds or deerhounds, for the pur- 
 pose of hunting wolves, and no better sport was of- 
 fered in the cattle country than this coursing wolves 
 with hounds. The cowboys kept the pack in good 
 hard condition, for the excitement of the horseback 
 running, the mad flight of the long chase, and the en- 
 suing bitter fight at the close when a big " gray " was 
 " stood up," made a sort of thing exactly to the cowboy 
 fancy. In this way a great many wolf pelts found 
 their way to the walls of the ranch house. 
 
 One remembers very well a wolf chase with a ranch 
 pack which had killed many grays. The ranchman, 
 riding out over the range early in the morning, saw 
 a heifer pursued by a pair of big wolves, which pulled 
 her down in a little valley. The ranchman rode 
 back to the ranch at full speed and called out the 
 
226 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 dogs, all the men, of course, piling out and getting 
 into saddle as soon as the nature of the excitement 
 was known. Wild enough was the scene, as the en- 
 tire force of the ranch, some seventeen dogs and a 
 dozen men, strung out at speed across the country, 
 each man riding at top speed and the dogs bounding 
 up at the horsemen and running eagerly about, as 
 though beseeching that they be shown their game. 
 The kill was at a distance of some three miles from the 
 house, and it happened that the wolves were ap- 
 proached at their feeding within a quarter of a mile 
 before they took alarm. The dogs sighted them well, 
 and at once shot forward with their inimitable burst 
 of speed. The wolves, already heavy with feed, could 
 not travel at their best, and soon one of them, the 
 larger, was reached by the head dog, a great blue 
 hound that had killed many wolves in the numerous 
 fights of his eventful life. This dog seized the wolf 
 by the side of the neck and rolled it over in its 
 stride. The wolf rose just in time to be caught upon 
 the other side of the neck by the second hound, a 
 powerful red fellow, also of great experience. It is 
 very likely these two dogs would have eventually killed 
 the wolf, large as it was, for finally one or other of 
 them would have shifted and gotten the fatal grip 
 on the throat for which they were both manoeuvring, 
 and which neither would have released until the wolf 
 was dead, though possibly both would have been badly 
 cut up before this conclusion was reached. As it was, 
 the wolf was so very large (its skin was six feet six 
 inches in length) that it got to its feet and was actually 
 dragging both doers alone: with it as they chins: to its 
 neck, trying all the time viciously to get its teeth upon 
 them, which their skill in seizing prevented it from 
 doing. Seeing that the dogs could not kill without 
 
THE COWBOY'S AMUSEMENTS. 227 
 
 breaking their hold, and disliking to have such valu- 
 able hounds cut up by the wolf, as would be the case 
 if it got its jaws free for a moment, the rancher at 
 length rode up and broke the back of the wolf with 
 a pistol shot, so that it was soon killed by the dogs. 
 The cowboys all loudly expressed their dissatisfaction 
 at the shooting of the wolf, for they had all the con- 
 fidence in the world in their pack, which they always 
 allowed to do their own killing in their frequent runs. 
 In this case the second wolf escaped from the other 
 dogs, which had no dog among their number large 
 and courageous enough to seize and stop a gray. The 
 latter is a tremendous fighter and an ugly customer, 
 so that the ranch pack usually has a war-worn aspect, 
 nearly all the dogs being covered with scars received 
 in fights with wolves or coyotes. The coyotes are run 
 into and killed by good hounds without much trouble. 
 For this wild wolf coursing the cowboys usually pre- 
 ferred heavy greyhounds, though at times there were 
 good wolf dogs among the rough staghounds. 
 
 It is sometimes said that the antelope can not be 
 taken by any greyhound, and this is practically true 
 in regard to the single greyhound, though even 
 then with exceptions. A pack of good greyhounds 
 can certainly kill antelope, for the writer has known 
 eleven antelope to be killed in one week by a pack of 
 greyhounds. In certain parts of the country, too, 
 the white-tailed deer offers sport to the ranch pack, 
 or at least did at one time, though perhaps now it 
 would be difficult to find country where the deer could 
 be successfully coursed with hounds. In the Indian 
 Nations the writer has been out with a pack of grey- 
 hounds, which included a good pack of ranch dogs, 
 when three deer were killed by the hounds in one day. 
 It was very intense sport, and none enjoyed it better 
 
228 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 or were more adept at it than the cowboys, who were 
 sure to be in at the death if that were among the 
 possibilities. The fleet and hardy cow horse is never 
 seen to better advantage than in this rapid and head- 
 long rush across country after so swift an animal as 
 the deer, and few riders but the cowboys could man- 
 age to keep in view of so impetuous a chase. The deer 
 can outrun the horse on a straight course, to be 
 sure, but if it double or swerve, as it is sure to do if 
 pressed by the dogs, it is very likely that the cow- 
 puncher and his horse will be near it at the turns. 
 Then it is that the cowpuncher yells and spurs and 
 rides his best, his kerchief flying straight on the wind, 
 his hat front sitting back firm against his forehead 
 under the impact of the air. In such riding one can 
 see some of the finest horsemanship of the world, and 
 certainly some of the most reckless. 
 
 The mountain lion is another animal in disrepute 
 upon the cow range, because of its fondness for young 
 calves or colts, but the range and the numbers of these 
 animals was always so restricted that they cut less 
 figure than the wolves in the annual estimate of losses 
 in ranch work. Still, it was not unusual, more espe- 
 cially upon the southern range, where this animal 
 ranged farther out into the open country, to see one 
 of these great red cats stealing off across the plains in 
 its attempt to get away unnoticed. The cowboy knew 
 perfectly well that a more arrant coward never lived 
 than this big, hulking cat, and he had for it a contempt 
 that not all the panther stories of the Sunday news- 
 papers, had he ever seen such a thing as a Sunday 
 newspaper, could have mitigated. No matter whether 
 alone or in company, as soon as he saw the " lion," he 
 made after him at full speed. The cat ran away with 
 incredible great leapings, showing a good turn of 
 
THE COWBOY'S AMUSEMENTS. 229 
 
 speed for a time; but the savage little cow horse, which 
 enjoyed such a chase as much as did its rider, was sure 
 to soon lay the cowboy well alongside if the country 
 was open enough for a little running. The cat looked 
 back over its shoulder, spitting viciously, but not turn- 
 ing to fight, and in reality scared fairly to its wits' end. 
 The hissing rope soon clinched it, and then, no matter 
 whether the noose fell on paw or neck or body, the 
 little cow horse quickly dragged the panther to death. 
 Wild enough sport, too, was such a chase as this. 
 
 The cow range did not often or not long offer any 
 great amount of fur-bearing animals. The wolf, the 
 coyote, the foxes and swifts, the antelope and deer, were 
 the animals most frequently seen by the cowboy in his 
 rounds. In the early days, or even yet, the ranch might 
 be on a bit of good fur country, but if the cowboy 
 found a beaver stream he was more apt to tell some 
 trapper than to trouble his own head about the beaver 
 harvest. At times on the cold northern range the 
 cowboy bethought him of a fur cap for the winter 
 days, and if an otter came in on some stream near 
 the ranch and showed sign of staying about some 
 creek or spring hole for a time, one of the cowboys 
 might undertake to get his hide. It takes a good 
 trapper to catch an otter, and the cowboy was not 
 always a good trapper. But sometimes he would take 
 his rifle and lie at some air hole through the ice where 
 the otter came up to breathe, and wait there for a 
 shot at his game, which he occasionally got. Once in 
 a while the cowboy might go out for a look after some 
 smaller fur-bearing animal, and he was always ready 
 to join any hunting party made up at the ranch for a 
 day or night hunt after wildcats, " leopard cats," lions, 
 or other sort of game which his country might happen 
 to produce; but left to himself, the cowboy was not 
 16 
 
230 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 always an ardent hunter, especially when the hunt de- 
 manded that he go on foot, a means of locomotion 
 not in accordance with his idea of the human proprie- 
 ties. If he could ride to the game, any sort of chase 
 suited him. Sometimes, if he lived in a country where 
 there was timber along some stream, he might go out 
 at night for a 'coon hunt, for he loved the noise and 
 flurry of the fight with the dogs in the dark. Such 
 sport was possible only over a very limited part of the 
 cow country. 
 
 In some parts of the country the cowboy carried a 
 rifle in the holster under his leg, but this sometimes 
 as much for the cow thief or rustler as for any game. 
 The favourite arm of the cowboy was really the six- 
 shooter, and with this weapon he rarely hesitated to 
 attack any animal that came in his way. Very often 
 cowboys killed mountain lions with their revolvers, 
 sometimes shooting them out of trees where they had 
 taken refuge. In a few instances the cowboy has 
 ridden alongside and with his six-shooter killed the 
 grizzly, cinnamon, or " range bear." Constantly in- 
 ured to the dangers of the open range, and familiar 
 with the sight of large game, there was no animal for 
 which he had much fear or reverence. Really there 
 were some small ones which he feared more than any 
 large ones. The bite of the small plains polecat he 
 dreaded above all things, for he knew that it was prac- 
 tically certain to result in hydrophobia and death. 
 Many cowboys lost their lives in this way, being bit ten 
 by this animal when it had crawled into their blankets 
 at night. At the least move of the sleeper the venom- 
 ous creature would bite, and its bite was accounted 
 almost certainly fatal. One United States army iv<ri- 
 ment stationed at an Arizona post lost thirteen men 
 in one season through bites of the polecat. 
 
THE COWBOY'S AMUSEMENTS. 231 
 
 The rattlesnake sometimes crawled into the cow- 
 boy's blankets at night, but this was a less dangerous 
 affair, as the snake was apt to be chilled and stupid. 
 Yet another creature much dreaded on the range was 
 the centipede, which was also a night traveller. It is 
 a tradition of the range that if a centipede crawls 
 across a man's flesh the poison left by its hooked and 
 penetrating feet will surely produce insanity. One 
 instance comes to mind where a cowboy was so poi- 
 soned by a centipede, and who really became crazed, 
 although he did not die. 
 
 The tarantula was still more poisonous than the 
 centipede, but seems to have been less dreaded. It was 
 a favourite amusement at a cow camp, where these 
 hairy monsters abounded, to get a pair of them and 
 set them fighting, which they were always ready to 
 do, tearing off each other's legs with great gusto. A 
 winner of many of these battles was sure to become a 
 ranch pet, and was usually kept in a tin can with a 
 board over the top, ready for action in case anybody 
 came along with a tarantula which he thought could 
 fight, and which he was disposed to back for a little 
 money. The thought comes to mind now, with some- 
 thing of horrified regret, of a certain pet tarantula, 
 a scarred warrior of many battles, which was forgotten 
 and left thirteen years ago in a tin can back of a 
 certain ranch house far out on the cattle range. A 
 tarantula is a hardy animal, and can live long without 
 food, but one must admit that thirteen years is a long 
 time for even a tarantula to go without anything to 
 eat, and it is probable that the pet of the camp has 
 before now departed this life in a way not deserved 
 by so redoubtable a warrior. 
 
 The cowboy was fond of any kind of hazard, any 
 manner of fight, any contest of speed or skill or 
 
232 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 strength. Not much of a runner himself, he would 
 back his favourite in a foot race. Wrestling and box- 
 ing were unknown upon the range, and it is well 
 enough they were, as they might have led to more 
 serious matters, whose result would have been a lessen- 
 ing of the visible supply of material for cowpunchers. 
 The horse race was an ever-present and unfailing 
 source of enjoyment for the cowboy, and if a ranch 
 had a good quarter horse the whole outfit would, if 
 necessary, " go broke " in backing it, as a matter of 
 pride, against a horse from some other ranch or town. 
 Sometimes the cowboys rode their own horses in such 
 races, or sometimes they trusted to riders of lighter 
 weight. No more inveterate gambler or horse racer 
 ever existed than was the North American Indian, 
 and sometimes a ranch outfit would " go after " an 
 Indian village with some favourite running horse, and 
 both parties would back their convictions to the ex- 
 tent of their worldly goods. 
 
 Small enough, we may be sure, were the amenities 
 of ranch life, and rude enough were the conditions out 
 on the far, unsettled country, where these rough, 
 strong-natured men had no society but that of their 
 fellow-workmen, and no amusements save such as lay 
 at their hand in the rude surroundings of their em- 
 ployment. Though these amusements were always 
 about, always possible, the life of the cowboy was by 
 no means taken up in their pursuit. He was above all 
 things a labouring man, with much to occupy his at- 
 tention beside the demands of sport. The romance of 
 the cowboy's life is best seen at a little distance from 
 the cattle range. The visitor to the ranch has an 
 enjoyable time, for his is the zest of novelty. The 
 cowboy in turn cares little for the things whose fresh- 
 ness delights the man from the States. The cowboy 
 
THE COWBOY'S AMUSEMENTS. 233 
 
 longs to see a theatre, to have a trip to the city, to 
 eat an oyster stew and all the green " garden truck " 
 he can hold. To him it seems that all the great pleas- 
 ures of life must lie out beyond the range, in the " set- 
 tlements." The latter term usually meant for the cow- 
 boy, over the greater part of the cattle range, some 
 squalid little cow town of the frontier, and ill-fitted 
 enough was such a community to show the quality of 
 civilization. It may be imagined what were the amuse- 
 ments of the cowboy when he left the range and vis- 
 ited the " settlements." 
 
 The end of the round-up or the drive, perhaps, 
 found the men of a cow outfit at some such ragged, 
 scattering little Western town. These men, reared in 
 the free life of the open air, under circumstances of 
 the utmost freedom of individual action, perhaps came 
 off the drive or round-up after weeks or months of un- 
 usual restraint or hardship, and felt that the time 
 had arrived for them to " celebrate." Each and all of 
 powerful constitution, of superb physical health, and 
 of all the daring and boldness inculcated by wild life 
 amid wild surroundings, these men were ignorant of 
 fear, ignorant of self-restraint, ignorant of life in any 
 but the narrowest sense of the word. Their vices 
 were few and strenuous. They were eager to practise 
 such vices as they knew, and to learn as many more 
 as they could in the brief time of their visit. Merely 
 great, rude children, as wild and untamed and un- 
 taught as the herds they led, their first look at the 
 " settlements " of the railroads seemed to them a 
 glimpse of a wider world. The tinsel and tawdry 
 glitter of it caught their eye as a bit of bright stuff 
 attracts that of a babe. They sought to grasp that 
 which they saw. They pursued to the uttermost such 
 avenues of new experience as lay open before them, 
 
234 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 almost without exception avenues of vice. Virtue 
 was almost unknown in the cow town of the " front " 
 in the early days. Vice of the flaunting sort was the 
 neighbour of every man. The church might be toler- 
 ated, the saloon and dance hall were regarded as neces- 
 sities. Never in the wildest days of the wildest min- 
 ing camps has there been a more dissolute or more 
 desperate class of population than that which at times 
 hung upon the edge of the cattle trail or of the cattle 
 range and battened upon its earnings. The chapters 
 of the tale of riotous crime which might be told would 
 fill many books, and would make vivid reading enough, 
 though hardly of a sort to the purpose here. It would 
 be folly to attempt to idealize the cowpuncher in his 
 relations with the early " settlements." He was the 
 wildest of all the wild men of the West, and he rose 
 rapidly into a reputation which, unjust and inaccurate 
 as it is to-day, has clung to him ever since, so that 
 people will have no other cowboy but him of the un- 
 couth garb and the wild and desperate bearing, him 
 who swears, shoots, carouses, and comports himself 
 as a general " terror." This notion of the cowboy is 
 grotesque in its injustice, but none the less it at one 
 time had a certain foundation. There was a time when 
 the name of " cowboy " was one with which to frighten 
 children, and it carried with it everything of abso- 
 lute disregard for law and order. In the early days 
 of the drive, at the cow town it was a regular and 
 comparatively innocent pastime to " shoot up the 
 town." To shoot out the lights of a saloon was a 
 simple occupation, and to compel a tenderfoot to 
 dance to the tune of a revolver was looked upon as a 
 legitimate and pleasing diversion such as any onile- 
 mnn of the range might enjoy to his full satisfaction. 
 If a cowboy wanted a drink, he shot a hole in a whisky 
 
THE COWBOY'S AMUSEMENTS. 235 
 
 barrel and helped himself. As the revolver was thus 
 first in peace, so also it was first in war. All quarrels 
 were arbitrated with the six-shooter, and it took slight 
 cause to start a quarrel when the strong waters of the 
 settlements were doing their work. Hardly a night 
 passed without its " killing/ 5 though one never heard 
 of a murder. In the town of Newton, Kan., one of 
 the hardest of the hard cow towns of the early trail 
 days, it is said that eleven men in one day " died with 
 their boots on," as the euphonious expression goes. 
 The coveted art of the six-shooter was an essential of 
 a finished education in that country. The powerful 
 excitements of vile liquor and viler women stirred into 
 a malignant activity all the evil elements of untutored 
 and rugged natures, and the results in many cases 
 were lamentable enough. It is strange that the rec- 
 ords of those days are the ones that should be chosen 
 by the public to be held as the measure of the American 
 cowboy. Those days were brief, and they are long 
 since gone. The American cowboy has atoned for 
 them by a quarter of a century of faithful labour, and 
 it is time the atonement were written for him in the 
 minds of the people by the side of the record of his 
 sins. 
 
 The stories of excess, the lessons of restraint were 
 the same upon the cattle range and in the cow towns as 
 they are in the cities to-day. Under it all is the same 
 human nature, seeking that which is forbidden, long- 
 ing, daring, sinning, and repenting. The cowboy was 
 above all things human, and he had the failings of the 
 ordinary man. Yet he had his softer and his more 
 reflective side. The man who would carry a wounded 
 greyhound five miles on his saddle and nurse it for a 
 month as one would a child until it recovered was a 
 man not altogether bad. If his impulses led him 
 
236 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 wrong at times as whose shall not? he could at least 
 with those equally guilty feel regret and remorse. 
 On the range in the old times, on the range even to- 
 day are men drifting about like wrecks at sea. The 
 old West was full of such characters, men who knew 
 their own stories of self-reproach, regret, remorse, 
 despair. The outward reflex of such feelings was a na- 
 ture perhaps silent or apparently surly, at times in- 
 flammable and uncertain. The West in the good old 
 days asked no questions of any man. It cared not 
 whether the younger cowboys were at times wild and 
 full of freakishness. It asked not why the older men at 
 times seemed never more happy than when they were 
 hard at work. 
 
 The amusements of the cowboy were like the fea- 
 tures of his daily surroundings and daily occupation 
 they were intense, large, Homeric. 
 
CHAPTEE XIII. 
 
 SOCIETY IN THE COW COUNTRY. 
 
 THE West in the good old times, before the influx 
 of the so-called better classes, was a great and lovable 
 country. We go back to it yet in search of that vigor- 
 ous individuality which all men love. In the cities 
 men are much alike, and, for the most part, built upon 
 rather a poor pattern of a man. The polish of gen- 
 erations wears out fibre and cuts down grain, so that 
 eventually we have a finished product with little left 
 of it except the finish. In modern life the test of 
 survival is much a question of the money a man is 
 able to make. The successful money-maker can buy 
 a part of the desirable things of life, and he may found 
 a family, the latter, perhaps, not begun in love and 
 mutual admiration of person so much as in admira- 
 tion of the tangible evidences of that which is called 
 success. Men do not love women because they are 
 rich, nor do women admire men because they are 
 rich; and, after all, the only problems of life are those 
 of bread and butter and of love. All the rest is a mere 
 juggling of these two. Such is the society of the arti- 
 ficial modern life of large communities. In the West 
 the individual reigned, and there had not been estab- 
 lished any creed of sandpaper. Should we break up 
 the organizations of society as it is known to-day in 
 the focal points of civilization, should we cast abroad 
 
 237 
 
238 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 the men of the cities and bring in the men of the old 
 plains, what a changing about there would be then! 
 Society and human nature and the human race might 
 be benefited by it. But this may never be, and in this 
 country, as in the history of all other countries, there 
 must go on the slow story told by the ages, of more 
 and more wealth, more and more artificiality, more 
 and more degeneration. And yet good human na- 
 ture, dragged by the hand of the spirit of complex 
 civilization, looks back always at the past. Aside from 
 the love of tinsel, which in time becomes a necessity for 
 many natures, mankind has always loved the strong, 
 because it is only the strong which is fit to be loved. 
 So we go back continually, fascinated, and revel in the 
 stories of strong times. 
 
 Among the little cow towns of the frontier the 
 searcher for vivid things might have found abundance 
 of material. Society was certainly a mixed matter 
 enough. It was a womanless society for the most part, 
 hence with some added virtues and lost vices, as well 
 as with certain inversions of that phase. The inhab- 
 itants might be cowboys, half-breeds, gamblers, team- 
 sters, hunters, freighters, small storekeepers, petty 
 officials, dissipated professional men. The town was 
 simply an eddy in the troubled stream of Western im- 
 migration, and it caught the odd bits of drift wood 
 and wreck the flotsam and jetsam of a chaotic flood. 
 
 In the life of a modern business community a man 
 must beware of too much wisdom. The specialist is 
 the man who succeeds, and having once set his hand 
 to an occupation, one dare never leave it, under pen- 
 alty of failure in what he has chosen as his life work. 
 In the city he who shifts and changes his employment 
 loses the confidence of his fellow-mortals, who agree 
 that he should know how to do one thing and nothing 
 
SOCIETY IN THE COW COUNTRY. 239 
 
 else, and should continue to do it diligently all his life. 
 In the West all this was different. Versatility was a 
 necessity. The successful man must know how to do 
 many things. The gleanings of any one field of activ- 
 ity were too small to afford a living of themselves. 
 This fact was accepted by the citizens of the country, 
 sometimes with the grim humour which marked the 
 West. A young lawyer in a Western town had out 
 a sign which read, " John Jones, Attorney-at-Law. 
 Real Estate and Insurance. Collections promptly at- 
 tended to at all hours of the day and night. Good 
 Ohio cider for sale at 5 cents a glass." A storekeeper 
 had on his window the legend, " Wall Paper and Mar- 
 riage Licenses," thus announcing two commodities for 
 which there was but very small demand. One of the 
 prominent citizens of such a town was a gambler, a 
 farmer, a fighter, and a school teacher all in one. One 
 of the leaders of the rustlers and cattle thieves who 
 made a little cow town their headquarters was a Meth- 
 odist minister. It was not unusual for a justice of the 
 peace to be a barber. The leading minister of a certain 
 thriving cow town, which experienced a " boom " in 
 the early railroad days, eked out his scanty salary by 
 working as a sign painter during the week. There 
 seemed to the minds of the inhabitants of the country 
 nothing incongruous in this mixing up of occupations, 
 it being taken for granted that a man would endeavour 
 to make a living in the ways for which he seemed best 
 fitted. 
 
 In any early cow town or mining camp of the West 
 there was sure to be a man from Leavenworth. No 
 apparent reason for this curious fact seems ever to have 
 been given, yet it is certainly true that no such town 
 ever was settled without a man from Leavenworth to 
 take part in the inauguration. He was apt afterward 
 
240 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 to be one of the town officers. He was nearly always 
 a lawyer, or claimed to have once been one. He was 
 sure to be the first justice of the peace, and in that 
 capacity of high dignity presented an interesting spec- 
 tacle. The early Western justice of the peace was a 
 curious being at best. Apt to be fully alive to his 
 own importance,, he presided at his sessions with a 
 wisdom and solemnity not to be equalled in the most 
 august courts of the land. It was rarely that the jus- 
 tice knew much law, but he nearly always was ac- 
 quainted with the parties to any suit and with the 
 prisoner who happened to be at bar, and usually he 
 had a pretty accurate idea of what he was going to do 
 with the case before it came up for trial. It may have 
 been such a justice as this of whom the story is told 
 that he made the defendant's lawyer sit down when he 
 arose to reply to the arguments of the prosecution, 
 saying that the counsel's talk served to " confuse 
 the mind of the court." Yet the frontier justice of 
 the peace usually came well within the bounds of 
 common sense in his decisions, as witness the ruling 
 of that Texas justice who gravely declared "uncon- 
 stitutional " a certain State law which restricted the 
 sale of liquor in his town in many unwelcome ways, 
 he holding that such a law must necessarily be con- 
 trary to public policy and against good morals. This 
 man was later elected to the State senate. 
 
 The first female inhabitants of the town were also 
 sure to come from Kansas. There seems to be no spe- 
 cial reason for this curious feature of the fauna of 
 the cow town in the early days, and it seems difficult 
 to tell why all the men seemed to have left Leaven- 
 worth and all the women to have abandoned the State 
 of Kansas, though the fact remained none the less ap- 
 parent. The family from Kansas nearly always came 
 
SOCIETY IN THE COW COUNTRY. 241 
 
 In a wagon, and among the family there were usually 
 two or three girls, sure to become objects of admira- 
 tion for a large cowboy contingent in a short period 
 of time. There never was a cow town which did not 
 have a family including " them girls from Kan- 
 sas/' and their fame was sure to be known abroad 
 all over the local range. One by one the girls from 
 Kansas disappearead down the tortuous road of 
 matrimony,, yet still the supply seemed unexhausted, 
 more girls coming from Kansas in some mysterious 
 way. 
 
 There was always a Jew merchant in any cow town, 
 who handled the bulk of the business in general sup- 
 plies. The infallible instinct of his kind led him to 
 a place so free with its money and so loose in its busi- 
 ness ideas. The Jew did not come from Kansas, but 
 dropped down from above, came up from below, or 
 blew in upon the wind, no one knew how, but he was 
 always there. He advertised in the local paper, com- 
 plaining about the rates, of course. " Keep your eye 
 on Whiteman " read his advertisement, and " Geep 
 your eye on Viteman " was the burden of his talk to 
 his customers. It was, indeed, a very wise thing to 
 keep your eye on Whiteman, though perhaps the 
 latter did not mean it in that way in his boastful 
 advice. 
 
 There was always a sheriff in a cow town, and he 
 was always the same sort of man quiet, courageous, 
 just, and much respected by his fellow-men. The pub- 
 lic of the cow town had little real respect for the 
 courts, and the judicial side of the law was sometimes 
 farcical; but, by some queer inversion of the matter, 
 all had respect for the executive side of the law, and 
 indeed, recognised that side alone as the law itself. 
 The sheriff was the law. He was worthy of this feel- 
 
THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 ing, for nearly always he was a strong and noble na- 
 ture, worthy of an unqualified admiration. 
 
 There was always a barber in a cow town, and when 
 a town \vas so run down that it could not support a 
 barber it was spoken of with contempt. There might 
 not be any minister of the Gospel or any church, but 
 there were two or three saloons, which served as town 
 hall and general clubrooms, being the meeting places 
 of the inhabitants. There was no dentist or doctor, 
 though there might be a druggist, who kept half a 
 dozen or so jars and bottles. If a cowpuncher wanted 
 a little alum to cure a hide, the druggist charged him 
 at about the rate of ten or fifteen dollars a pound for 
 it, according to the extent of the need he had just 
 then for the money. If the druggist was playing in 
 fair luck at the time in the nightly poker game, alum 
 was cheaper. 
 
 There was always a little newspaper, a whimsical, 
 curious little affair, which lived in some strange fash- 
 ion, and whose columns showed a medley of registered 
 and published brands and marks for the members of 
 the cattle association living in that district, this busi- 
 ness being almost the only source of revenue for the 
 newspaper. Of news there was none, except such as 
 all men knew. The editor of the paper had a certain 
 prestige in political matters, but led withal an exist- 
 ence properly to be termed extra hazardous. The edi- 
 tor always drank whisky when he could get it, just 
 as everybody else did, it being quite too much to ask 
 that he should depart from popular custom; but the 
 paper was ground out from the hand press every week, 
 or almost every week, with a regularity which under 
 the circumstances was very commendable. Sooner or 
 later, if one paper began to make more than a living, 
 another paper came in, and then life assumed an added 
 
SOCIETY IN THE COW COUNTRY. 243 
 
 interest with the inhabitants. Both papers were then 
 read, so that everybody might see what one editor was 
 saying of the other. The second editor was nearly 
 always a more vindictive man than the first one, and 
 he drank more whisky, and wrote worse English and 
 had a redder nose; but he added life to the town, and 
 he was sure of a fair showing until at some unfortunate 
 time he said the wrong thing. This wrong thing was 
 never far away in the journalism of the range. It be- 
 hooved the editor to be careful in his criticism of any 
 one, and always to be sure to " boom the town/' no 
 matter what else might be omitted. 
 
 One of the owners of the saloons was sure to be a 
 gambler as well as a dispenser of fluids. He had more 
 money than anybody else, and also a surer chance of 
 sudden death. He always killed one or two men before 
 his own time came, but his time came some day. He 
 was then properly mourned and buried, and the affair 
 was discreetly mentioned in the papers. If it seemed 
 that the gambler's partner was getting too " bad " to 
 be needed in the economy of the town, he was asked 
 to " move on," and this he was wise enough to do. 
 Another gambler came in then. 
 
 The lawyer of the town was something of a per- 
 sonage. His library did not amount to so much, con- 
 sisting probably of not more than two or three books, 
 not very many, for one can not carry many books 
 when on foot, and the lawyer nearly always walked 
 into town; but the lawyer had all the authorities in 
 his head, and so did not need a library. The lawyer 
 was naturally a candidate for the territorial council, 
 for county assessor, or anything else that had any 
 pay attached to it. Of strictly legal work there was 
 not much to do, but the lawyer always remembered 
 his dignity, and you could always tell him in a crowd, 
 
244 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 for he was the only man in the town who did not 
 wear " chaps " or overalls. The lawyer and the county 
 surveyor sometimes had work to do in settling the 
 lines of a homestead or some such thing when water 
 rights were in dispute. He had no occasion to prose- 
 cute or defend any client for theft, for everybody in 
 that country was afraid to steal; and burglary was a 
 crime unknown. It was rarely that a man was prose- 
 cuted for horse stealing; never, unless the sheriff got 
 to him first. A " killing " sometimes gave the law- 
 yer a chance, but this was not a thing to make much 
 stir about, and very often the killer was set free, be- 
 cause it was usually certain that the other man would 
 have killed him if he could, and that is defence at law. 
 Much more interesting was it when a man was shot 
 and not killed, alike for the rarity of the occasion and 
 for its probable consequences. Everybody wondered 
 then which would be the one to get killed when he was 
 well and around shooting again. 
 
 The cow town was very proud of any public im- 
 provements, very resentful of any attempt to cast 
 slight upon such improvements, and very jealous of 
 the pretensions of any other town of its neighbour- 
 hood. It being rumoured that a certain foothills city 
 over toward the edge of the range was to have a rail- 
 road tunnel which would add to its attractions, it was 
 gravely suggested by the citizens of a rival town 
 located well out on the plains that the latter should 
 also have a tunnel, and not allow itself to be surpassed 
 in the " race of progress " by any " one-armed sheep- 
 herding village." The county surveyor lost popularity 
 because he tried to point out how expensive it would 
 be to construct a tunnel out on the prairie. 
 
 The first coal-burning stove, the first piano, the first 
 full-length mirror to come to town made each an occa- 
 
SOCIETY IN THE COW COUNTRY. 245 
 
 sion of popular rejoicing. At a time when all was pro- 
 gressing as usual in the leading saloon of such a town 
 one evening, two of the players at a card table, without 
 word of warning, arose and began shooting at each 
 other in the celeritous yet painstaking fashion of the 
 country. They were both caught by friends before 
 any damage was done to either man, but the aim of 
 one being disconcerted by the grasp upon his wrist, 
 his bullet missed its mark and shattered the stove door, 
 on the big new stove which was the boast of the com- 
 munity. For this careless shooting he received a gen- 
 eral censure. 
 
 One time there came to a certain cow town on the 
 range a Missouri family who brought along a few hogs, 
 about half a dozen young porkers of very ordinary 
 appearance, but which none the less became the ob- 
 jects of a popular ovation, as being the first hogs ever 
 brought in on the range, and an attraction which it 
 was not pretended could be duplicated by the rival 
 town over in the foothills. These hogs were the pride 
 of the settlement for some time, until at an evil hour 
 they chanced to be spied by a drunken cowpuncher, 
 who was visiting town that day and enjoying himself 
 according to his lights. When the cowpuncher saw 
 these new and strange creatures in the streets of the 
 town, he at once went back to his horse, got his rifle 
 from his saddle, and forthwith inaugurated a hunt 
 after them, this resulting in the early and violent death 
 of all the " shotes." No one objected in the least to 
 his shooting in the streets, for that was the privilege 
 of all men, but it was voted a public offence to kill 
 those hogs. The cowpuncher was censured by some 
 of the citizens, including the druggist, who at that 
 time was pleasantly intoxicated himself, and he would 
 have killed the druggist had not the latter pleaded 
 17 
 
246 TH E STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 that he was not armed. The cowpuncher, very fairly, 
 it must be acknowledged, told the druggist to go back 
 to his store and get his gun, and then to come on and 
 they would have their little matter out together. With 
 this invitation the druggist complied, and soon ap- 
 peared at the corner of his cabin with a long six-shooter 
 in hand, calling to the cowpuncher to come on down 
 the street and be killed like a gentleman. The street 
 was properly cleared for the accommodation of the 
 two, a number of us stepping into the newspaper 
 office, and standing well back inside the door, though 
 with heads out to see what was going to happen. 
 
 At this moment there appeared on the scene the 
 sheriff of the county, who had concluded that this 
 was a matter of sufficient note to warrant his inter- 
 ference. The sheriif was a large, burly man, who 
 spoke very little at any time and was now quite silent 
 as he walked up the street steadily, without any hurry, 
 into a line directly between the hostile forces. His 
 hands, with the thumbs lightly resting in his belt, 
 made no move toward the long guns which hung at 
 each side. His face was quite calm and stolid, and 
 with a certain dignity not easy to forget. As he passed 
 the newspaper office, some one made some light re- 
 mark to him for all the time he was walking straight 
 up to the rifle of the cowpuncher, who was warning 
 him to step aside, so that he could kill the druggist, 
 whom he appeared to dislike at the time. To the re- 
 mark the sheriff made no answer, but turned his heavy, 
 solemn face, with a look which said plainly that in 
 his opinion a man ought not to be interrupted when he 
 was in pursuit of a duty which might end in his death. 
 The sheriff was not afraid, but he knew what was to 
 be done. The deputy, who accompanied him, was 
 white as paper and evidently badly scared. The two 
 
SOCIETY IN THE COW COUNTRY. 247 
 
 walked on up the street slowly, the sheriff never hasten- 
 ing a step, until finally they reached the place where 
 the cowpuncher stood, the latter having been puz- 
 zled by the slow and quiet advance until he had for- 
 gotten to begin shooting, though the druggist con- 
 tinued to shout out defiance. The sheriff said noth- 
 ing, and made no attempt to pull his gun, or to cover 
 his man in the style usually mentioned in lurid West- 
 ern literature. He simply reached out his hand and 
 took the cowpuncher's rifle away from him, setting it 
 down against the side of a near-by house. Then he 
 said: " Now, Jack, you d d little fool you, I don't 
 want no more of this. You go on down to my 
 house an' go to bed to onct, an' don't you come out 
 till you git plum sober. Go on, now." And Jack 
 went. 
 
 The sheriff then went on down to the druggist, 
 who had by this time slipped into his store and hid 
 his gun. Him the sheriff rated well as a disturber, 
 but did not take in charge at all. The loss of the 
 " shotes " was generally lamented, but on the follow- 
 ing morning Jack apologized about that, paid for the 
 " shotes," invited everybody to drink to their memory, 
 and at the suggestion of friends both he and the drug- 
 gist shook hands over the matter and forgot all about 
 it. This affair of course never got into the courts, as 
 indeed why should it? The settlement reached was 
 eminently the wisest and most effectual thing that 
 could have been done, and showed well enough the 
 sterling common sense of the sheriff, who retained 
 the friendship of all parties. His deputy, if left alone, 
 would have tried to " cover his man," would very likely 
 have been killed himself, and had he succeeded in get- 
 ting his man to jail the latter would very likely have 
 killed the druggist as a point of honour as soon as he 
 
248 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 got out. The peace and dignity of the town were far 
 better preserved as it was. 
 
 In the communities of the frontier men were some- 
 times apt to be a trifle touchy and suspicious of their 
 fellow-men, perhaps a bit ultra in their notions of per- 
 sonal honour and personal rights. A cowpuncher from 
 the Two Hat outfit was once heard explaining a little 
 instance of this. " It was this a' way," said he, speak- 
 ing of the recent killing over on Crooked Creek of Bill 
 Peterson, who had been shot by his neighbour, a man 
 by name of Sanders. " Peterson an' Sanders had both 
 of 'em started hen ranches, allowin' to make plenty 
 o' money next year, when the hens had sort o' got used 
 to the range an' begun to do well on the feed. Sanders, 
 he come in there first, an' he 'lowed he wouldn't have 
 no one to buck aginst in the aig business, but Peter- 
 son he moves in on the creek "too, and lays out his 
 ranch right up agin Sanders, an' that makes Sanders 
 plenty mad. Them two v fellers, they got so blame 
 jealous of each other they used to be afraid to go to 
 sleep, for fear the other feller would think up some 
 scheme or other. The wild cats and coyotes got in 
 among the corrals like, an' before long they mighty 
 nigh cleaned up the whole cavvieyard o' hens fer both 
 of 'em, but they couldn't see it that way, an' each 
 accused the other of stealin' his hens, which of course 
 we knowed meant trouble some day. 
 
 " Fin'ly, these fellers got so jealous of each other 
 that one feller he'd stay out in his hen pasture all 
 day, a-herdin' back the grasshoppers to keep 'em 
 from goin' on to the other feller's range which 
 them grasshoppers is shore good feed fer hens. Peter- 
 son, he consults a lawyer about this, and he comes 
 back and tells Sanders that grasshoppers is crit- 
 ters -ferry natoory, or somethin' o' that sort, and so 
 
SOCIETY IN THE COW COUNTRY. 249 
 
 they belongs to everybody alike. Sanders he says he 
 don't care a d n about that, he aint goin' to have 
 Peterson's hens a-eatin' his 'hoppers, because he saw 
 the place first. So they at last got to sort o' havin' 
 it in fer each other. One day Sanders he come down 
 to me an' ast me to lend him my gun, because his was 
 out o' order, an' he had to kill Peterson purty soon. 
 So I let him take my gun, which is a shore daisy, an' 
 next mornin' he laid fer Peterson when he come out 
 the house. Peterson he saw him, an' he come out 
 a-shootin', but Sanders he was a leetle too quick fer 
 him. Sanders he quit the ranch then, an' now you 
 kaint get a aig in this whole country fer a dollar a 
 aig, not noways." 
 
 In the rude conditions of the society of the frontier 
 the man of " sand " was the man most respected. If 
 one allowed himself to be " run over " by the first 
 person, he might as well be prepared to meet the con- 
 tempt of all the others. Sooner or later a man was 
 put to the test and " sized up " for what sort of timber 
 he contained. If he proved himself able to take care 
 of himself, he was much less apt to meet trouble there- 
 after. The man who was willing to mind his own busi- 
 ness was not apt to meet with the professional bully 
 or bad man of the town. The latter was a person who 
 understood the theory of killing and escaping the law. 
 He was confident in his own ability to pull quick, and 
 it was his plan to so irritate his antagonist that the 
 latter would " go for his gun." After that it was a case 
 of self-defence. In the great cities the man who draws 
 a deadly weapon is severely handled by the law, but 
 in the old days on the frontier the bearing of arms 
 was a necessity, and their general use made all men 
 familiar with them and deprived them of half their 
 terror. The stranger in the cow town was at first much 
 
250 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 troubled when he heard of a " killing " next door to 
 him, but soon he became accustomed to such things 
 and came to think little of them. The fashions of a 
 country are its own and are not easily changed by a 
 few; the change is apt to operate in quite the oppo- 
 site direction. It is not the case that all the dwellers 
 on the frontier were brave men, but courage is much 
 a matter of association, and comes partly from habit 
 after long acquaintance with scenes of danger and 
 violence. The citizens of the cow town all wore guns, 
 and did not feel fully dressed without such appur- 
 tenances. There was but one respectable way of set- 
 tling a quarrel. It was not referred to the community, 
 but to the individual, for in that land the individual 
 was the supreme arbiter. None the less, many a cow- 
 ard's heart has beaten above a pistol belt, and nowhere 
 in the world was such a fact more swiftly and un- 
 erringly determined than in a primitive community 
 such as that in question. Upon the other hand, the 
 rudest of the inhabitants of that community would 
 recognise the quality of actual courage very quickly, 
 and the man who stood highest in the esteem of his 
 fellow-men was he who had the reputation of being 
 a " square man/' not " looking for trouble," but al- 
 ways ready to meet it if it came. 
 
 A wealthy and respected cattleman of a certain 
 part of the cow range had a niece who ran away and 
 married a renegade ranch foreman against whom she 
 had been warned. This man soon began to abuse her, 
 and she returned to her former home. The quarrel 
 was patched up, but the girl's uncle sent word to the 
 husband that if she ever was obliged to come back 
 home again, she should never again go away to live 
 with him. The husband sent back word that he would 
 kill the uncle on sight. To this the cowman made no 
 
SOCIETY IN THE COW COUNTRY. 251 
 
 reply, but he always rode abroad with a rifle across 
 his lap. One day he had word that his enemy was 
 about to waylay him, and accordingly he was upon the 
 lookout for him. As he entered the edge of a bit of 
 wood, he saw the dutiful relative waiting for him, but 
 luckily looking in the wrong direction. The wind 
 being in his favour, the cowman drove up within a 
 short distance of the man who was seeking to kill him, 
 and then calling to him, killed him in his tracks when 
 he turned. In this act he was upheld by all the society 
 of the range, and was never in the least called to ac- 
 count for it, as it was thought he had done quite what 
 was right and needful. He was never molested by any 
 more relatives after that. This incident was long ago 
 forgotten in his history, and a quieter, more respected, 
 or more useful citizen does not live than he is to-day, 
 nor one more marked for his mildness and even-tem- 
 pered disposition. He did only what in his time and 
 under his surroundings was the fit and needful thing 
 to do. 
 
 Such a man as this was the cowman who happened 
 to be standing in a saloon one day, talking with some 
 friends as he rested his elbows back of him on the bar 
 against which he w T as leaning. The conversation was 
 interrupted by a cowpuncher of the frisky sort, such 
 as in those days occasionally materialized in the cow 
 town for a little lark. This cowpuncher rode his 
 horse into the saloon and up to the bar, declaring that 
 both he and the horse had come a long way and were 
 thirsty, and must both have a drink. His requests 
 having been complied with, he began to shoot around 
 a little, and drove everybody out of the saloon except 
 this one cattleman, who still stood quietly with his 
 back against the bar, leaning back upon his elbows, 
 this directly in the middle of the room, which was 
 
252 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 only about twenty feet square. The cattleman stood 
 there saying nothing, and finally the cowpuncher rode 
 on out. When asked why he had not driven out the 
 " old man " too, he replied that he had not seen him. 
 
 " You could shore of seen him if you looked hard/' 
 said one of his friends, " f er he was right at you there 
 in the middle of the room." 
 
 " Well, I never did see him," said the cowpuncher 
 gravely. " My eyes ain't allus as good as they ought 
 to be, sometimes." As a matter of fact the reputation 
 of the " old man " was such that the cowboy was very 
 wise in not seeing him and undertaking to run him 
 out. 
 
 Sometimes in the winter season society in the cow 
 town would be enlivened by a ball. Such a ball was a 
 singular and somewhat austere event, and one which 
 it would be difficult to match to-day in all the land,. 
 The news of the coming ball spread after the mysteri- 
 ous fashion of the plains, so that in some way it be- 
 came known in a short time far and wide across the 
 range. The cowboys fifty miles away were sure to 
 hear of it and to be on hand, coming horseback from 
 their ranches, each man clad in what he thought was 
 his best. The entire populace of the cow town was 
 there, the ballroom being the largest room to be found 
 in the town, wherever that might chance to be. Re- 
 freshments were on hand, sometimes actually cake, 
 made by the fair hands of the girls from Kansas. A 
 fiddler was obtained from some place, for where a few 
 men are gathered together there is always sure to be 
 a fiddler; and this well meaning, if not always melodi- 
 ous, individual was certain to have a hard night's 
 work ahead of him. 
 
 Of course there was a great scarcity of lady part- 
 ners, for the men outnumbered the women a dozen 
 
SOCIETY IN THE COW COUNTRY. 253 
 
 to one. No woman, whatever her personal description, 
 needed to fear being slighted at such a ball. There 
 were no wall flowers on the range. The Mexican wash- 
 woman was sure of a partner for every dance, and 
 the big girl from Kansas, the little girl from Kansas, 
 the wife of the man from Missouri, and all the other 
 ladies of the country there assembled, were fairly in 
 danger of having their heads turned at the praise of 
 their own loveliness. In the Southwest such a dance 
 was called a bailie, and among the women attending 
 it were sure to be some dark-eyed senoritas with man- 
 tilla and reboso, whose costume made contrast with the 
 calico and gingham of the " American " ladies. The 
 dancing costume of the men was various, but it was 
 held matter of course if a cowboy chose to dance in 
 his regulation garb, " chaps," spurs and all. In the 
 more advanced stages of society it became etiquette 
 for a gentleman to lay aside his gun when engaging 
 in the dance, but he nearly always retained a pistol 
 or knife somewhere about him, for he knew there 
 might be occasion to use it. Sometimes the cow- 
 puncher danced with his hat on, but this later be- 
 came improper. There are few more startling specta- 
 cles, when one pauses to think of it from a distance, 
 than a cowboy quadrille in which there was a Mexi- 
 can woman with only one leg, a girl from Kansas 
 who had red hair, and two cowboys who wore full 
 range costume. 
 
 Between dances the cowpuncher entertained his 
 fair one with the polite small talk of the place; sur- 
 mises that the weekly mail had been delayed by some 
 mule getting " alkali ed over on the flats "; talk of 
 the last hold-up of the mail; statistics of the number 
 of cattle shipped last year, and the probable number 
 to be shipped this; details of the last "killing" in 
 
254 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 the part of the country from which the cowpuncher 
 came, etc. Meantime the lady was complimented 
 openly upon her good points and those of her cos- 
 tume, not to her personal displeasure, for human 
 nature is much the same no matter where the ball is 
 held. It sometimes happened that the lady was not 
 averse to sharing with her escort of a bit of the liquid 
 refreshments that were provided. The effects of this, 
 the stir of the dancing, the music, the whirl and go 
 of it all, so unusual in the experiences of most of the 
 attendants, kept things moving in a fashion that be- 
 came more and more lively as the hours passed by. 
 The belated range man, riding full gallop to town, 
 could see from a distance the red lights of the win- 
 dows at the hall, and could hear afar the sound of 
 revelry by night. Excited by this, he spurred on his 
 horse the faster, answering to the dancers with the 
 shrill yell of the plains, so that all might know an- 
 other man was coming to join in the frolic. He cast 
 his bridle rein over the nearest corral post, and forth- 
 with rushed in to mingle with the others in a merri- 
 ment that was sure to last to daybreak. Out of this 
 ball, as out of other balls, were sure to arise happiness, 
 heartburnings, jealousies, and some marriages. An 
 engagement on the plains was usually soon followed 
 by a marriage, and such an engagement was not made 
 to be broken; or if it was broken to the advantage of an- 
 other man, there was apt to be trouble over it between 
 the men. Sometimes the night of the ball did not 
 pass without such trouble. Any such affair was apt 
 to be handled most delicately in the next issue of the 
 paper; although funeral notices were not customary 
 there, the papers being printed only each week or so. 
 
 The cow town was sure to have among its dwellers 
 some of the odd characters which drifted about the 
 
SOCIETY IX THE COW COUNTRY. 255 
 
 West in the old times,, men who had somehow gotten 
 a warp into their natures, and had ceased to fit in with 
 the specifications of civilization. Such men might be 
 teamsters, cowboys, or those mysterious beings who 
 in some way manage always to live without doing any 
 work these not to be called tramps, for the tramp 
 was something unknown in the cow town. Such a 
 man might have a little cabin of his own, with a fire- 
 place and a bed of blankets. Nearly all the male popu- 
 lation of the town was made up of single men, and of 
 these nearly all did their own cooking, living in a 
 desultory, happy-go-lucky sort of fashion, with no 
 regularity in any habits. Some of these men were 
 educated, and had known other conditions of life. 
 Bitterer cynics never lived than some of these wrecks 
 
 of the range. There was Tom , a cowpuncher, 
 
 apparently as ignorant and illiterate as any man that 
 ever walked, but who had his Shakespeare at his 
 tongue's end, and could quote Bryon by the yard. 
 Tom's only song was 
 
 " I never loved a fond gazel-1-e ! " 
 
 The song rarely got further along than that. A 
 cheerful fatalist, Tom accepted the fact that luck was 
 against him, and looked upon life as the grimmest of 
 jokes, prepared for his edification. No matter how 
 ill his fortune, Tom never complained, even as he never 
 hoped. He had, too, a certain amount of enterprise 
 in his character. At last accounts he was headed for 
 the Indian Nations, it being his expressed intention 
 to marry an Indian woman and so become a member 
 of the tribe, this being the easiest way open to fortune 
 which offered to his mind. He had several wives scat- 
 tered over the range at different points, and at times 
 he was wont to discuss the good and bad points of these 
 
256 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 with the utmost candour and impartiality,, thus show- 
 ing himself a liberal and philosophical man. 
 
 The foreman of the T ranch was a good cowman, 
 who stood well with the men of his own outfit and of 
 the neighbouring ranches. This man never at any 
 time, either upon his own ranch or in town, was 
 known by any other name but that of " Springtime." 
 His accounts at the stores were run under the name 
 of " Springtime " and in no other way. His real name 
 one can not give, for it seems that no one ever thought 
 of asking him what it was. " Springtime " was a quiet 
 man, although, like Tom at times, given to medita- 
 tive song. As in the case of Tom, his song never got 
 beyond the first line, which jan 
 
 " Whe-e-en the springtime cometh, ge-e-ntle Annie-e-e-e ! " 
 
 It never seemed to trouble him what had happened 
 or might happen in the springtime, and for him the 
 springtime never seemed to get any closer. Nor did 
 this fact give concern to his neighbours, who gave him 
 the name " Springtime " in all gravity, as being the 
 title by which he would be most readily and generally 
 known. 
 
 Other citizens of the cow town were One-eyed 
 Davis, and Hard-winter Johnson, and Cut-bank Bill, 
 and Two-finger Haines, and Straight-goods Allen, and, 
 of course, Tex and Shorty and Bed, and all sorts of 
 citizens whose names never got further along than 
 that, unless in connection with their respective ranch 
 brands. Thus, in speaking of an event of interest, 
 down at the saloon or store, the proprietor would 
 say, " Yesterday, that feller Charlie, from down on 
 the Hashknife, he comes in here an' he says," etc. 
 And in course of reply some one else might cite what 
 Pinto, of the Hat brand, had said upon the subject; 
 
SOCIETY IN THE COW COUNTRY. 357 
 
 all men knowing by those presents that there was 
 meant a certain individual whose vast extent of freckles 
 had by common consent earned for him the name of 
 " Pinto." No one seemed to take amiss these cling- 
 ing nicknames, and indeed it was as well to accept 
 them without protest. A singular incident in a man's 
 life, or a distinguishing personal peculiarity, was usu- 
 ally the origin of the name. In the simple and direct 
 methods of thought which obtained it was considered 
 wise to give a man a name by which he would be known 
 easily and precisely. There might be many men by the 
 name of John Jones, but there would be only one 
 Overcoat Jones a man who had the odd habit of 
 wearing an overcoat all summer, for reasons which 
 seemed to suit himself, and which therefore suited his 
 acquaintances. There might be many Wallaces, but 
 Big Foot Wallace was known from one end of the 
 range to the other. There might, indeed, have been 
 a certain courtesy in this plains nomenclature. It 
 was one of the jests of the later West to ask a man, 
 "What was your name back in the States?" but this 
 was never seriously done in the cow country of the 
 early times, because it might have been one of the 
 things one would rather have left unsaid. Too much 
 personal curiosity was not good form, and met with 
 many discouragements. Under the system of the so- 
 ciety of the cow town, it was quite enough to know 
 a man by his local and accepted name, which should 
 distinguish him easily; and the man was valued for 
 what he was, not for what his name was, or for what 
 that of his father had been. Some cheap persons of 
 the later West bestowed upon themselves nicknames 
 of rather ferocious sort for the purpose of impress- 
 ing upon dwellers of the East a sense of their wild 
 Western character; but the man who had his card en- 
 
258 THE STORY OP THE COWBOY. 
 
 graved as Dead Shot Dick, or Charlie the Killer, or 
 that sort of thing, did not make a practice of claiming 
 his title when he was away from the new settlements 
 and back in the society of the old cow country, where 
 life was real and earnest in its lines, and assertions of 
 a personal sort apt to be taken up for serious investiga- 
 tion. 
 
 In short, the cow town of the good old times was 
 a gathering of men of most heterogeneous sorts, a mass 
 of particles which could not mix or blend. Of types 
 there was abundance, for each man was a study of him- 
 self. He had lived alone, forced to defend himself 
 and to support himself under the most varying and 
 trying circumstances, very often cut off from all man- 
 ner of human aid or companionship for months at 
 a time. Needing his self-reliance, his self-reliance 
 grew. Forced to be independent, his independence 
 grew. Many of these men had been crowded out of the 
 herd in the States, and had so wandered far away from 
 the original pastures of their fellows. They met in the 
 great and kindly country of the old West, a number 
 of these rogues of the herd, and it was a rough sort 
 of herd they made up among themselves. They could 
 not blend; not until again the sweep of the original 
 herd had caught up with them, and perforce taken them 
 in again among its numbers. Then, as they saw the 
 inevitable, as they saw the old West gone forever, leav- 
 ing no place whither they might wander farther, they 
 turned their hands to the ways of civilization, and did 
 as best they could. In many cases they became quiet 
 and useful and diligent citizens, who to-day resent 
 the raking up of the grotesque features of their past, 
 and have a contempt for the men who try to write 
 about that past with feigned wisdom and unfeigned 
 sensationalism. Among those citizens of the old cow 
 
SOCIETY IN THE COW COUNTRY. 259 
 
 town were many strange characters, but also many 
 noble ones, many lovable ones. A friend in that so- 
 ciety was really a friend. Alike the basest and the 
 grandest traits of human nature were shown in the 
 daily life of the place. Honour was something more 
 than a name,, and truth something less than a jest. 
 The cynicisms were large, they were never petty. The 
 surroundings were large, the men were large, their 
 character was large. Good manhood was something 
 respected, and true womanhood something revered. 
 We do very ill if we find only grotesque and ludicrous 
 things in such a society as this. We might do well 
 if we went to it for some of its essential traits traits 
 now so uncommon among us that we call them pecul- 
 iarities. 
 
 A more curiously democratic form of society never 
 existed upon earth than that of the old cow town. 
 Each man knew his own place, but felt that that place 
 was as good as any other man's. In the cow town, if 
 anywhere, all men were free and equal. Perhaps no 
 better instance of this curious independence in the genu- 
 ine cowpuncher could well be found than in the story 
 of a certain ranch foreman, whom we may as well call 
 Jim, and his relations with his employer, who, accord- 
 ing to the story, was a foreigner, an Earl of something 
 or other, who had come to America to engage in the 
 cow business. It seems that upon the first day they 
 spent upon the ranch together Jim appeared at the 
 dinner table without any invitation, and moreover 
 without removing his hat. The earl objected not only 
 to Jim's hat but to his presence, saying that he was not 
 accustomed to dining with his servants. This was an 
 error on the part of the earl, really a most unfortunate 
 remark to make, but in extenuation it should be added 
 that he was not to be blamed so much for it, for he 
 
260 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 was a newcomer in the cow country and had had very 
 little time to become acquainted with its ways. But 
 this fact Jim did not pause to consider. Without 
 protest or parley, he drew his revolver, and so beat 
 the earl -about the head with it as nearly to kill him, 
 though not so nearly, so says the story, as to prevent 
 his apologizing freely. 
 
 " Why, that feller/' said Jim, in a surprised and in- 
 jured manner, when later speaking of the occurrence, 
 "he put on more airs than a cook! . . . But," he added 
 later, " he was all right after that, an' after a while 
 he got to be a pretty good sort o' feller, fer a English- 
 man." 
 
 Over this vast, unsettled region of the old West 
 the cattle of the cowman roamed, and this wild graz- 
 ing was almost the only possible industry of the coun- 
 try. Therefore the employments of the cowman's oc- 
 cupation were practically the only ones open to a man 
 in search of a means of making a living. Almost 
 everybody had at one time or another tried his hand 
 at " punching cows," and therefore the little towi\ 
 which made the headquarters of the surrounding coun- 
 try was sure to have all the flavour of the range. Its 
 existence, of course, depended upon the trade of the 
 great ranches which lay about it, at distances perhaps 
 of forty, fifty, or even nearly a hundred miles. Dis- 
 tances had not the same values in that country that 
 they have in the older States. A neighbour who was 
 only fifty miles away was comparatively near. All the 
 supplies of the town were freighted in perhaps a hun- 
 dred and fifty miles from the railroad. The rancher 
 thought nothing of driving sixty or seventy-five miles in 
 to town to get his groceries. The cowboy would ride 
 thirty or forty miles after the ranch mail, and think 
 no more of it than one does of going down town on 
 
SOCIETY IN THE COW COUNTRY. 261 
 
 the street car. The roads were usually hard and good, 
 and the air pure and stimulating. Either man or horse 
 can endure very much more physical exercise in the 
 country than in the city, because the air is better. 
 The atmosphere of the plains was very fresh and pure. 
 Now and then, therefore, the residents of the town, 
 who perhaps themselves had ranch interests or 
 " claims " somewhere out in the country, would have 
 the quiet of their daily lives broken by the visits of 
 the men from the cow ranches, near or far. Then 
 the merchant sold his goods, the saloon keeper smiled 
 with pleasure, the editor had use for his pencil, the 
 lawyer stood in readiness, the justice of the peace 
 pricked up his ears, and the coroner idly sauntered 
 forth. The cowman was great. He was the baron of 
 the range. Cheap cattle^andjstill cheaj^r Mavicks, 
 free grass and|fde^wa^er~^vith prices always rising 
 in the maj*kfs at the end of the drive no wonder 
 cowman was king and that money was free 
 the range. No wonder that things /were lively 
 when the cow outfit rolled into town, and that the 
 pleasantries of the men were tolerated. It was known 
 that if they shot holes in the saloon looking-glasses, 
 they would come in the next day and settle for the 
 damage, and beside throw the saloon open to the pub- 
 lic. Those were the good old days the days when one 
 cowman rode into a restaurant and ordered " a hun- 
 dred dollars worth of ham and eggs " for his supper; 
 or when a certain cowman who had just sold his beef 
 drive to good advantage came home and " opened 
 the town/' ending his protracted season of festivities 
 by ordering for himself at the little tumble-down hotel 
 a bath of champagne, filled with the wine at five dollars 
 a bottle. He said he wanted a bath, and that nothing 
 was too good for him at the time; and his wishes were 
 18 
 
262 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 complied with cheerfully, though the last champagne 
 of the cow town went into the bath. 
 
 One can see it now, the little cow town of the 
 far-away country, a speck on the great gray plain, the 
 mountains lying beyond it, blue and calm, all about 
 the face of Nature looking on^at it sleepily, through 
 eyes half shut and amused, everywhere a strange, mov- 
 ing, thrilling silence, that mysterious, awful, fascinat- 
 ing silence of the plains, whose charm steals into the 
 blood, never thereafter to be eliminated. 
 
 The cark of care, the grind of grief, the racking of regret 
 
 all these things are gone, vanished from the face of this 
 silent, smiling, resting land. 
 
 A dard-hued lizard on the dark-hued sand ; 
 A rock ; a short gray tree ; an earth-built hut. 
 Around, an edgeless plain ; above, an equal sky. 
 She sits and dreams. The whiteless blue of heaven 
 Comes down to meet the greenless gray of earth 
 And compasses her dream. 
 
 It is high and glaring noon in the little town, but 
 it still sleeps. In their cabins some of the men have 
 not yet thrown off their blankets. Along the one 
 long, straggling street there are few persons moving, 
 and those not hastily. Far out on the plain is a trail 
 of dust winding along, where a big ranch wagon is 
 coming in. Upon the opposite side of the town a 
 second and more rapid trail tells where a buckboard 
 is coming, drawn by a pair of trotting ponies. At the 
 end of the street, just coming up from the arroyo, is 
 the figure of a horseman a tall, slim, young man 
 who sits straight up on his trotting pony, his gloved 
 hand held high and daintily, his bright kerchief just 
 lopping up and down a bit at his neck as he sits the jog- 
 
SOCIETY IN THE COW COUNTRY. 263 
 
 ging horse, his big hat pushed back a little over his 
 forehead. All these low buildings, not one of them 
 above a single story, are the colour of the earth. They 
 hold to the earth therefore as though they belonged 
 there. This rider is also in his garb the colour of the 
 earth, and he fits into this scene with perfect right. 
 He also belongs there, this strong, erect, and self-suffi- 
 cient figure. The environment has produced its man. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE NESTER. 
 
 THE destruction of the cattle range was a matter 
 of doom. It was foregone that all these wide lands 
 should at some time be claimed by those thousands 
 of human beings who had taken fully upon themselves 
 the compact of society. The cowman is a creature 
 of unmeasured lands, of wide methods,, of no multi- 
 plicity of laws or of acknowledged obligations. The 
 husbandman is a man of small holdings of land, of eye 
 jealous of his own rights, of reverence for the laws 
 whose protection he covenants in the terms of his 
 surrender of personal freedom to the society of which 
 he has become a member. The cattle range is a 
 womanless country. The farming country is a land of 
 homes. Society is built up of homes, and the laws of 
 society will sooner or later trend in favour of the man 
 with the home and the yoke, the more willing or the 
 more helpless slave. 
 
 The term " nester " was one applied in half con- 
 tempt by the cattle men of the Southwest to those 
 early squatters and homesteaders who first began to 
 manifest a disposition to abandon the saddle for the 
 plow, to cease ranching and go to farming. The nester 
 might be a cowboy himself, who had met his fate in 
 some pair of eyes that held him back from long jour- 
 neyings. He might be some lean and sallow individ- 
 
 264 
 
THE NESTER. 265 
 
 ual, whose wagon and team had brought him down 
 from some State where things were getting too much 
 crowded for him. Probably the first great accession 
 of numbers received by the cult of the nester came 
 from the settlements of Germans who, early in the 
 century, were colonized in large numbers in portions 
 of Texas. There are whole communities of these peo- 
 ple in parts of that State to-day, and most of them 
 are valuable citizens, but many of them were hard 
 enough cases in the early days, and much disliked 
 by the native American population, from whom their 
 ways differed in almost every respect. The instinct 
 of these people was all for farming, and they re- 
 tained then, as they do to-day, all their habits of econo- 
 my, industry, and thrift. Added to this disposition 
 there was the wildness of nature acquired by years of 
 free life on the frontier in the early days. These for- 
 eigners kept pretty much to themselves, after their 
 clannish fashion, and each man was content to till 
 his little holding, perhaps by some water course or 
 spring, and concerned himself little about the affairs 
 of the great cattle baron whose herds roamed the 
 country at large. It might be that the homesteader 
 was really only a squatter, with no actual title to his 
 property at all, but possession was ten points of the law 
 in those days. Or it might be that he had taken up his 
 land under the State laws governing the matter (for 
 Texas was never subject to the United States land laws, 
 reserving title to her own lands when she entered the 
 Union), or who had bought his land from some earlier 
 owner and paid for it. Perhaps he had a few horses 
 and oxen, a few rude farming implements, a little flock 
 of sheep or goats. He had without doubt a " woman " 
 and a flock of children, some dogs, and a rifle. Surly 
 and inhospitable to a degree some of these foreigners 
 
266 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 were,, giving no welcome, perhaps, to the party of 
 horse hunters who came over from the nearest ranch, 
 sometimes refusing visitors the right to water or to 
 camp in their yards, a thing unheard of in the annals 
 of the land. What was thus refused them the rude 
 and spirited range riders customarily took for them- 
 selves, telling the " Dutchman/' as they contemptu- 
 ously called their unwilling host, that if he objected 
 too much they would hang him to a corner of his 
 own corral. Sometimes, indeed, they did do such 
 things, and that, with the original discourtesy, at times 
 created hard feelings among the relatives of the de- 
 parted, who viewed with sullenness every movement 
 of the encroaching cattle men. 
 
 The vast lands of Texas could not fail to attract 
 the attention of persons contemplating a venture in 
 the cattle business, and at the time of the first " cattle 
 boom" a great many men went into Texas for their 
 operations, among these a number of wealthy foreign- 
 ers who sought a place to use capital and younger 
 sons. The country was fairly crowded with capitalists, 
 who wanted possession of large bodies of land for the 
 use of their herds. Such a cowman would look out 
 a tract of land, perhaps twenty or thirty miles square, 
 and would lease or buy it, paying perhaps a few cents 
 an acre for some of it, or more for the better-watered 
 portions. Public lands, school lands, railroad lands 
 were taken possession of in large bodies. These tracts 
 the cowman proceeded to fence in, not always being 
 very careful how much he included in his fence, so 
 that he was sure he had enough. Inside the sweep 
 of his " pasture " fence he might have the little 
 " nests " of dozens of the native small ranchers who 
 had settled first on this land. These perhaps had their 
 roads established, over which they went to town, or 
 
THE NESTER. 267 
 
 after their wood, or went hunting, or made any of 
 their various trips away from home. This made no 
 difference to the cattle man, who cut off the road, and 
 perhaps left no gate within ten miles of it; nor did 
 he serve notice on the nester where the gate might 
 be found. This mattered little to the latter. He sim- 
 ply cut his own gate when he came to the fence. This 
 first gap so cut was the sign of war a war in which 
 many lives were lost and much property hazarded 
 before adjustment was found for the deep principles 
 involved. 
 
 The big landowner went on with his fencing op- 
 erations, and returned along the line some morning 
 to find the fence gapped in half a dozen places. Per- 
 haps he missed certain cattle whose range habits should 
 have made them easy to find at a certain point. Per- 
 haps he traced certain suspicious hides to the butcher 
 shops in the towns. Of these things he made no com- 
 plaint. But he stationed some cowpuncher, who was 
 a good sure shot with the Winchester, at some gully 
 near the trail over which the nester was apt to come 
 some morning. The cowpuncher cheerfully shot the 
 nester, and the cousin of the nester killed the cow- 
 puncher, and that created a feeling of injury at the 
 ranch for which the cowpuncher was working. Per- 
 haps there was a little riding party the next day. Per- 
 haps there were several nesters hiding out for a time. 
 But the gaps continued to appear in the lines of the 
 great wire fences, rendering them useless. Parties of 
 cowboys lay out at night regularly watching the fence 
 at suspected points, and parties of nesters lay out for 
 the cowboys. Many on both sides were killed. One 
 large landholder of foreign nationality put up twenty 
 miles of fence in one line. He was disliked by his 
 own cowboys as well as by the nesters, and all of 
 
268 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 them joined hands to destroy the fence. In the night 
 time the men cut the fence in hundreds of places, and 
 hitching their ropes to the long strands of wire 
 dragged them bodily out upon the prairie. By morn- 
 ing the entire fence had disappeared. 
 
 The country had been free too long for a man to be 
 hindered in his riding. What should one do who 
 met this impassable wire when he was on his way 
 across the wild country, riding by the shortest line, 
 as had been his wont in the past? It was a dangerous 
 thing, this fence upon the waterless country, which 
 shut one off from the necessaries of life. There had 
 never been bred in that land any respect for a law 
 which cut a man off from the watering places, and from 
 the right to travel across the open range. By no means 
 was the " foreign " nester alone in his feeling against 
 the fences. Natives joined him, and all men whose 
 Original liberties were transgressed. The cause of the 
 nester grew in strength and became indeed a popular 
 one. 
 
 It angered well-nigh to a point of frenzy many 
 foreign and alien capitalists to learn that they had 
 come indeed upon a land of the free; for the State of 
 Texas had no trespass law. The remedy was to col- 
 lect civil damages against the man who cut one's fence, 
 and failing that, to kill him; the latter, a game at 
 which he could also play, and often did. All sober- 
 minded men began to see that the fencing of the 
 country was obnoxious to the institutions which had 
 long prevailed, and that there had been traversed the 
 sense of justice in the hearts of a great body of the 
 population. The question was one which demanded 
 settlement, and at length the aid of the courts was in- 
 voked. In dozens and hundreds the nesters were ar- 
 rested and brought in for trial. At one session of the 
 
THE NESTER. 269 
 
 court in a certain little Texas village, in the early 
 'SO's, nearly two hundred fence cutters were indicted 
 by the grand jury. When their time came up for trial 
 they were on hand very much so. The town thronged 
 with them. Each man of them had a Winchester and 
 a revolver, and they held together in a great body of 
 silent, watchful, determined men. The jailer of the 
 town had a pair of valued hounds which he at occasion 
 used in tracking escaped prisoners. Early in the day 
 both of these hounds were found dead, poisoned by 
 meat thrown over the jail wall to them. The jailer 
 swore he would kill the man who poisoned the dogs. 
 The sheriff, who was himself later killed, the United 
 States marshal who had made most of the arrests, and 
 who met death in the course of his duties at another 
 time, together with the deputy sheriff, who was also 
 killed later on, all at this time urged the jailer to keep 
 quiet. The tension of the community was very great. 
 All knew that if the limits of the law were enforced, 
 the officers of the law would have to fight the whole 
 body of their " prisoners." Really the court was in the 
 hands of the prisoners, and had common sense enough 
 to see it. One or two light fines were imposed, in cases 
 where it was obviously just or feasible, and the other 
 cases were dismissed or " continued." 
 
 Thus a state of wholesale war was temporarily 
 averted in one section of the country. In other sections 
 the war went on also, with varying results. The chief 
 battles were fought upon the range, and many and 
 bitter were the feuds in the outlying portions of the 
 cow country. The name of the nester spread to other 
 parts of the Southwest, and he was regarded with 
 hatred or open contempt over the cattle country of 
 New Mexico, where he too often turned up in legal 
 possession of some choice bit of water front, which he 
 
270 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 misused, according to the cowman, by applying it to 
 the purposes of irrigation. But everywhere the nester 
 stood on his rights, legal and personal. He was as good 
 a shot as any, and he had-lived on the " front " as long as 
 any, and he had all the wild frontier reliance upon 
 himself and the swift hand of resentment for any in- 
 jury. In the West it was never well to allow any 
 man to " run over you/ 7 and he who suffered this 
 forever lost caste. The nester was born to this creed 
 as much as the cowman, and he lived up to it as sternly. 
 Slowly the little wars went on, the underlying ques- 
 tions meantime receiving gradual adjustment in the 
 courts. Naturally, a sort of compromise was the out- 
 come, giving to each industry, so desirable of itself, 
 a proper showing, and holding both to a stricter ob- 
 servance of the laws. To-day the original usages and 
 necessities of the wilder past may be seen in some of 
 the laws of the cow country. The great ranges of 
 Texas are fenced, the land of the original source of the 
 American cattle industry being the first to give up 
 the " free grass " of the range. The great " pastures," 
 as they are called, have fences running twenty, thirty, 
 forty miles in unbroken line at times. But if one 
 need to cross one of the great tracts of land, he shall 
 have " wood and water right " to camp by the roadside 
 wherever he may be. If the landholder fence in 
 more than ten thousand acres of property in one 
 body, one may treat it as if it were his to travel over 
 and hunt over as he likes. The nester is almost 
 forgotten now by his original name. The far in or 
 is tolerated by the cowman, and the cowman by the 
 farmer. They adjust their necessities eacli with 
 the other, and the first phases of the question are de- 
 cided. 
 
 But the homesteader, the man with the family, 
 
THE NESTER. 271 
 
 the man with the small holding of land,, is established 
 in the cattle country of America,, and will hold his own 
 by a law greater than State law and greater than any 
 national law; by the inexorable law of the growth and 
 spread of the population of the earth. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE BUSTLER. 
 
 As in the Southern cattle country the nester was 
 an enemy to the interests of the cattle trade, so on the 
 northern range was the man who represented his ex- 
 aggerated counterpart, that somewhat famous West- 
 ern character known as the rustler. There has never 
 been upon the range a character more fully discussed 
 or less fully understood. Many persons are familiar 
 with the curious Western verb " to rustle/' and know 
 what is meant when one is asked to " rustle a little 
 wood " for the camp in the mountains, or when it is 
 announced that the horses should be turned out to 
 "rustle a little grass," etc.; but they would be unable, 
 as indeed perhaps many resident cattle men might be 
 unable, to give the original derivation of the term 
 " rustler." 
 
 Any one acquainted with the cattle country of 
 the North would soon come to hear much of the 
 rustler, and that in stories of the most confusing 
 character. Thus he might hear of the murder of 
 some dweller in an outlying camp, and be informed 
 that the crime was attributed to " rustlers." A stage- 
 coach might be held up, or a mountain treasure train 
 robbed, and the act would be laid at the door of this 
 same mysterious being, the rustler. He might hear 
 that a number of men had boon the victims of a lynching 
 
 272 
 
THE RUSTLER. 273 
 
 bee, and be advised that the men hung were rustlers. 
 Thus in time he might come to believe that any and all 
 bad characters of the West were to be called rustlers. In 
 this he would be inaccurate and unjust. The real rustler 
 was an operator in a more restricted field, and al- 
 though it would be impossible to induce a cattle man 
 to believe there was ever any such thing as a good 
 rustler, it is at least true that there were sometimes 
 two sides to the rustler's case, as there were two sides 
 in that of the nester. In the later or acquired sense 
 of the term, all rustlers were criminals. In the original 
 sense of the word, no rustler was a criminal. He was 
 simply a hard-working man, paid a little gratuity for 
 a little extra exertion on his part. He got his name 
 in the early Maverick days, before the present strict 
 laws governing the handling of that inviting range 
 product. He was then a cowboy pure and simple, and 
 sometimes his employer gave 'him two, three, or five 
 dollars for each Maverick he found and branded to the 
 home brand. Then the cattle associations for a time 
 paid any cowboy five dollars a head for any Maverick 
 he found for the association. It behooved, the cow- 
 boys of those days to ".get out and rustle " for calves, 
 the word being something of a synonym for the city 
 slang word " hustle," and with no evil meaning at- 
 tached to it. The term passed through pome years of 
 evolution before it gained its proper modern signifi- 
 cance, or the improper and inaccurate use which is 
 sometimes given it. 
 
 Under the system of Maverick gratuities the cow- 
 boy prospered on the northern range. Those were 
 his palmy days. Any cowpuncher of active habits 
 and a saving disposition could easily lay up consider- 
 able sums of money each year. As he was bred upon 
 the range and understood nothing but the -cow busi- 
 
274 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 ness, it was the most natural thing in the world for 
 him to buy a few cows and start in business for him- 
 self, sometimes while still under pay of his former 
 employer, and sometimes quite " on his own hook." 
 He gradually began his herd, and had his brand 
 registered as those of the cowmen of the district. Thus 
 he ceased to be cowboy and became cowman; or rather 
 he remained as he really always was, both cowboy and 
 cowman, both herder and owner. In this way many 
 young men who went on the range " broke " began 
 in a short time to " get ahead " very rapidly. There 
 were few better avenues to quick fortunes than those 
 offered by the cattle business at this stage of its growth. 
 The logical sequel followed very rapidly. From all 
 parts of the country all sorts of men pressed into the 
 business. There appeared upon the range a great many 
 men of the sort known to the old-time cowmen as 
 "bootblack cowpunchers," men who came from the 
 Eastern country to go into the cattle business for 
 what money there was in it, and who were not slow 
 to see where the quick ways of making money might 
 be made still a little quicker. There also came into 
 the business a great many Eastern men of wealth and 
 standing, who were wise enough to see that the cattle 
 business offered profits fairly Midaslike compared 
 to the possibilities of capital in the older country. The 
 West was now settling up rapidly along all the rail- 
 roads with a good class of citizens, men of culture 
 and refinement among them, all pressing into the 
 new West to " grow up with the country," and to lake 
 advantage of the great opportunities of that promised 
 land. 
 
 Under this influx of mixedpopulation and this access 
 of new business methods there appeared a factor never 
 before known on the great cattle ranges that of com- 
 
THE RUSTLER. 2Y5 
 
 petition. Heretofore there had always been enough for 
 all. Now there came the stress of the multitude, and 
 with it the dog in the manger which belongs with the 
 ways of modern business life. By this time there began 
 to be hundreds of new brands upon the range, and the 
 wealthy cattle men saw some of their cowboys building 
 up herds in competition with their own. It always 
 grieves the heart of capital to behold a poorer man 
 begin to make too much money. In time there was 
 inaugurated upon the cow range the good old game 
 of the settlements, of dog-eat-dog, and the big dog 
 began to eat the little one. The big men met and com- 
 bined against the little ones. They agreed that no 
 more Maverick commissions should be paid, and that 
 the cowpuncher need " rustle " no more calves for 
 himself, but should rustle them for his employer only. 
 Moreover, it was agreed that no cowboy should be 
 allowed to own a brand of his own. This all happened 
 just at the period of the passing away of the good old 
 times of the West. It was at the beginning of the 
 West of to-day the humdrum, commonplace, exact, 
 businesslike, dog-eat-dog West which is precisely 
 like any other part of the country now, with as much 
 competition as any, and with as few special oppor- 
 tunities in business. 
 
 This blow at the welfare of the cowboy had a 
 curious effect. It was intended to stop "rustling," 
 but it increased it a thousandfold. It was intended 
 to protect the herds of the big ranchers, but it came 
 near to ruining them. It was intended to stop an 
 honest business system, and it resulted in establishing 
 a dishonest one. It arrayed the written law against 
 the unwritten law which had in all the past been the 
 governing principle of the free West. It threw down 
 the gauntlet for that inevitable war which must be 
 
276 TH E STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 waged between society and the individual; a conflict 
 which can have but one end. In this case that end 
 meant the destruction of all that free and wild char- 
 acter which had for a glorious generation been the dis- 
 tinguishing trait of a great and heroic country. Let 
 us admit that the rustler who now began to brand 
 calves where he found them, Maverick or no Maverick 
 was a sinner against the written law, that he was a 
 criminal, that he was the burglar, the bounds-breaker 
 of the range; but let us not forget that he acted in 
 many ways under the stern upholding of what seemed 
 to him the justice of the old West. At any rate, we 
 shall not be asked to forget him as the man who 
 watched out the nickering breath of that dying West 
 which not all our lamentations can now ever again 
 bring back to life. 
 
 The rustler was a cowpuncher, and one of the 
 best. He understood the wild trade of the range to 
 its last detail. Among cowpunchers there were men 
 naturally dishonest, and these turned to illegal rustling 
 as matter of course. They were joined by the loose 
 men of the upper country, who " were not there for 
 their health," and who found the possibilities of the 
 cattle system very gratifying. These took in with 
 them, sometimes almost perforce and against their 
 will, often at least against their convictions, some cow- 
 punchers who were naturally as honest and loyal 
 men as ever lived. To understand their actions one 
 must endeavour to comprehend clearly what was really 
 the moral code of that time and that country. This 
 code was utterly different from that of the old com- 
 munities. Under it the man who branded a few calves 
 for himself as an act of "getting even" with the unjust 
 rules of the large cow outfits and the big Eastern 
 syndicates was not lowered in the least in the esteem 
 
THE BUSTLER. 277 
 
 of his fellow-men, but, to the contrary, was regarded 
 as a man of spirit, and therefore entitled to the rough 
 Western respect which had no eye for him who sub- 
 mitted to be "imposed upon." In some portions of 
 the upper country, notably in a few counties of Wyo- 
 ming, the rustlers, or men who took beef cattle or calves 
 not their own, far outnumbered the men opposed to 
 them. They were called thieves and cutthroats and 
 outlaws, and so perhaps they were from one stand- 
 point. From their own standpoint they were not, 
 and there were so many of them that they really made 
 the " sovereign people," which is supposed to be the 
 ultimate court of appeal in this country. They elected 
 all the officers and chose the judges in some counties, 
 and they the people ran things to suit themselves. 
 It was of no use for a syndicate man to try to get in 
 one of those courts what he called justice, because he 
 was sure to get what the people called justice, and 
 the two were very different things. 
 
 To this organized rallying of the " little fellows," 
 as the small cattle owners were called, there came all 
 sorts of hard and dissolute characters out of the chaotic 
 population of the West. The wild frontier life had 
 attracted men of bold nature, who had taken on all 
 the restless and unsettled habits of the country and 
 were irked by restraint or law of any kind. Out of 
 such population came many of the guides and scouts, 
 who actually were such, as well as a deplorable number 
 of a class contemptuously called " long-hair men " 
 by the genuine Westerner. The man who lived on the 
 " front " had to make his living as best he could. In 
 the time of the buffalo a large class of men went regu- 
 larly into the miserable occupation of " skin hunting," 
 and it is due to their efforts that the innumerable hosts 
 of the American bison were destroyed from the face 
 19 
 
278 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 of the earth. At the close of the rapid season of 
 butchery which was thus set on foot, there were 
 thrown upon the settlements and outlying country 
 of the cattle range a large number of these ex-skin 
 hunters, men of hardy nature and of exact knowledge 
 of the wildest parts of the country. These men scat- 
 tered over the country and fell into such occupations 
 as they could find. Some of them went to punching 
 cows, and some went to the Legislature. Some lived 
 in out of the way corners of the land, dwelling in the 
 dugout or cabin which was their old-time home, and 
 making a living no one just knew how. There was 
 a little wild game left in the country, but not in the old 
 abundance. After awhile there swept over the coun- 
 try, all around the dugout of the hunter, the great 
 herds of cattle which inundated the northern range. 
 Was it likely that this old hunting man would go 
 without beef? 
 
 Thus it was that the cult of the rustler grew. The 
 ranks were filled by cowpunchers wholly bad and only 
 partly bad, by old-time cowpunchers and new-lime 
 ones, by ex-skin hunters and drifters of the range; 
 in short, by all sorts of men who saw in the possi- 
 bilities of the cow trade a chance to make a living 
 in a way which to them seemed either excusable, ex- 
 pedient, or easily capable of concealment. The quali- 
 fications for the new calling, no matter what or who 
 the man who filled them, were simply the best ones 
 demanded by the calling of the cowpuncher. The 
 rustler must without fail be a rider, a roper, a sure 
 shot, and fully posted in all the intricacies of marks 
 and brands. He must, moreover, be a man of " nerve." 
 In viewing him we view the criminal of the range, 
 but an open and unaffected criminal, and we are less 
 than broad if we fail to see the extenuating circum- 
 
THE RUSTLER. 279 
 
 stances for his crime which existed in the conditions 
 which then obtained. Of course, if we can not claim 
 acquaintance with those conditions, and know only 
 those of the old civilizations, we must call him a rene- 
 gade, a thief, and often a murderer. Under those 
 names no one can be admired. 
 
 The rustlers of the upper country rapidly joined 
 their forces and arrived at an understanding with one 
 another. The true story of their operations has never 
 been written, and would make stirring reading, as 
 indeed would a description of many of the scenes and 
 incidents of the cowboy's life. They had in a way a 
 creed and a dialect of their own. A genuine rustler 
 was called a " waddy," a name difficult to trace to 
 its origin. He might also, when spoken of in terms 
 of admiration, be called a " pure," meaning that he 
 was a thoroughbred, a reliable man, with " sand " 
 and ability in his chosen profession. He was sure to 
 be a good plainsman, and probably a " straight-up " 
 rider i. e., one who could ride any bucking horse 
 without a " bucking strap " to hang on to. The 
 rustler, and indeed pretty much everybody in his 
 country, lived on " slow elk," which is to say that they 
 ate yearling beef belonging to some one else, probably 
 some big cow outfit. It was held strictly a point of 
 honor among these men never to touch an animal be- 
 longing to a poor man or a small owner. The big 
 non-resident cattle companies were the chief suffer- 
 ers through losses of their " slow elk." Sometimes 
 the spring freshets would carry away from the little 
 willow-covered creek valleys the skeletons or hide- 
 less carcasses of many " slow elk." Resident managers 
 for Eastern companies were obliged to report a lessen- 
 ing yearly increase among their herds, which after a 
 while became almost a decrease. The profit was nearly 
 
280 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 taken out of non-resident cattle ranching by the opera- 
 tions of the rustlers in certain unfortunate parts of 
 the range. Sometimes the foreman of a ranch was 
 in open or concealed sympathy with the rustlers, and 
 very often some of the cowpunchers were friendly to 
 them. Perhaps some of the cowboys were a " little on 
 the rustle " themselves in a quiet way. Sometimes 
 such a cowboy would rope and tie out at some conven- 
 ient place during the day a number of calves, and 
 would then slip out at night and brand them with his 
 own iron or that of some confederate. 
 
 Local sympathy was all with the rustlers and 
 against the Eastern syndicate men, and it was un- 
 popular to be too outspoken in condemnation of 
 the rustling operations. The small homesteader or 
 squatter who had made an attempt at a farm on 
 some water way out in the dry and inhospitable 
 country might not be much of a cowman, and might 
 not wish to mix up in any of these crooked operations 
 of the pseudo-cowman; but if a man came into his 
 house some morning and made him a present of a 
 quarter of beef, or sold it to him for half a dollar, who 
 was to be the wiser? It was difficult, and not always 
 safe, for the small settler to refuse. If he accepted, 
 and did so again a few times, he became tacitly recog- 
 nised as bound to secrecy, and practically a friend 
 of the rustlers. After a time another man might 
 come along and ask permission to leave a few calves 
 in his pasture for a few weeks, and as he did not know 
 where the calves came from, he was perhaps not averse 
 to accepting the pay for this, unconscious of the fact 
 that the calves were only being made into artificial 
 Mavericks by being weaned away from their mothers, 
 so that no discrepancy of brands might be noticeable 
 between the mother and her calf. Thus also some- 
 
THE RUSTLER. 281 
 
 times the corral of a sympathizer might be used at 
 night to hold a few calves which were being run out 
 of the country, or a bunch of horses which were going 
 the same way. The very corral of the ranch from 
 which the stock was taken might serve this same pur- 
 pose. It was covertly understood by the majority of 
 the population resident upon the cattle range of this 
 section of the country that it was not well to watch 
 things too closely. In this sentiment many cowboys 
 joined who did not openly join the rustlers. The 
 honest cowboys who remained steadfast in their en- 
 deavour to protect the interests of their employers 
 were spoken of with contempt, and were referred to 
 as being " peoned out " to their employers, and were 
 accused of " living on bacon rinds, like so many jack- 
 asses." Sometimes they were called " pliers men," or 
 " bucket men " by ex-cowboys who would have scorned 
 to carry a "bucket of sheep dip," or to bother too 
 much about mending a gap in a wire fence. Thus 
 we see an entire perversion of the original cowpuncher 
 love of justice, and his wish to give each man his own 
 property. Instead of being ready to hang a cow thief 
 or shoot a horse thief, we find our cowboys over a 
 great strip of country sympathizing or conniving with 
 such men. Such a pronounced change of principles 
 surely requires a pronounced reason. In point of fact, 
 this was not a change of principles, but a change of 
 conditions. The cowboy remained true to the West, 
 but he felt no loyalty for the East. He was true to 
 his old code, but he maintained that the application 
 of that code had changed in its conditions. Slowly 
 he was to learn the new codes, and to become the cow- 
 boy of to-day. 
 
 If anything can be said in extenuation of the rus- 
 tler, it is of that rustler who in certain parts of the 
 
282 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 range waged his fight against the big barons who, as 
 he claimed, were oppressing the cowpunchers and de- 
 priving them of what had been a regular source of 
 income. This was about the time of the forming of 
 the Wyoming stock commission, and the appointment 
 of the brand inspectors at the cattle markets, when 
 the cattle men organized into a general State associa- 
 tion for the purpose of protecting their interests 
 against the lawless element. Long before that time 
 this same question of cattle thieving had come up on 
 the range, and under more virulent and absolutely 
 inexcusable form. The range in Montana had been 
 infested with cattle and horse thieves, who robbed in- 
 discriminately all who owned property that came in 
 their way, without show or colour of attempt at justi- 
 fication. These thieves lived in the out-country, each 
 in his own cabin, and with only a very loose sort of 
 organization, though if a visit of suspicion was made 
 to the dugout of such a man, to see what was going 
 on about his place, he was apt to be surly about it; 
 and a second such visit might find him entertaining 
 a few friends of his own, each a hard-looking man with 
 a good gun and a clever way of using it. Long before 
 the courts had become strong enough to be of use 
 in meeting this outlawry, the cattle men of Montana 
 banded together to crush it out by means of vigilante 
 work. The description and abode of nearly every one 
 of the cattle thieves were known, and a regular cam- 
 paign of reform was begun, after the practical and 
 thorough methods of that day. Some of the rustlers 
 were asked to leave the country, and did so; and some 
 who were thus asked to leave and did not comply, were 
 shot or hung when next found. In this campaign the 
 vigilantes killed between sixty and eighty of the 
 rustlers. One railroad bridge one morning had thir- 
 
THE RUSTLER. 283 
 
 teen corpses swinging to it. In the ten years from 
 1876 to 1886 the vigilantes of the range executed as 
 many men in Montana, Dakota, and Nebraska as have 
 been legally executed by the law in any dozen States 
 in all the time since then. It was the only way which, 
 in that part of the country and at that time, was prac- 
 tical. Capital punishment was a necessity, but jails 
 were an impossibility, and the population had not 
 yet had time to organize fully into the ways of the 
 older communities. We may call these lynchings 
 wrong also, and certainly they were as much against 
 the law as stealing cattle was against the law; but 
 it was here also a question of the unwritten as against 
 the written law. It is folly to apply the standards 
 of other times and places to the wild 'surroundings 
 of that rude early population. Far better might we 
 accord to them the right, which the American people 
 have ever been wont to claim and take, of governing 
 themselves according to their sense of justice under 
 the circumstances then and there prevailing. The 
 men of these times knew what we should always, in 
 our efforts to be just, remember also, that circum- 
 stances alter cases. Thus these opposing interests, 
 each lawless and each strong, fought out their battles 
 for themselves, and so arrived at eventual justice. 
 
 The rustler in those days was never to be accused 
 of " putting up a slow fight," or not " dying game." 
 He was very likely to be an individual of the sort 
 known as a " bad man with a gun." When he came 
 to town he usually wore two guns, and " wore 'em 
 low," as the saying went. That is to say, he carried 
 two revolvers, each swinging low down and pretty 
 well forward on his thighs, not on the hip in the less 
 efficient fashion. The scabbards, or holsters, of his 
 revolvers were attached at their bottoms to the man's 
 
284 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 boot tops or to his trousers by buckskin thongs, so 
 that when a sudden jerk was made for the " gun " it 
 came out smoothly and did not pull the holster with 
 ;it, the latter being held down. Nearly all the gun 
 fighters of the time had their pistol holsters thus tied 
 down to their clothing, even when the gun was worn 
 concealed by the coat, well around on the hip. The 
 usefulness of this little device can be appreciated by 
 any one who has practised the handling of the large re- 
 volver both with and without it, and who remembers 
 the extreme value which each little shining moment 
 had in one of the rapid encounters of those days. 
 Sometimes the rustler showed fight when he was cor- 
 nered by the vigilantes, but he was usually taken at 
 such disadvantage that he had little chance. He rare- 
 ly asked any mercy, for he was a practical sort of man, 
 and knew that it was not worth while. 
 
 " Excuse me, gentlemen," said one of them, as he 
 was led to the fatal tree, " but I'd just like to take a 
 chaw o' tobacco fer a few minutes before I leave." 
 His wish was granted gravely and politely. " So long," 
 said another, as he sprang boldly out from the end 
 of the wagon which made the death trap for his gal- 
 lows. A few of these men broke down under the 
 memory of other days and scenes, but none of these 
 asked any aid or pity. Some died cursing, not many 
 died praying. They were hard, rough souls, these 
 fellows, but among them there were some men whose 
 splendid courage might almost have earned them a 
 right to longer life. 
 
 The riijUantes of the plains rarely made any mis- 
 takes in their hurried trials and executions, and though 
 they sometimes hung the wrong man it made little 
 difference, because it was a part of the optimistic 
 creed of the time that even if such a man was hung 
 
THE RUSTLER. 285 
 
 under a mistake, he probably ought to have been hung 
 anyhow; so it was all right. It is only in the very 
 rarest of cases that a man who has ever engaged in a 
 lynching will speak of it to any one, even to a man 
 who has been of the same party with him. The act 
 is buried with its victim. It would be in bad taste 
 to quote any such confession even if it had been made, 
 but the case was different, at least in the popular 
 mind of to-day, when a man had simply acted as one 
 of a legal posse sent out under formal process of the 
 law to take a man, dead or alive. In either case the 
 method of making the arrest was much the same. The 
 practical Western mind early discovered that a man 
 must sleep, and that in time he must wake up again; 
 and these facts offered the suggestion for the manner 
 of either " getting " one's fellow-citizen as a private 
 matter, or " taking " him as a public matter. Such 
 an arrest was once described by a cowpuncher, who 
 had served upon a sheriff's posse for the capture of a 
 cattle thief. 
 
 " Eeddy Patterson, the sherf," said the cowpuncher, 
 " he come to me an' he said he wanted me to go along 
 an' help take a feller. 
 
 "'What feller?' says L 
 
 " ' Hank Ferris,' says he. 
 
 " ' What fer,' says I. 
 
 " ( Eustlin' cows on the Three X/ says he. 
 
 " i Oh,' says I. So I goes an' gets my Winchester, 
 an' we all rides on over to Hank's place, about twenty 
 miles. Feller name of Parker was along. Parker he 
 taken up a hay ranch down clos't to town. Well, we 
 come to Hank's house, an' tied out a way from it an' 
 crep' into the bushes near the spring, fer we 'lowed 
 if Hank was home he'd come out perty soon to git 
 some water. We laid out fer a hour or more, an didn't 
 
286 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 see no sign o' no-thin', till fin'ly we see a smoke start up 
 in the chimbly, so we know'd some one was in there, sure. 
 
 " Bimeby Hank he comes out an' walks down to- 
 warts the spring wher we was a-lyin'. I could a-got 
 him easy, but Eeddy he holds me back, an' when Hank 
 gets down clos't to us, Eeddy steps out an' tells him to 
 get up his hands. Hank he looks at him, an' don't 
 put up his hands at first, an' yet so far as we could 
 see he didn't have on no gun. I reckon he was plenty 
 mad. Eeddy he calls to him to get up his hands 
 quick, and Hank puts 'em up then, though all the time 
 he kep' a-backin' towarts the house. We all stood 
 out and was goin' up to him then, thinkin' he might 
 get some edge onto us, but jest as we got a'most up to 
 Hank, blamed ef there didn't another feller run out 
 of the house an' start to go 'round the corner. Parker 
 he blazes away at this feller without no orders, an' 
 blame ef he didn't get him, too! 
 
 " ' What in hell you shootin' at ? ' says Eeddy, who 
 ain't give no orders. An' says Hank, ' D d ef you 
 ain't killed that feller! What'd you do it fer? ' 
 
 " We all went to the other feller, an' he wasn't 
 dead, only shot through the shoulder, an' he was 
 mighty mad about it. 
 
 " ' My frien',' says Eeddy, e who are you an' what 
 you doin' yer? ' 
 
 " ' My name's Hanson,' says he. ' Who in hell 
 are you ? ' 
 
 " ' My name's Patterson,' says Eeddy. ' I'm sherf 
 o' this county. What made you run?' 
 
 " ' I 'lowed it wuzn't safe,' says the feller. 
 
 " ' It ain't,' says Eeddy, ( er not always. Wher e'd 
 you come from ? ' 
 
 " ' Cheyann,' says he. ' I never was in yer before 
 in my life. I wuz just visitin' Hank.' 
 
THE EUSTLER. 287 
 
 " ' Is that so, Hank? ' says Reddy. 
 
 "'Sure/ says Hank. 'That feller ain't done 
 no rustlin'. D n perty thing, you comin' an' shootin' 
 him!' 
 
 " Reddy he thinks a while, and he says to the 
 feller: 'Well, pardner, I reckon we was mistook 
 about you, an' I ain't got no warrant fer you nohow. 
 I'm mighty sorry we shot you.' 
 
 "'That's so,' says the feller. 'It don't look 
 quite right.' 
 
 "Then Reddy says to Parker, 'Parker, I 
 reckon you better go on up to town ahead of us. 
 You mustn't mind him,' he says to the feller, mean- 
 in' he mustn't mind Parker. ' He's jest a leetle nerv- 
 ous, er he wouldn't a-shot you at all. I didn't tell 
 him to, and I'm mighty sorry he done it, too.' 
 
 " That feller Reddy Patterson, he's shore a plum 
 white man," said the cowpuncher in conclusion. " He 
 don't mean wrong to no man." 
 
 The lawless life of the rustler, and the opportuni- 
 ties it offered for the easy and rapid accumulation of 
 property, attracted many uneasy and loose-principled 
 men from different parts of the country. Some of the 
 men publicly known to belong to the rustlers in the 
 Wyoming factional troubles of less than a decade ago 
 were men who had respectable ranch properties. They 
 had good cottonwood log-houses built, with perma- 
 nent improvements, corrals, etc., just as the legitimate 
 cowmen had. They had good herds begun, princi- 
 pally without the trouble of buying any cattle at 
 the start. One of them was thought to be worth 
 seventy thousand dollars, and had a herd of several 
 hundred head of good horses, some of them as fleet as 
 " ever looked through a bridle " ; for it was well for 
 the rustler to own fast horses. This man was " doing 
 
 
288 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 well/' when he was shot and hung one day by un- 
 known parties, his body not being discovered until 
 
 some time later. Tom W will do for the name 
 
 of this man. " Stalker Smith " will come near enough 
 to the name of another successful man in this line of 
 business; for now we come down to times less than 
 half a decade old, and could easily touch upon some very 
 tender memories,, which may as well be left untroubled. 
 The team of Stalker Smith came home one day, and 
 in the wagon was the driver, shot through the neck 
 and dead. No one ever knew who did it. 
 
 The successes of some of these rustlers, and the 
 general sympathy in which rustler principles were held, 
 offered temptation to many ambitious young men to 
 go into the same business, in spite of the risk of it. 
 In the Big Horn country of Wyoming it was for a time 
 a toss up when a new cowboy came on the range 
 whether he would go in with the cowmen or join the 
 rustlers. Sometimes the new man had sudden occa- 
 sion to regret his departure from the strict ways of 
 rectitude. One recalls one such instance which was 
 especially sad. There was a young cowpuncher who 
 came up from Kansas and became fascinated with the 
 sort of cowpunching he found going on in his adopted 
 country, a trade in which it was not necessary to have 
 any capital to get cattle, or even any iron to own 
 them. He fell in with two men whom we may call 
 Jimmy and Spoke for short, these at least being names 
 which will serve the purpose. These men told him 
 that they were engaged in a very risky occupation, 
 and did not encourage him to go in with them, but 
 the new cowpuncher insisted that he wanted to be 
 as bad a man as anybody, and was bound to try this 
 new way of getting along rapidly in the cattle busi- 
 ness. The result was that the three went out one day 
 
THE RUSTLER. 289 
 
 pfter "slow elk/' and shot down half a dozen cattle 
 in a little hollow, where they thought they would not 
 be observed by the ranchers' men. Their confidence 
 in this latter belief was ill-placed,, for they had not 
 half finished the skinning of their illegal beef before 
 they were surprised by a party of cattle men and 
 officers, who rose up from the edge of the hill above 
 them and ordered them to throw up their hands. In- 
 stead of doing this, all the rustlers threw themselves 
 flat on the ground, each behind the carcass of an ani- 
 mal. The oldest of the three ordered the others to lie 
 close and not to show a head until they got an idea 
 of what to do, but the Kansas cowpuncher could not 
 get the better of his curiosity. He stuck up his head 
 over the back of his dead cow, and was at once shot 
 square through the forehead and instantly killed. 
 Thus ended his aspirations as a rustler on the very 
 first day that he went out. 
 
 Spoke jumped to his feet to run to his horse, pull- 
 ing at his revolver as he rose. He was shot through 
 the right wrist and his pistol dropped. He picked 
 it up in his left hand and was shot through that wrist 
 as he ran. He and Jimmy none the less got to their 
 horses, but Jimmy's horse was shot down just as he 
 sought to mount. Spoke turned to him and said, 
 " Here, Jimmy, take my horse. I'm shot so I can't 
 ride anyhow, and we can't both get away. You get 
 on and ride, and keep on a-ridin'." So Jimmy took 
 his comrade's horse and rode away under fire. His 
 mount was a grand one, and in less than thirty-six 
 hours he was a hundred and twenty-five miles away, 
 and never has been caught yet. His plucky fellow- 
 rustler was captured, tried, and imprisoned, but it is 
 enough to say that he did not remain in prison very 
 long and is to-day a free man. In regard to the 
 
290 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 location of this rude little drama, which did not occur 
 so very long ago, it will do to say in the rustler ver- 
 nacular that it happened " where the winds come 
 from." 
 
 As there is but an inaccurate popular knowledge 
 in regard to the character of the rustler himself, still 
 less exact is the understanding in regard to his occu- 
 pation and the manner in which he carried it on. In- 
 deed, perhaps there are not a few experienced cattle 
 men whose mode of life has not made them familiar 
 with all the tricks of the rustler's trade. Really the 
 rustler needed to be the most expert of all cow 
 handlers, for he had to deceive the most expert of the 
 legitimate followers of the trade, and was forced to 
 outwit, outride, and outbrand sometimes even to out- 
 shoot the cowmen who had perhaps been in the busi- 
 ness all their lives. He needed to know the range 
 brands thoroughly, and to know the manner in which 
 they could most successfully be changed without de- 
 tection. 
 
 It might be supposed, for instance, that the brand- 
 ing iron of the rustler was simply a straight " running 
 iron," with which he wrote over the former brand on 
 an animal his own brand; or it might be supposed 
 that he simply impressed his own hot stencil upon the 
 hide of the creature, thus blotting out the original 
 brand. This would be very clumsy work, apt to be 
 easily detected by the nature of the wound left upon the 
 hide of the creature, which would in such a case often 
 slough off and leave visible proof that there had been 
 tampering with the brand. The rustler who was ;i 
 past master in his art was very fond of a bit of hay 
 wire, or better yet, of telegraph wire, as a branding 
 tool. This could be folded up and put in the pocket, 
 so it could be easily carried without much chance of 
 
THE RUSTLER. 291 
 
 detection. Upon occasion, it could be twisted into 
 the form of almost any of the set brands of the district, 
 or made into shapes which would cunningly alter such 
 original brands, and yet leave no trace of the original 
 by which it could be proved. It should be borne in 
 mind that the rustler was branding after the round-up 
 in some cases, and it would not do for him to claim a 
 calf showing a sloughed-off brand at a date when all 
 calves were fairly to be supposed well of their spring 
 branding and with the hair clearly showing the mark 
 of the brand wound. After the rustler had used his 
 bit of wire, the whole altered brand had the appear- 
 ance of having been a genuine brand and all made at 
 the same time. The fresh burn fitted in with the 
 older and heavier burning in such way that it was 
 impossible to tell legally that there had ever been 
 any attempt at change at least it was legally 
 impossible to do so in any of the courts sitting in 
 rustlerdom! 
 
 Another favourite way of easing down a brand was 
 by means of branding through a wet blanket. The 
 heavy iron could then be used, and yet the wound 
 would not be so severe as to " give the thing away/' 
 as the saying of the range ran. Experts were divided 
 as to the merits of these two methods of blotting 
 brands, but the easily concealed hay wire had its ad- 
 vantages. It was so easy to pull a bit of crooked wire 
 out of the pocket, heat it red hot, and by simply laying 
 it upon a given point of the calf's hide acquire title 
 to that calf, which alone would represent a pretty fair 
 day's work for a poor man. 
 
 There were different ways in which the rustler 
 operated. He might be rustling calves for his own 
 ranch, or he might be rustling beef for the markets, 
 and he might work a little differently at different 
 
292 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 times in either specialty. Of course he had always to 
 overcome that great unerring instinct by which the 
 cow and her calf always kept together for nearly a 
 year of the calf's life, an instinct which has been ex- 
 plained as a part of the whole foundation of the cattle 
 business. The rustler must separate these two in order 
 to get the calf. Sometimes he shot down the cow, and 
 simply took away the calf with him., branding it as 
 his own. This might be before the round-up or after 
 it, and the calf might be already branded or not 
 branded. Or he might make up a bunch of calves and 
 hold them in corrals or pastures away from their 
 mothers, and so finally drive them away to another 
 part of the range, these calves either branded or not 
 branded as the case might be. 
 
 If the rustler wanted any beef, he simply shot 
 down any animal he fancied and skinned it, carrying 
 away the meat. As he might not care to have the 
 incriminating hide found in his keeping, with its tell- 
 tale brand to speak against him, he might burn up 
 or destroy the hide or throw it away where it might 
 not be found. It was a very big and wild country, and 
 not many persons would be apt to cross his trail in 
 the course of a day or a week. 
 
 It was not considered any crime at all for the resi- 
 dents of the country to kill what beef they wanted 
 for their own use, provided it was beef that belonged 
 to the big cattle companies. But the rustlers were not 
 content with this. They wanted to do a little more 
 than live. So they began to regularly market this 
 free beef. A great many of the butcher shops in the 
 ragged little frontier towns would take all the risk of 
 handling such beef, especially if this happened to be 
 in one of the recognised rustler towns, where a trial 
 involving the title to beef always went one way, and 
 
THE RUSTLER. 293 
 
 that not in favour of a non-resident or a big cattle 
 company. 
 
 Under these conditions the rustler was able to 
 make a living and a little more than a living, and had 
 not much cause to complain; or as he would probably 
 have phrased it, he " had no kick coming." But pres- 
 ently there appeared upon his horizon a change of con- 
 dition which offered him a still better chance to get on 
 in the world, and gave his occupation a veritable 
 " boom." Across the cattle range of Nebraska and 
 Wyoming came the advancing arm of a railroad, the 
 C. B. & Q. extension into Montana. The camps of 
 the railroad contractors, where hundreds of men were 
 emplo}^ed and had to be fed, made a most enticing 
 market, one right at the door of the rustler, a most 
 accommodating and pleasant thing to have occur. 
 The rustler was a boon to the railroad camps, and the 
 latter were a boon to him. At once a fine traffic 
 sprung up in free beef, and whole communities were 
 benefitted by the new line of trade. In some way or 
 other the rustler always managed to part with what 
 money he made, and rarely became a very successful 
 business man, but during the railroad days a number 
 of the rustlers got hold of considerable amounts of 
 money. It was all so very simple. Here were the 
 cattle. Here was the market. There was no com- 
 plicated system of round-ups and drives and shipping 
 and inspecting, and, best of all, a man did not need 
 any money to go into business. All he required was a 
 rifle and a wagon. It was no wonder that under so 
 flattering a prospect a great many men went in with 
 the clans of the resident rustlers. The result was so 
 wholesale a stealing of the range cattle of non-resi- 
 dents and of large resident outfits that the industry 
 of cattle raising received a terrible blow. All the 
 20 
 
294: THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 profits of the ranches were going into the hands of the 
 rustlers, and the herds instead of increasing were 
 standing still or decreasing. Of course, this state of 
 affairs could not long prevail, and there ensued the 
 determined fight upon the rustlers which resulted 
 ultimately in the breaking up of their practices, or re- 
 ducing them to an endurable extent. 
 
 It may be curious information to some to learn 
 the exact manner in which brands were changed by 
 these light-fingered persons, so that one brand was 
 made into another without leaving proof behind it of 
 the change. We now come upon a delicate field, as the 
 rustling operations in consideration all transpired 
 within a few years back, and a great many of the men 
 who assisted in them might not like to have their 
 names and signs manual appear in print. It is not 
 alleged that any or all of the brands given herein are 
 actual or genuine, or that the alterations shown were 
 ever actually made by any persons, and no accuracy 
 is claimed for the names of the different brands men- 
 tioned. They are simply given, as the "retired rus- 
 tler " who reviewed them remarked, to " show the pos- 
 sibilities of the cow business in a good climate." There 
 may or may not be certain cattle men or certain ex- 
 rustlers who might recognise some of the brands 
 shown, but these no doubt would understand the mo- 
 tive to be simply one of accurate explanation of the 
 subject in general and not in particular. 
 
 Thus, we may say, one of the first brands to appear 
 on the upper ranges after the first Southern drives was 
 the old |O brand. Numbers of cattle men bought 
 cattle of that brand to stock their ranges, and, of 
 course, needed to rebrand the cattle. It was an easy 
 thing to think of the |QI brand, and this was one of 
 the largest outfits on the range. But let us suppose a 
 
THE RUSTLER. 295 
 
 rustler wanted to brand one of the |Q cows for his 
 own private purposes. He simply took his little iron 
 or wire, and put a little top to the figure 1, making it 
 into a 7. It then appeared thus: 7O quite a dif- 
 ferent thing ! Still more different was it written with 
 a letter S after it, thus: 70S* The owner would 
 not recognise his own cow thus disguised. Neither 
 could the owner of a |QI cow ver J we ll prove his 
 property when he found it wearing a brand which said 
 7OI- The matter would be still more difficult by the 
 time the next rustler had made it 7OL> an d the orig- 
 inal |O cow would be very difficult to recognise under 
 the evolved brand HOB- It should be borne in 
 mind that the brand mark as it actually shows upon 
 the hide is not so sharp and clearly defined as it looks 
 upon paper. 
 
 There was a brand known upon the range as the 
 Wrench brand, thus : JC- By the time the rustler 
 was done with it it appeared thus: Q Or it 
 might assume this form, QJJO' and be called the 
 Bridle-bit brand. The brand 21 was easily made to 
 read 26- Without much trouble 999 could appear 
 quite differently, as 888- The hair of the cow would 
 cover up any little defects of penmanship. 
 
 A brand which was a simple V was easily altered, 
 
 as thus : A ; but the skilful rustler would have been 
 wise enough to put a straight line across it, thus : -A- 
 
 covering up the junction mark of the two brands. Of 
 the old brand with the curious name of the Wallop, 
 }{, there might possibly have been constructed the 
 brand appearing 8- 
 
29 G THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 The man who invented the Pipe-bowl brand, 
 had reason to believe he had a good brand till he saw 
 
 it written thus : m j^ m ; and then thus : ij . The 
 
 originator of the following brand, CO> was contented 
 with it until he saw it changed into the C3 , and 
 called the " Fiddle-back" brand. Bar T, written T 
 was readily made into m ; and finally it might have 
 appeared thus : I Ml. 
 
 The open A U was written thus : A U ; but it came 
 to pass that a brand appeared on the range which read 
 thus : AW quite a different thing ! Another reading 
 of the T might be Q Q The L brand might be- 
 come the Block brand, thus: Q. The brand TOT 
 might have a second story put underneath it, and so 
 
 become "P 8B- A gentleman by name of Kid A 
 
 is said to have discovered that the DHL brand, Q L, 
 looked better thus : CH3- T ne 2 1 brand was very 
 pretty when made into the Tin-cup brand, thus : fij. 
 The Bar-11-Bar ( -|| ) brand was much improved 
 in the estimation of some by being inscribed 
 
 I I . under which form it was called the Hog-pen 
 
 brand. The owner of it is said to have gone over 
 the divide. The brand ^ | might be pleasant as re- 
 minding some Eastern cattle man of the year he went 
 into the cattle business. A few years later he might be 
 looking for some cows marked in that way, and would 
 not know them when he saw them, for they might be 
 
 marked ^ Jj. Or they might also be markedCJO. The 
 
 brand originally made thus, -fc, was easily made into 
 the Wheel brand, thus : A. The original brand 1 1 
 
THE RUSTLER. 297 
 
 could have been changed to U , and then into lp. It 
 
 is not stated that any such change ever was made, 
 but it might have been made along with any of the 
 above. The letter S, alone or in combinations, was 
 one of the hardest brands for the rustler to change 
 successfully. 
 
 But perhaps the best instance of the brand-blot- 
 ter's or " brand-blotcher's " art, one which shows alike 
 his ingenuity and his grim sense of humour, was the al- 
 teration of the brand of the Liverpool and Suffolk Cat- 
 tle Company, a wealthy English corporation who went 
 into business in Wyoming with a view to gaining 
 'American money and American experience. The lat- 
 ter they actually got. The brand of this company was 
 known as the " Guinea brand," in token, perhaps, of the 
 many guineas of profits which were to flow into the 
 company's coffers. It was written thus on the re- 
 corder's books : f . But some of the cattle of the Eng- 
 lish company changed their guinea stamp. The cow 
 was the cow for a' that ; but it bore the mark of the 
 good old American dollar, and was called the property 
 
 of the " Dollar brand," whose sign was thus : 4. 
 
 IT 
 
 This was something which the Englishmen could not 
 understand for a long time. 
 
 Reference to the cuts will show the process of evo- 
 lution of some of the rustler brands,, and will afford a 
 clear idea of the means by which the intention of the 
 old-time identification marks of the cow trade was per- 
 verted by dishonest individuals. Of course this was all 
 a serious injury to the legitimate trade indeed, a blow 
 at its fundamental principles and a contravention of 
 the original principle of justice among cowmen. Those 
 
298 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 of the ranchmen who were suffering, together with 
 those who were opposed to all such dishonest methods, 
 soon joined forces to crush out this growing evil, which 
 must else have put an end to the cattle trade. The 
 whole sanctity of the brand was going, and there was 
 danger that the idea of its integrity as a sign of owner- 
 ship would lose alike legal and popular value. The 
 height of these depredations was reached at a time well 
 within modern days and modern methods; none the 
 less the law of force was invoked, as well as the law of 
 the land, and this upon hoth sides. Two or three 
 ranch foremen who remained loyal to their employers' 
 interests were forced to leave the country, and one or 
 two others were killed outright by the rustlers. Sev- 
 eral non-resident cattle men found it unsafe to live 
 upon their ranches, and so returned to their homes 
 in the States. Upon the other hand, a few of the rus- 
 tlers were killed, and many were warned or threat- 
 ened. Finally came the climax of affairs, which ul- 
 timately resulted in the waning of the star of the 
 rustler and the general establishment upon the range 
 of those principles of justice which were agreed upon 
 by all as best for the interests of all. The cattle asso- 
 ciations attained the practical control of the cattle busi- 
 ness. Cattle men held the most responsible positions 
 of public life, and were acknowledged to be among the 
 most important citizens of the State, and to represent 
 the State's most considerable industry. Since then the 
 cattle business has become one of business methods and 
 high organization. 
 
 The rustlers were wrong. They were lawless men 
 refugees and outlaws many of them. Yet there is a 
 certain picturesqueness in their story, intimately blonrl- 
 ed as it is with the story of the cattle trade and of the 
 cowboy, a romantic interest which we should not over- 
 
THE RUSTLER. 299 
 
 look. It was the rustler who held the last pinnacle 
 in the fight for the old days and the old ways of the 
 West. 
 
 Since his fight was doomed of necessity to he a 
 losing one, let us at least endeavour to be just to him. 
 He was the burglar of the range; but, unlike the 
 burglar of the cities, he very often thought that he 
 was justified in what he did by the precedents of his 
 country. When he came to see and to believe that he 
 was wrong, he in many cases reformed and never again 
 went back to the old ways. There should be no stigma 
 allowed to rest upon the name of as honest and hard- 
 working a class of men as any of the country, and so 
 there should be no confusing of the rustler with the 
 cowboy; yet it is none the less true that some of the 
 most skilful and most trusted men now engaged in 
 punching cows upon the range are men who at one 
 time were " a little on the rustle," and who are by no 
 means anxious to cover up their past. NOT is their 
 past a barrier to them, even in these days, in the open- 
 hearted country of the range. 
 
CHAPTEE XVI. 
 
 WARS OF THE RANGE. 
 
 AT times there have been wars upon the cattle 
 range conflicts between armed bodies of men of such 
 numbers as to lift the matter above the field of mere 
 personal encounters. These wars occurred when the 
 interests of one class of men interfered with those of 
 another. They might be classed as wars between sheep- 
 men and cattle men, between factions of cattle men, 
 or between the cattle men and rustlers or cattle thieves. 
 In all these affairs the cowpuncher was the private 
 soldier, the rank and file of the firing line, so essential 
 in any fighting. In his capacity as armed retainer we 
 shall see him in yet another light. 
 
 Of these three great sources of armed interferences, 
 the difference of interests between sheep men and cat- 
 tle men is the one which has attracted the least atten- 
 tion, but which is the most serious of all. This is a 
 Avar not only of men, but of conditions. The sheep 
 are bound to drive out the cattle from much of he 
 range held by them to-day. This range is limited and 
 is growing less. It will be cut into more and more by 
 farmers and by irrigation, and on such part of the wild 
 range as is left the sheep have as good right to the 
 free grass as have the cattle. As they can live on less, 
 and as they destroy the life of the range for cattle as 
 they pass over it, it is suro they will have the best of 
 
 300 
 
WARS OF THE RANGE. 30 1 
 
 the final argument. The cattle men resent this 
 thought even to-day. What must have been their 
 feelings in the early days, when the idea was first pre- 
 sented to them? One may readily find the answer 
 when he considers the customs and precedents which 
 then obtained. The great remedy for trouble in those 
 days was the gun. 
 
 When the great herds of sheep were heard of as 
 approaching over the feeding grounds of a certain dis- 
 trict, the cowmen hurriedly met and took action. A 
 delegation was sent to the men in charge of the sheep 
 bands, warning them to come no further. If the sheep 
 outfit felt strong enough, which was rarely the case, it 
 sent back its defiance, and said that it would walk its 
 sheep over any part of the free earth that seemed most 
 convenient. The cowmen then sent to town for extra 
 ammunition. 
 
 As the sheep worked in over the country, passing 
 sometimes over high and dry mountain plateaus and 
 across the rocky foothills, the herds were watched con- 
 stantly by the cowboys of the nearer ranch outfits. 
 The solitary sheep herder, sitting with head downcast 
 on some mountain side, might hear the sing of a bul- 
 let. His own rifle, rusted and full of grass and sand, 
 might fail him even if he tried to use it. He might 
 take the hint, or again receive the final hint, and in- 
 deed go " over the range," never more to return. The 
 sheep, sometimes driven by the cowboys into some box 
 canon or defile, were butchered in hundreds and thou- 
 sands. One sheep outfit, if memory serves correctly, 
 lost nearly four thousand sheep one afteroon in a little 
 canon where they were crowded up, their bodies being 
 left where they were shot down and their attendants 
 driven out of the country. The law of might was the 
 only one held in respect in those days. The general 
 
302 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 consensus of opinion was that no man engaged in 
 walking sheep could be a decent citizen. He was a 
 low down, miserable being, whom it was quite correct 
 to terrify or kill. A popular contempt was entertained 
 for " sheep meat/' and any one addicted to the habit 
 of eating it was considered of degenerate tendency. 
 The little cow town hotel at times served this meat 
 on its tables, but the very waiter girls had scorn in 
 their voices when they called to the cook through the 
 kitchen window their order for a " plate of sheep." 
 
 Of all the wars of the range, the greatest and blood- 
 iest was the Lincoln County war of New Mexico, a 
 mere factional war, in which there was no principle at 
 stake, and no motive except the desire of robbery and 
 personal revenge. This bloody partisan contest was 
 carried on at a time before the modern ways of gather- 
 ing news had penetrated so far as the remote country 
 which was the scene of the disturbances. Did that 
 country remain to-day as wild and unsettled as it was 
 then, and as far from railroad and telegraphic commu- 
 nications, the best of the newspapers of to-day might 
 have no inkling of equal sensations occurring there 
 until weeks or months after they had happened. Eu- 
 rope, Turkey, the Soudan, are not so far as was, about 
 the year 1880, the little-known country between the 
 Rio Grande and the Pecos River. The Lincoln 
 County war raged for a couple of years or more in spas- 
 modic virulence, until the whole cattle community 
 was ranged in factions, one half against the other, and 
 each man doubtful of his neighbour. It was supposed 
 that this war resulted in the death of two or three 
 hundred men, but no one will ever really know how 
 many men were killed in this guerilla fighting, until 
 the tally-book of the recording angel shows how many 
 skeletons are lying out in the mountains of that calm 
 
WARS OF THE RANGE. 303 
 
 Southwestern country, where even to-day the deer 
 hunter may find a human skull, or the scattered mem- 
 bers of some disjointed thing whose nature he perhaps 
 fails to recognise. Yet recent as was the occurrence 
 of these terrible events, they are already shrouded in 
 apathy and buried in forgetfulness. The public never 
 knew of this war, and does not know of it to-day. The 
 newspapers of the cities never got hold of the facts in 
 any actual accurate state. Most of the men of the coun- 
 try did not care to write or tell all they knew. The 
 greatest war of the range has passed into the oblivion 
 which broods above the cattle country. Yet were the 
 book of this little drama written, it would be in its 
 way a series of hero tales, full of the bravery and de- 
 termination, the faithfulness and hardihood of many; 
 of the fiendish cruelty, the lust of blood, the insatiable 
 vindictiveness of others. Human life was never cheap- 
 er than in the Spanish Southwest. In this time of 
 outbreak it seemed that all the smouldering passions of 
 generations, all the uncentred hate, the misgrown men- 
 tality, the distorted love of blood, and the reckless love 
 of danger for its own morbid pleasure had accumulated 
 and broken forth in a volcano of blood and crime. The 
 only society was one of armed conflict, the only fellow- 
 ship was that of mutual danger or mutual criminality. 
 There were no law courts in the region at the time 
 fit to bear such name, and such as there were remained 
 helpless. The Territorial authorities were no less 
 helpless. The Governor of the Territory was disposed 
 to quell the disturbance, and it is related of him that 
 in pursuance of his military training he intended to 
 send troops and cannon down into the desert to fight 
 these cowboys, though this perhaps was related with a 
 bit of the grim humour of the times. Prices were 
 put on the heads of some of the most dangerous men, 
 
304: THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 and then for years the merry chase of man-hunting 
 went on until most of the gangs were broken up. 
 Many of the men were killed, and those remaining 
 alive dispersed into Old Mexico. During the preva- 
 lence of the war the whole country had been terror- 
 ized by continual scenes of violence and death, and so 
 indiscriminate had been the murderous spirit of the 
 worst of the outlaws engaged in this fighting that no 
 man knew when he was safe from some one or other 
 of the many gangs which infested the country. 
 
 The cause of this great war lay primarily in the 
 loose state of society at the time. Far down in the 
 Seven Eivers country, at the lower portion of the Pecos 
 Valley, was the ranch of old John Chisholm, who had 
 ventured in there when few other men had dared to 
 try the country. He had become very wealthy. That 
 was the day of Mavericks, and as the country was 
 very wild and unknown perhaps it is less known to- 
 day than any country of equal size in the United 
 States the Chisholm herd soon grew to number any- 
 where from thirty to sixty thousand, and Chisholm and 
 his brother lived the lives of veritable cattle kings. 
 Under them at times were large numbers of cowboys, 
 and among these were some of the hardest men that 
 ever threw a leg over a saddle, as indeed they had need 
 to be. 
 
 The whole region was full of horse thieves and 
 outlaws, the worst of these being under the leader- 
 ship of the notorious cutthroat, Billy the Kid, a name 
 famous even yet along that border. Billy the Kid died 
 at the ripe age of twenty-three, and at that time had 
 killed twenty-three men, committing his first murder 
 when he was but fourteen years of age. He and his 
 men inaugurated a reign of terror, which made his 
 name a dread from one end of the country to the other. 
 
WARS OF THE RANGE. 3Q5 
 
 They lived on their earnings as robbers,, and glad 
 enough were the Mexicans of the remote placitas to 
 give them anything they asked in return for life. This 
 young fiend and his gang at one time shot down in 
 cold blood a party of seven Mexicans whom they found 
 encamped at a water hole, declaring later that they 
 did this " just to see them kick." Twice captured by 
 the bold officers sent after him,, the Kid escaped, in 
 the last instance killing his two guards in the county 
 jail, and then openly parading on the platform before 
 the court house for half an hour before he deigned to 
 move off upon a horse which he took from a passer-by. 
 The gang of the Kid made a practice of raiding 
 the little white settlements then just coming into the 
 country, and each such raid was apt to mean a life 
 or two. Once they thus visited the village of White 
 Oaks, and at night amused themselves by shooting at 
 the lights in the windows of the houses. It chanced 
 that there was a family living in one of the houses 
 among whom were some women, almost the first that 
 had ever come to the camp. The stern men of the 
 frontier might pass over the shooting at their own 
 windows, but they would brook no ill treatment of 
 the women of the community. A band of pursuers 
 was made up, and the Kid was besieged at a ranch 
 house some miles north of White Oaks. ' The self-ap- 
 pointed leader of the pursuers went into the house 
 with a flag of truce and was detained there. Later he 
 tried to escape from the house and was shot down by 
 the Kid as he ran, this breaking up the siege with Billy 
 still in possession of his fortifications. It seemed that 
 the Kid would never be killed or taken, and he and his 
 men became more and more daring and outrageous. 
 Yet it is a curious fact, showing well the condition of 
 the society of the times, that the Kid was perfectly well 
 
306 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 known by nearly everybody living in the country, and 
 had many warm friends and adherents. A great many 
 others entertained him when he called, and professed 
 for him a friendship which they did not feel, but dared 
 not deny. If a man was suspected by the Kid as apt 
 to convey undesirable news to undesirable parties, the 
 Kid never made any accusations, asked any questions, 
 or waited for any denials. He simply shot the man, 
 laughed about it, and rode on. A wilder or more 
 lawless part of the earth never lay out of doors than 
 this portion of New Mexico at this time. 
 
 It was the habit of these gangs of the Kid's people 
 to make a living from the country in the easiest way 
 possible. Some of them knew all about the Chisholm 
 outfit, and it seems to have been agreed among them 
 that it would be a desirable thing to kill the owners of 
 the ranch, take possession of the property, and settle 
 down to being cattle kings themselves, counting upon 
 the remoteness and untravelled nature of the country 
 to protect them in this crime, as it had in hundreds of 
 others. There may have been some disagreements over 
 Maverick matters and that sort of thing which never 
 came to light, but the conclusion on the part of the 
 gang was to make a wholesale killing and stealing. 
 
 There was one obstacle to the carrying out of this 
 little plan of taking the Chisholm herds and killing 
 John Chisholm, and that was the objection John Chis- 
 holm had to both phases of the proposition. Instead 
 of submitting or running, he sent out word and in a 
 short time had about him as good a little army of fight- 
 ing men as ever got together. These men were paid 
 about five dollars a day apiece, and had arms and am- 
 munition furnished them. In a short time there wore 
 practically two armies scattered about over the country 
 looking for somebody to kill. As neither party had 
 
WARS OF THE RANGE. 307 
 
 any uniform or distinguishing mark, it was difficult for 
 a man to tell his friends from his foes. When two 
 parties of these armed riders met, it was known there 
 must be a statement as to sides, for all the country was 
 forced to take one side or the other. The wayfarer 
 who saw a body of men approaching was obliged to 
 guess, and guess very quickly, which side he favoured. 
 If he guessed wrong, the coyotes had another meal. 
 The victim was left lying where he fell. The moun- 
 tains were full of dead men, and each camping place 
 by the infrequent water holes had its tale of blood and 
 horror. One man after another was killed thus by 
 men of one side or the other, sometimes men who were 
 entirely innocent of any connection with the trouble 
 in hand. If a paid fighter was killed, another man was 
 hired to take his place. 
 
 Neither faction knew how many men the other 
 had arrayed against it, nor did it care, for there 
 ws no regular force on either side and no gen- 
 eral meetings of the opposing clans, the little 
 straggling bands of fighters being scattered about 
 as the case might be, not only near the Chisholm 
 ranches, but over the whole of a county which is as 
 large as the State of Pennsylvania. At one time there 
 was a sort of pitched battle waged at the county seat 
 of Lincoln County, and some of the Kid's men " holed 
 up " in a 'dobe house until driven out by fire, meantime 
 making deadly rifle practice upon any of the enemy 
 who chanced to show a head anywhere along the street 
 of the tiny 'dobe town. Upon the hillside back of 
 the courthouse one of the opposing force attempted 
 to run to the cover of a big rock, from which he could 
 command the windows of the 'dobe fortress of the 
 Kid's men. As he ran there spoke a heavy buffalo gun 
 from the window, and he fell shot through the back 
 
308 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 at four hundred yards. He was not killed at once, 
 and lay upon the hillside all the rest of the afternoon 
 waving his hand for help, but no one dared go near 
 him; and there he died, one of the cowboy victims 
 of this war a death inglorious enough, but met in 
 pursuance of what the poor fellow thought was his 
 duty. 
 
 Many were the stories of the bloody incidents of 
 the Lincoln County war one heard upon the scenes 
 of their happening and within the year or so follow- 
 ing their occurrence, but it would be sickening to tell 
 the full details of this great feud, or enter into the 
 long story of its history of open or secret assassina- 
 tions. It is enough to say that the outlaws who were 
 at the bottom of it were gradually defeated. The offi- 
 cers of the land were as brave men as ever lived, and 
 they never ceased in their killing or capturing until 
 they themselves were killed, and then their deputies 
 took up the work. Prices were put on the heads of 
 the leaders, and this made traitors of many of the men, 
 all the arts of State's evidence and the like being em- 
 ployed by the courts^ now gradually becoming stronger 
 in the country. Gradually the war died away in a 
 series of personal feuds, which resulted in many kill- 
 ings }^ears later. Some of the hired fighting men left 
 the country when it began to get too hot for them, 
 and some of these may be living now on the Northern 
 cow ranges, not telling all the things they know about 
 the past. Indictments were out for many men who 
 never had service of warrant made on them. 
 
 Pat Garrett, the man who had been elected sheriff 
 for the express purpose of killing Billy the Kid, and 
 who had sent word to him that one or the other of 
 them must be killed to which Billy gave a cordial 
 assent finally got track of the little ruffian just as he 
 
WAKS OF THE RANGE. 3Q9 
 
 was about to leave the country for Mexico. It was 
 reported that Billy was to call at night at a certain 
 ranch to say good-bye to his sweetheart, a Mexican 
 senprita, and JL J at Garrett went to the house and se- 
 creted himself behind the bed of the ranch owner in 
 the room nearest the entrance. After dark Billy came 
 to the house, passing two of Garrett's men half sus- 
 piciously as they sat on the ground outside the door. 
 He apparently was about to repent of having violated 
 his customary rule of shooting first and inquiring 
 afterward, and had pulled his gun from the scabbard 
 and was looking out at the men as he came backing 
 into the door, with his boots in one hand. Garrett 
 saw and recognised him, and at once shot and killed 
 him; none too quick, for Billy heard him as he rose 
 from behind the bed, holding the scared ranchman 
 down with one arm as he fired. Billy turned swiftly 
 about and made a quick but ineffectual shot, for he 
 was dead even as he fired. Pat Garrett to-day is a 
 respected ranchman, as pleasant a man as one would 
 ask to meet. All that country now is trying to forget 
 its earlier history, and little is ever done to dimin- 
 ish the general ignorance in regard to the most seri- 
 ous and most bloody factional war ever known upon 
 the cattle range. 
 
 The last of the important cattle wars was the some- 
 what famous " rustler war " of 1892, in which a cam- 
 paign was made by the cattle men of Wyoming against 
 the rustlers of Johnson County, Wyoming. This 
 " war " was not without its opera-bouffe aspects, 
 though it was ventilated for each day for over three 
 weeks in the daily press, and heralded to the corners 
 of the world. It was very much an affair of going 
 after rustlers with a brass band, and it did not result 
 so successfully as was hoped by the leaders of the pro- 
 21 
 
310 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 ject. Only two men were killed in this " war/ 7 yet 
 the matter attracted far more attention than any 
 similar clash that ever occurred in the cattle coun- 
 try. This was simply because of the newspaper no- 
 toriety it had. An old cowman covered the case per- 
 fectly when he said: " There might be twenty-five 
 men killed each day down in Lincoln County in the 
 old times, and it wouldn't make half the stir that is 
 made nowadays if one man shoots at another in Wyo- 
 ming. The newspapers make all the difference." The 
 full force of such a remark can never be felt unless it 
 has been one's fortune to live, at some time or other 
 in his life, in a country where there were no newspa- 
 pers and no law. He is then back at the beginning 
 of the world, antedating civilization-, and in a posi- 
 tion to see the crude and grim forces underlying this 
 human nature which pretends later to compose itself 
 with the ways of society, but which has really a snarl 
 and a claw not far away. 
 
 The newspaper accounts of the rustler war of 1892 
 were in many respects incorrect, the despatches coming 
 from Buffalo, in Johnson County, the seat of the rus- 
 tler element, being entirely contradictory to those 
 emanating from Cheyenne, the headquarters of the 
 big cowmen concerned in the raid. One gathers his 
 beliefs in regard to the situation not from the news- 
 paper accounts, but from thorough review of the mat- 
 ter upon one hand with a cowman who was one of the 
 participants in the raid, and upon the other hand with 
 some rustlers who were at Buffalo and thoroughly con- 
 cerned in all the incidents which occurred on that 
 side of the " war." 
 
 For a long time the rustlers had boon making lifo 
 a burdon to tho locn'timate cowmen of the countios of 
 Johnson, ISTatrona, and Converse, until they had nearly 
 
WARS OF THE RANGE. 31 1 
 
 brought to a standstill all the proper operations of the 
 cattle industry. Before the establishment of the live 
 stock commission and the brand inspectors, it was im- 
 possible for a ranchman to tell whether he was going 
 to come out at the end of the year with any cattle left 
 or not. Practically the whole country was living on 
 stolen beef, and not content with this and with serving 
 notice on the cattle companies that they would no 
 longer be allowed to hold their round-ups, the rustlers 
 began to ship beef by car-load lots to the markets of 
 the East. As there were no brand inspectors there 
 to detect the fraudulent nature of such shipments, 
 there was imminent danger that the illegal cattle men 
 would entirely ruin the legal ones. The extent of 
 the losses suffered by the cattle men may be inferred 
 from the fact that within the first year after the ap- 
 pointment of the brand inspectors at the markets they 
 sent back to the commissioners of the State $127,000 
 of " estray money " on cattle passing to market from 
 the Wyoming range. The commissioners found proper 
 ownership for all but $14,000 of this, but refused some 
 of the funds to rustlers who openly claimed dues there- 
 in. This appearance of the action of the new cattle 
 laws was extremely unsatisfactory to the rustlers, and 
 it resulted in a practical solidification of the various 
 rustler factions, and made of the county of Johnson a 
 rustler settlement, where the cattle men had no voice. 
 In four years the cattle men brought one hundred and 
 eighty suits in Johnson County against rustlers for 
 stealing beef or calves, but no jury could be found 
 which would convict a man, and the only case in which 
 a rustler was ever punished was one in which a thief 
 bad killed a cow and taken home a quarter of the beef, 
 for which he was convicted of petty larceny and as- 
 sessed the value of the beef, about eighteen dollars. 
 
312 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 The rustlers posed as small stockmen,, and did all 
 they could to array the interests of the actual small 
 stockmen against those of the " barons/ 7 or ranch capi- 
 talists, claiming that the fight was one of wealth 
 against men in moderate circumstances, and asserting 
 that as to the methods practised in acquiring cattle, 
 the big ranchmen were no better than they should 
 be. In this latter statement there was colour of truth 
 in many instances, for the fortune of more than one 
 man engaged in the raid against the rustlers was more 
 than probably laid in the early and active efforts of 
 their foremen with the branding iron. When such 
 foremen sought to carry on the old methods for them- 
 selves which they had practised for their employers, 
 the latter made objection, feeling that there had been 
 a change in the former relations of meum and tuum. 
 There is large undercurrent of unwritten history on 
 both sides of the question in this rustler war. Be that 
 as it may, there was much bitterness felt on both sides, 
 and no doubt both sides thought they had some partial 
 justification in many things which they did or at- 
 tempted to do. 
 
 Early in the spring of 1892 a number of the large 
 cattle owners met at Cheyenne and resolved upon a 
 general raid against the rustlers, they having the names 
 of about one hundred and twenty-five men whom they 
 claimed to know were engaged in the rustling business, 
 some thirty-five of whom they agreed among them- 
 selves either to kill or drive out of the country. In 
 this movement to invoke the old-time ways of the 
 range were several men prominent in State affairs, a 
 member of the Legislature, a member of the stock 
 commission, and some two dozen wealthy cattle men, 
 several of whom were practically non-resident Eastern- 
 ers who had large holdings of cattle in Wyoming. 
 
WARS OF THE RANGE. 313 
 
 There never was a more select, or a more inefficient, 
 lynching party started out across the plains. Nearly 
 all the cowmen of the movement were men of culture 
 and refinement. Two Harvard graduates were among 
 the outfit. There was a young Englishman along to see 
 the fun which he saw and all in all the gathering 
 was, socially speaking, everything that could be asked. 
 It was incidentally remarked in one of the newspaper 
 reports that one of the select lynchers while asleep 
 in camp one day chanced to toss out his hand over his 
 blankets, thus displaying two large diamond rings 
 which he wore as part of his range costume. It is 
 not justly to be said of these men that they were not 
 brave and determined, and it probably never occurred 
 to them that they would fail of carrying out their pro- 
 gramme as arranged in detail without experiencing 
 any great hindrance on the part of the men they were 
 intending to hang, shoot, or drive out of the county. 
 They had read of such things being done, and agreed 
 that it was desirable they should do some of those 
 things for themselves. That one of their number 
 who tells this story of the raid admits frankly that 
 they made a great mistake. They were all new at 
 that sort of business, Eastern men who had not been 
 reared in the hard school of the old times, and who, 
 while they might have been fit for privates in such 
 an enterprise, were absolutely unfit for leaders; in 
 which latter capacity there seems to have been a gen- 
 eral willingness to serve. The men who should have 
 been in charge were the men who were hired by the 
 day to serve as privates twenty fighting Texans, cow- 
 punchers from the lower range, who were imported 
 for this purpose and paid five dollars a day and ex- 
 penses to go along and see or assist in the hanging, 
 shooting, and driving out. Had the leader of the cow- 
 
314 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 boys been the leader of the party, the result might 
 have been, at least in some respects, different; for here 
 was a man with followers who, though they had not 
 accumulated enough funds to afford to wear diamond 
 rings when going to a lynching, had none the less 
 served in the rude apprenticeship of Western life on 
 the plains, and knew far more about partisan cam- 
 paigning than all the men who acted as the leaders 
 of this raid. 
 
 The party as finally organized numbered forty- 
 three men, including the twenty Texans, and their out- 
 fit was as perfect as money could buy. They had three 
 wagons and plenty of cooks, and evidently intended to 
 travel in perfect comfort. Secretly embarking their 
 outfit on a train at Cheyenne at night, early in April, 
 1892, they went by rail to Casper, Wyoming, arriving 
 there the following night. Thence they started with 
 their horses and wagons overland across the wild coun- 
 try, something like one hundred and thirty miles, which 
 lay between them and the seat of war. The first seri- 
 ous business of the expedition was at the K. C. ranch, 
 occupied by two well-known rustlers, Nate Champion 
 and Mck Ray. The raiders held up this ranch at day- 
 break, and early in the morning took prisoners two 
 freighters who happened to be stopping at' the house, 
 and who came o~t of the house to go toward the barn. 
 The house was then surrounded by a firing party of 
 twelve men, it being supposed that Champion and Ray 
 would soon miss the other men and come out to see 
 what had become of them. Presently one of the rus- 
 tlers, Ray, stepped to the door, and at once fell under 
 the rifle fire of the men who lay concealed and waiting 
 for him. The participants in this raid are very reti- 
 cent in regard to the names of those who did any 
 shooting, but one of the freighters taken prisoner 
 
WARS OF THE RANGE. 315 
 
 afterward said that it was a smooth-faced boy, one of 
 the Texas lighters, who took the first hurried aim 
 and shot Ray down. Hay was shot again as he crawled 
 back into the house. The other rustler, Champion, 
 remained game till the last and refused to come out, 
 keeping up his fire upon his besiegers whenever op- 
 portunity offered. Champion was finally driven out 
 by means of fire. A wagon load of hay was pushed up 
 against the ranch house and set on fire, so that the 
 cabin was burned over the head of the rustler defend- 
 ing it. The body of Kay was later found burned and 
 charred. 
 
 When the heat became too much for him, Cham- 
 pion ran from the burning house, endeavouring to 
 reach a little gully near by. He was shot as he ran, 
 and it was later said that twenty-eight wounds were 
 found in his body. The rustler side in this war claim 
 that when Champion was first shot down he was only 
 wounded, and asked the men who came up to him 
 not to shoot again, but that one of the party placed 
 his rifle to Champion's face and deliberately shot him 
 as he lay upon the ground. The body of Champion 
 was left with a card pinned to it bearing the inscrip- 
 tion, " Cattle Thieves, beware." In Champion's pock- 
 et, after his death, there was found a roughly written 
 memorandum of the events of the day as they appeared 
 to him as he was shut in his cabin by the invading 
 party. He told of the suffering of his comrade Ray, 
 stated the hour of Ray's death, mentioned his efforts 
 to get a shot at the men who were firing at him, 
 stated calmly that he did not think he could hold out 
 much longer, and mentioned the appearance of^ the 
 wagon-loa'd of hay which he knew was to burn him'out. 
 Then, as though in deliberate address to his fellows 
 of the range, he wrote, " Boys, I guess it is all up. 
 
316 THE STOEY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 Good-bye." Had the fact not been established clearly 
 enough otherwise, it might have been seen from the 
 simple nature of this pitiful little scrawl that the rus- 
 tler Champion \vas a brave man. He had long been 
 known and dreaded by the cattle men. 
 
 While the siege of the K. C. ranch was in progress, 
 two men came along the trail with a wagon, and owing 
 to the poor management by the leaders of the raiders, 
 these men were allowed to escape, which they did at 
 full speed on the horses which they took from the 
 wagon. It happened that one of these men was Jack 
 Flagg, a man whose brand, p, was odious in the eyes 
 of more than one of the cattle men who could here 
 have held him prisoner. Flagg was one of the promi- 
 nent men among the resident range people who were 
 accused of rustling. His escape meant the ruin of 
 the raiders' expedition. Flagg never drew rein until 
 he had alarmed his friends from the K. C. ranch to 
 the town of Buffalo. In twelve hours all Bustlerdom 
 was alarmed and hurrying to the combat. The town 
 of Buffalo, the county seat of Johnson G'ounty, and 
 the headquarters of the free-range element, was at 
 once aroused into that deadly fury w*hich among West- 
 ern men means but one thing. Immediate w r ar was 
 to be given those who had carried war into this 
 country. 
 
 Nor was this war upon the side of the rustlers to 
 be without show of legal justice. It is all very well 
 to say that the principle of the majority is a dangerous 
 principle in the hands of dangerous men; yet how can 
 this principle legally be set aside in any of the forms 
 of this Government, whether in the election of offi- 
 cers national or municipal? Legally speaking, the 
 county of Johnson was as resnlarly organized ,1? any, 
 and a man who lived there had as good a right to vote 
 
WARS OF THE RANGE. 317 
 
 for the officers of that county as has any man of any 
 part of the Union. The residents of Johnson County 
 had legally elected as their sheriff Ked Angus, who 
 therefore was the recognised agent of the law. As 
 sheriff, Angus summoned about him a posse of the citi- 
 zens of Buffalo and vicinity, in numbers sufficient, as 
 he thought, to accomplish the arrest of the invading 
 party of raiders, who of course had no legal status 
 whatever in that country, and who were breaking laws 
 of a nature always held to be higher than those laws 
 which they accused the rustlers of violating. Surely a 
 more dramatic or more involved situation never ap- 
 peared upon the cow range than this, when two armies, 
 each armed, each able and anxious to kill, met each 
 other to decide an issue an issue in which both were 
 wrong! In no country but the West of the cattle 
 days could any such situation ever have arisen. 
 
 The sheriff had a vast posse at his back when he 
 started forth from Buffalo to arrest the band of cattle 
 men. The latter, knowing what would be the result 
 of their mistake in allowing the two men to escape and 
 spread the news, pushed on as fast as they could into 
 the country where they expected to find others of the 
 men whom they had upon their list as men to be shot, 
 hung, or driven out of the country. They seem 
 little to have known the seriousness of their under- 
 taking, or the sternness of the men against whom they 
 were proceeding, among whom, wrong as they were, 
 were some of the best cowpunchers and hardiest plains- 
 men of the entire cattle range. The raiders kept their 
 wagons with them as long as they could, and then 
 pushed on ahead, leaving their supplies behind them. 
 In a little while after that the rustlers swarmed in 
 upon the trail, seized the wagons, and took prisoners 
 the teamsters. From that time the invaders ceased to 
 
318 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 be the pursuers and became themselves the pursued. 
 They stopped at the T. A. ranch, by this time discover- 
 ing what the circumstances really were. Here they 
 stood at bay and were surrounded by the forces of 
 the rustlers. There were three hundred and nine- 
 teen men in the body which besieged the cattle 
 men at the T. A. outfit, the force being made 
 up of rustlers and rustler sympathizers, with perhaps 
 a great many others who were afraid to refuse the 
 invitation to join the fight. 
 
 The cowmen were outnumbered, although they 
 claimed that they expected re-enforcements from a 
 body of Montana cattle men within the week. Yet they 
 were brave as any, and moreover they had intelligence 
 and skill upon their side. They quickly fortified the T. 
 A. ranch with regular rifle pits, barricaded the build- 
 ings with logs, made firing stands out of more logs, and 
 really Jiad things in fine shape for a long siege or hot 
 attack. The rustlers constantly increased in numbers 
 and were determined to kill or capture the entire 
 party. Firing was kept up at long range on both 
 sides, though without much damage. One old fellow 
 by the name of Boone, a plainsman with a big buffalo 
 gun, was on the rustlers' side, and was extremely ac- 
 curate with his fire. He would throw a big bullet 
 against the ranch door or through a window nearly 
 every time he shot. There were twenty-six horses 
 killed in one day in the T. A. corral by the rustler fire, 
 and it must have appeared to the cattle men that they 
 were soon to be set on foot in the middle of a very 
 hostile country. It was never admitted that any of 
 the rustlers were killed in this long-range firing, and 
 the cattle men will not admit that they had any one 
 killed in the fight, thorurh they pny that two of their 
 men were accidentally killed. One of them was thrown 
 
WARS OF THE RANGE. 319 
 
 by his horse and his rifle accidentally discharged, shoot- 
 ing him through the thigh so that he afterward died. 
 A second man, while hurrying out of the door of the 
 ranch house to go after some water, knocked his own 
 revolver out of its holster, and was so shot through 
 the abdomen, dying later. One of these men was 
 still living at the time of the surrender, and both of 
 them came from the ranks of the cowpunchers who 
 were hired to do the fighting. The siege lasted for 
 three days, the firing being kept up more or less stead- 
 ily on both sides. The cattle men claim that they 
 knew many of the men in the rustler party were small 
 stock men who were really not in sympathy with the 
 rustlers, and who took pains to fire high when shoot- 
 ing at the ranch house. 
 
 While all this was going on, the entire civilized 
 world knew every detail of the combat from day to 
 day. The commanding officer of Fort McKinney, 
 which lay so close to the T. A. ranch that the firing 
 could be heard distinctly all the time, was asked by 
 the county authorities to assist in the capture of the 
 cattle men. This he declined to do, and he also de- 
 clined to lend the sheriff a cannon or a Gatling gun 
 for use in carrying the barricaded ranch house. The 
 rustlers then began plans for blowing up the ranch 
 house with dynamite, they having found in the cap- 
 tured wagons one hundred pounds of that article in- 
 tended for use against themselves, and having con- 
 cluded that it would be well to show the cattle men 
 still more fully the unwelcome situation of being 
 hoist by one's own petard. The commander at Fort 
 McKinney wired his superior officer as to what course 
 he should pursue, and the Government at "Washington 
 replied through the general in charge of the Depart- 
 ment of the Missouri, stationed at Omaha, that the 
 
320 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 officer in command at Fort McKinney should put an 
 end to this armed disturbance, and should turn over 
 his prisoners to the proper authorities, but should not 
 deliver any prisoners into the hands of the opposite 
 faction. On the third day of the siege a troup of 
 cavalry rode out from Fort McKinney carrying a flag 
 of truce, to which the cowmen answered. Their sur- 
 render to the United States forces was demanded, and 
 to this they gladly agreed upon the assurance that 
 they would not be turned over to the authorities at 
 Buffalo, which all knew meant the same thing as death. 
 The sheriff demanded these prisoners of the United 
 States troops, but was refused. There was then talk 
 among the rustlers of taking away the prisoners by 
 force and holding them for civil trial at Buffalo. No 
 forcible attempt of this nature, however, was made, 
 although there was very bitter feeling among the rus- 
 tlers at seeing their invaders escape from them. 
 
 The officer in charge of the prisoners was instructed 
 to take them away from the scene of conflict, remov- 
 ing them to Fort Eussell, about one hundred miles be- 
 low. Here, about three weeks after their outset from 
 Cheyenne, without their outfit, without their horses, 
 with two of their fighting men killed and two of their 
 teamsters missing, they arrived at Fort Eussell, not 
 in the character of victorious returners, but as prison- 
 ers in charge of the United States troops. In condi- 
 tion they were somewhat different from that under 
 which they had started forth. Some of them were 
 sick, all were weary and bedraggled, and all the leaders 
 were willing to admit that they ha<J had enough of 
 vifjilante work for the time. They admitted that they 
 had been mistaken and had not known what was be- 
 fore them, but still contended that their movement 
 had of itself been just and right. 
 
WARS OF THE RANGE. 321 
 
 As every detail of the fight at the T. A. ranch had 
 been given the public through the daily press, so was 
 the report of each day's march of the return given to 
 the world by the press correspondents. The inglori- 
 ous little " war " attracted a national attention, and was 
 for months the one theme of discussion in the State 
 of Wyoming, where it figured for a long time in State 
 politics, the two factions continuing their fight after 
 they had been obliged to lay down their arms. By one 
 party it was urged that these men should be taken back 
 to Buffalo to be tried there, at the scene of their of- 
 fence; but all knew what that meant, and the wealth 
 of the cattle men was brought into the legal fight 
 which contested any such dangerous contingency. 
 The men were finally taken by the civil authorities to 
 Laramie, and there succeeded in obtaining what they 
 coveted, a change of venue to Cheyenne, where they 
 were among their friends and on their own ground. 
 The methods of modern law, which they had but a few 
 months ago violated and held in contempt as un- 
 suited to themselves, they now hailed fervently as the 
 one thing to which all men should submit, and gladly 
 enough availed themselves of it as their only means 
 of salvation. So far from desiring to be set free, they 
 clung with ludicrous eagerness to their prison, and 
 actually paid their own expenses to be allowed to re- 
 main in jail! This they did for three months, know- 
 ing that it would bankrupt any of those scantily popu- 
 lated counties to keep so large a party of prisoners, 
 and they being desirous of anything rather than the 
 boon of liberty just then, since liberty meant danger 
 and imprisonment offered them safety! Their plans 
 were successful, and that law which they had scorned, 
 and under which they now cowered, took care of them 
 better than they perhaps deserved. 
 
322 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 It was now the time not of the old West,, but the 
 new West. All the wealth and influence of the most 
 heavity populated portions of Wyoming were with the 
 cattle men, and it was foregone that they would not 
 he convicted. When finally heard in court, these men 
 were all set free upon their own personal recognisance, 
 each man charged with the murder of two men, Cham- 
 pion and Kay, and each offence made bailable in a 
 very large sum of money, the total of bail for the forty 
 men or so tried amounting into the millions. This 
 the cattle men were able to produce or to pay if neces- 
 sary, but of course the Texas fighting men were not. 
 The latter, acting under advice of counsel, left the 
 country, " jumping " their bonds. During the trial 
 of the cause the cattle men were practically given 
 their liberty, being asked to attend at court at certain 
 hours of the day. A list of over one thousand possi- 
 ble jurymen was called, and at a time when not even 
 half of the peremptory challenges of the accused had 
 been exhausted, it became apparent that it would be 
 impossible to get a jury. It was actually seen that 
 the affair was too big for the courts of the State to 
 handle. The prosecution for the State nolle prowd 
 the cases. These men were therefore never tried, 
 never acquitted, and yet can not be again arrested 
 on the old charges. There are few of these cattle 
 men who care to speak much about this matter nowa- 
 days, and probably most of them still remain enthusi- 
 astic supporters 'of the law of the land to-day; or at 
 least they should if they possess the trait of <iratihide. 
 Indeed, the law has gradually taken sway in Uustler- 
 dom as the country has grown older, and now the 
 battles are referred to the courts by both parties to 
 much greater extent. Some of the rustlers have become 
 bold enough to openly forswear the old ways. Some 
 
WARS OF THE RANGE. 323 
 
 have turned State's evidence. Yet others are now em- 
 ployed by the cattle men., and make the best cowpunch- 
 ers possible to be found. In the odd conditions of the 
 range it has already been agreed between these late 
 armed foes that bygones are to be bygones. 
 
 Thus ended the last of the great wars of the range, 
 and the only one that has ever been a ludicrous one. 
 It might not have been so much smiled at had it suc- 
 ceeded, but success on either side might have been a 
 very unfortunate thing. The attempt failed partly 
 because the men who made it were not suited for such 
 work. Not plainsmen themselves, they undertook the 
 methods of plainsmen. They might far better have 
 clung to the ways under which they had been born 
 and brought up, and to which they so gladly returned 
 when they found they could not negotiate the ways 
 of the old West. Indeed, their fundamental mistake 
 was one of chronology. Suddenly it had grown too 
 late for the old ways. The old West was gone. 
 
 The story of this last attempt at the revival of the 
 past fashions of the West does not make to-day the 
 pleasantest of reading, but it serves after all to show 
 something further of the character of the cowboy. 
 Misguided and impulsive perhaps, he was always eager 
 to be where the fighting was thickest, and there he 
 conducted himself as a man according to the creed un- 
 der which he had been reared. Creeds change about 
 us; creeds of morals, of religion, of ethics, as the his- 
 tory of the past shows must continually be the case, 
 everything being always relative to some other thing. 
 It may have been a creed outworn which served the 
 cowboy upon the one side or the other of this ignomini- 
 ous little war. Yet it is a singular fact that, ignoble 
 as the part of a hired fiirhter has always been held to 
 be, no one has ever smiled at the part played by the 
 
324: THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 cowpuncher supernumerary in this little drama of the 
 range. The centre of the stage was occupied by fig- 
 ures larger financially than himself, but he alone out 
 of all those engaged played through to the end the part 
 for which he had been cast. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 BEEF AND FKEEDOM. 
 
 THERE is very great temptation in writing of the 
 American cowboy to tell only the thrilling stories of 
 his life, to paint only the vivid pictures, the material 
 for such treatment being so abundant and the demand 
 for it so pronounced. Yet, perhaps, we can afford to 
 be more just to the man and the country he repre- 
 sented, can afford to read at least a short lesson which 
 would show the cowboy not as a freak, but as a factor. 
 A factor he certainly was in the development of the 
 West. He was precisely the right man in the right 
 place. Therefore he was a factor in the building of 
 America, and as such he deserves a just and definite 
 place in the history of the country a place where he 
 can be viewed not so much with amusement as with 
 pride, where he can be recognised for what he was, 
 one of the great essential citizens of the land. The 
 cowboy did not make two blades of grass grow where 
 one had grown before, but he caused double the num- 
 ber of cattle to graze upon the unutilized grass which 
 made one of the resources of the land. He was not 
 only a product of the country, but a producer for the 
 country, and he distinctly added to the total of the 
 crude natural wealth quite as much as the farmer who 
 digs such wealth up out of the soil. He brought into 
 the reach of the citizen of America his share of those 
 
 325 
 
326 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 incomparable resources which have made that citizen 
 the most fortunate man of the earth. He played his 
 part in that national development which made the 
 American citizen not only the luckiest citizen of the 
 earth, but also the best citizen, the citizen best fitted 
 to uphold a nation's honour and prosperity. 
 
 It is no mere catch phrase to say that beef and 
 freedom go together. Compare the beef-eating Eng- 
 lish with the rice-eating natives of India, or the fruit- 
 eaters of Africa, whom they overwhelm so easily. It 
 is a matter of nationality in the first place, to be sure, 
 but of nationality plus long generations of better food. 
 To go further, both logic and history warrant the con- 
 clusion that there is not upon the face of the globe 
 to-day a better fighting man than he who by birth and 
 residence is entitled to be called a citizen of America, 
 because he has been the best-fed man on earth. The 
 cowboy has helped feed that man. He has added to 
 his wealth. For this he deserves an industrial credit 
 as much as does the farmer who also produces wealth, 
 the sailor who carries it, the soldier who defends it. 
 It was the part of the cowboy to aid in the production 
 of food of the most desired and valued sort, a food 
 which but small portions of the inhabitants of the 
 world have ever been able to afford. America has 
 sold beef to the world, but she sold of her surplus and 
 did not stint herself to sell. She gave to Europe what 
 was left over from her own table. Happy has been the 
 American perhaps how happy he does not stop to 
 think, and perhaps why happy he does not pause to 
 ask. Much of the measure of his good fortune lay in 
 the vast, the apparently inexhaustible treasures of the 
 West. The measure of his ignorance of that good 
 fortune may be seen later on in the history of the na- 
 tion; seen too soon, perhaps, when the mines of this 
 
BEEF AND FREEDOM. 327 
 
 wealth shall have been laid open and laid bare, when 
 the American, rich and unreckoning, shall have shared 
 with all the world, and that to his own disadvantage, 
 the wealth that was his native heritage. 
 
 The beef of the cattle range makes up but a small 
 percentage of the total of the beef which now conies 
 into the great cattle markets of the United States, for 
 the " granger " has won his fight, and from this time 
 on the farms and the herds will be smaller and small- 
 er. But it is not in the least fanciful to take into esti- 
 mate the relations of American free beef and American 
 free institutions as well as the American free and fear- 
 less character. The beef herders and the beef eaters 
 of history have been winning peoples as far back as 
 we can find in history, and it is not asking too much 
 of history to expect that she shall repeat herself. It 
 is not impossible to predict the quality or the names 
 of those nations which from now on will divide the 
 world among them. These will not be the vegetarian 
 nations. The latter will be eaten up, as the lion eats 
 up the deer. 
 
 Almost an overwhelming proportion of the popula- 
 tion of the globe, even of the population of Europe, 
 is vegetarian, not by choice but from necessity. The 
 American citizen who goes to Germany for a year's 
 residence learns that in that country many things are 
 held as luxuries which in America are necessaries, ex- 
 pected as matter of course by every American citizen, 
 no matter how poor he be. How often can the Ger- 
 man peasant afford even the most miserable bit of in- 
 ferior meat for his table? It is a feast for the family 
 of such a man if they chance to have that which 
 the American labourer eats as his daily and expected 
 portion. America throws away out of her back door 
 more than would make the German peasantry de- 
 
328 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 liriously happy. Moreover, America can afford to 
 doit. 
 
 The great bulk of the English lower classes, though 
 the English are the greatest meat-eating nation of 
 Europe, rarely see a bit of beef upon their tables. The 
 labourer of that country may make ten to twenty shil- 
 lings a week, out of which he is to support himself and 
 family, if he be conscienceless enough to marry and 
 raise a family, as usually he is. Both beef and free- 
 dom are far beyond such a man, dreams in which he 
 has no part. Compare the chain forgers and other 
 metal workers of England men, women, and chil- 
 dren, whole families fettered to the bellows and anvil 
 year in and year out, hopeless, continually hungry 
 for even one satisfying meal of but the coarsest bread, 
 to say nothing of a particle of meat compare such 
 beings with the free cowboy of America. Which 
 should be the better citizen? Whose the better blood 
 to have in a nation's veins? Take the slaves of Eng- 
 land's collieries, whose terrible and hopeless lives are 
 passed truly beneath the heel of their civilization, and 
 apparently beneath the consideration alike of hope 
 and of humanity; compare such men with the wild 
 rider of the range, who lives under the big blue sky, 
 who fears no thing that breathes, who has health and 
 energy fairly to throw away in mere surplus of vitality. 
 Which is the better sort of citizen to have behind a 
 nation in the shock of arms or in the shock of years? 
 Well may the slaves of the older civilization long for 
 the beef and the freedom of the West. And if that 
 West be gone, well may we sigh for it ourselvos! 
 
 The Hindu eats rice and grain, and he sits dream- 
 ing by the rivers which have mirrored his same apa- 
 thetic face for ages. The Russian lives upon wheat 
 and corn, when he is lucky enough to have it from 
 
BEEF AND FREEDOM. 329 
 
 his own soil or as the gift from rich America to the 
 starving; and behold the children's children of the 
 Kussian in sheepskins, and unable, as their fathers 
 were, to do more than make the sign of the cross and 
 the gesture of submission. The Chinese live upon 
 rice and what else they may find; and what are they 
 among the nations? What do such peoples know 
 either of beef or of freedom. We may be too proud to 
 ask a comparison between such men and the inhabit- 
 ants of this rich and favoured land of ours. No land 
 of the earth has ever been more fully or more variously 
 favoured than this; and never has any, in all the his- 
 tory of the world, shown the sudden expansion and the 
 permanent growth into all the richness of things valu- 
 able in national prosperity. It has been a wonderful 
 country, this rich, free land. It has won its wars, 
 and outlived its wounds, and builded well its cities 
 and great works, and bred a race that will live through 
 the centuries. France remembers to-day the benefi- 
 cence of that monarch the sign of whose wiseness was 
 a public prosperity which enabled every citizen to 
 " have his chicken in the pot." America has put upon 
 every poor man's table as much as that and more, and 
 for that it' thanks no sovereign at all. Its treasure- 
 house for such store was largely in the West that 
 glorious, abounding, open, manly West, where there 
 never was a throne except the saddle the land par 
 excellence of beef and freedom. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE IKON TRAILS. 
 
 THE settlement of the West went forward by leaps 
 and bounds, along projecting tongues of civilization, 
 which extended far in front of the main body of the 
 population. The demon of unrest drove the American 
 frontiersman to move a dozen times in a generation. 
 The settlers who pressed over the new land rolled on 
 and over in long waves, like a flock of feeding wild 
 pigeons, those in the rear rising and alighting ahead of 
 those who had preceded them; and, moreover, they 
 did this along lines determined by the same reasons 
 which governed the wild pigeons. They went in the 
 line of the least resistance; that is to say, where they 
 could find their food most easily. There is no push 
 so irresistible as that of advancing civilization. The 
 frontiersman dreaded a neighbour, and would be mov- 
 ing yet if there were any place to which he could 
 move. In his journey to the West he followed the 
 farming lands, the hunting regions, the rain belt, and 
 the places where the Indians were least prohibitory in 
 their numbers. Thus his progress was a series of 
 broken leaps, of concentrations and expansions, always 
 forward, and for the most part along the line of lati- 
 tude upon which he had been born. Of later years 
 the tide of interstate immigration has begun to move 
 from the North to the South, but this has occurred 
 
 330 
 
THE IRON TRAILS. 331 
 
 only since the Western lands suitable for cultivation 
 have been taken up, and in search of the cheap South- 
 ern lands which still remain unoccupied. 
 
 There came a time in the history of the West when 
 the projecting arms of civilization which 'extended into 
 the West were crossed at right angles by the scanty 
 population which came up from the southward with 
 the cattle trade as it spread swiftly over the northern 
 range. Thus the open lands of the Northwest and 
 middle West were assailed from two directions at once. 
 It was a singular population which took possession of 
 that wild country, and one whose like we shall hardly 
 see again at any corner of the world. Hunter and 
 trapper, skin hunter, gambler, horse thief, capitalist, 
 cowman, farmer, merchant, artisan, money lender, pro- 
 fessional man, desperado and tenderfoot all mingled 
 in an eddy and boil of tumultuous, vigorous life. Into 
 this new population there came pushing up steadily 
 from the South the cattle of the trail and the men who 
 cared for them. Thus there came yet other new in- 
 habitants, with new customs and a new industry. That 
 was the time when the two trails met, the long trail 
 of the drive and the iron trails which crossed it on 
 their way to the Western ocean. 
 
 It was not foreseen what tremendous changes these 
 iron trails would make in the features of the popula- 
 tion and the pursuits of the West, nor how unspeaka- 
 bly rapid would be these changes in their coming, yet 
 the changes came so swiftly as to forestall prophecy. 
 Each railroad acted as an irrigating ditch to carry the 
 stream of population out over the unsettled lands. 
 Each little town was the gateway for a series of smaller 
 ditches through which the flood trickled out and 
 around. Far out into the rainless region the wave of 
 people rolled and lessened and trickled, until fairly 
 
332 THE STOEY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 shallowed up by the ultimate earth, a soil which re- 
 fused to yield them a living. 
 
 The railroads crossed the continent once, twice, 
 thrice, and yet again. They began to- build spurs and 
 side lines, reaching out into all places where there 
 were merchantable things to be carried in or out of 
 the country. It was not long until the railroads saw 
 what a carrying trade there was in the cattle industry 
 of the West. These many thousands of great crea- 
 tures, the range cattle which came North at the ex- 
 pense of a season's time and a sad per cent of loss, 
 could be handled in a much quicker and safer way. 
 The railroads could do in a few days what the trail 
 outfit needed months to do, and could deliver the cat- 
 tle with less loss and in better condition. The rail- 
 roads no longer followed the law of latitude. They 
 took the suggestion of longitude. The iron trails bent 
 down and ran North and South along the old foot- 
 worn trails of the great cattle drives. In the year of 
 1896 there was but one trail outfit driving cattle North 
 from Texas. Before the days of the railroads there 
 had been hundreds. 
 
 Over the iron trails there went out ploughs and mow- 
 ing machines and harrows and other things strange 
 and unheard of upon the old cow range. The grain 
 lands pressed into the grass lands, and to these grow- 
 ing grain lands, as well as to the remaining range re- 
 gion, the railroads began to carry the horned cattle 
 from the South, from the East, from every direction. 
 They carried cattle from the North to the South, 
 changing the whole breed of the latter country. They 
 carried cattle from the South to the North, chang- 
 ing another breed in turn. Moreover, they car- 
 ried out wire for fences, and so they sewed the shroud 
 of the old cattle range. 
 
THE IRON TRAILS. 333 
 
 Into even the farthest corners of the cow range 
 the railroads crept. Towns sprang up over the 
 plains; towns where there were steeples, and where 
 houses had paint upon them, something hitherto un- 
 heard of in that country. The cow town dwindled 
 away or became disgustingly decorous, its place be- 
 ing taken by the smart and pretentious little city of 
 the new West. A horde of lawyers, doctors, mer- 
 chants, thieves, and other necessaries swept into each 
 town as quickly as it was organized. Life on the wan- 
 ing frontier became more colourless and less pic- 
 turesque. Again new customs came in. Hospitality 
 became less generous and suspicion more general. 
 There were locks on the doors. 
 
 The wire fences and the fields of the farming man 
 came into evidence wherever stony-hearted Nature 
 would allow the latter to hold his own for a season or 
 so out of every half a dozen; for the Western farmer 
 above all things was hopeful and enduring. The 
 farming communities, or " granger settlements," as 
 the cowmen called them, fed little towns of their own, 
 such towns taking also for a time the trade of the stock- 
 men. Then the cattle trade began under the influence 
 of the railroads to settle and centralize into big per- 
 manent cities of much more import and permanence 
 than the old cow towns of the frontier. One heard of 
 Sherman, Denison, Henrietta, Fort Worth, in the 
 South; of Miles City, Laramie, Cheyenne, in the 
 North. 
 
 And then there came another time in the history 
 of the West. The iron trails had brought all sorts 
 and conditions of men to this Western country, prom- 
 ising them all sorts of things in addition to those 
 things which they in their ignorance promised them- 
 selves. Some of these found the West not so hospita- 
 
334 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 Lie as they had thought. The " rain belt " proved a 
 most unsatisfactory thing to count upon, though it 
 looked well enough in Western railroad literature to 
 say that it had steadily moved westward and was now 
 shedding regular and beneficent showers alike upon 
 the just and the unjust over such and such lands in the 
 arid portions of the West. The farmers found that 
 corn would not ripen on the high bleak table-lands, 
 that wheat would not do well once in a half dozen 
 plantings. The nights were too cold for some crops, 
 and the days too warm for others. The " rain belt " 
 yielded no rain. It needed the deepest of wells to 
 reach unfailing water. There was no fuel within hun- 
 dreds of miles. There ensued some seasons of want 
 over great stretches of the newly settled country, and 
 some winters in which hundreds of the " grangers " 
 actually froze to death in the severe storms which 
 found them unprepared. Back from large areas of 
 Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas the discouraged settlers 
 began to sweep, and the antelope, resumed the feeding 
 grounds from which they had been temporarily driven.* 
 The cowboy followed the antelope back again over 
 some of this natural range. Then in time came the 
 resultant of all these many forces, the " sag " in the 
 
 * A newspaper paragraph printed in May, 1897, has the fol- 
 lowing information, apropos to the above : " The towns of 
 Woodsdale, Moscow, Springfield, and Fargo, in Kansas, which 
 had a population of 1,100 in 1890, have now only a population of 
 eighteen, according to a correspondent of the United States In- 
 vestor. Hugoton has three families out of the 400 that used to 
 live there. Nine children go to the $10.000 schoolhouso, and 
 there is standing, like a monument of folly, a water-works sys- 
 tem that cost some Eastern plutocrat $30,000. The town novor 
 paid a cent of principal or interest on all this and never will." 
 E. H. 
 
THE IRON TRAILS. 335 
 
 cattle business, and the final readjustment under the 
 exacter system of later days. 
 
 The edge was worn off the frontier by the grind of 
 the wheels of civilization. It became fashionable to 
 speak of law and order, of city improvements, of East- 
 ern capital, of future growth of the city, and all that. 
 Politics began to be considered, and all the ways of 
 older society came into effect. The men of the wilder 
 and freer West who made a good part of the new popu- 
 lation were not the ones to oppose all this. As they 
 had made it possible, so now they aided in making it 
 permanent. The old citizen of the West became the 
 new citizen. Changing with his fellows, the cowboy 
 now became a steady, quiet, faithful, and hard-working 
 man, following his trade as he had learned it in the 
 past, though now under conditions very different. 
 
 The centre of the cattle industry had now shifted 
 entirely from the South to the North, Wyoming and 
 Montana furnishing the bulk of the range beef instead 
 of Texas. Always the cattle in the long train loads 
 going to the markets had shorter and shorter horns. 
 Always the hatband of the Northern cowboy became 
 narrower and narrower. Far down in the Spanish 
 Southwest, in the remote and desert country where 
 even the boldest granger dared not venture, the ways 
 of the past were slowest to yield to change, and the 
 cowpuncher retained more fully something of his old- 
 time picturesqueness; for there the iron trails met iron 
 customs and the stony apathy of centuries of calm. 
 
 If the cowpuncher lost something of his old-time 
 picturesqueness as a Western type, the change did not 
 rob him entirely of his innate traits and characteristic 
 habits, nor did it change materially the routine of his 
 duties. The old ways of the range, the ways invented 
 by the unknown old Spaniard centuries ago, remained 
 
336 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 somewhat or much the same. The mark and the 
 brand were still the title of ownership, and the round- 
 up still the recognised means of establishing the cow- 
 man's wish for justice. The day's routine, the work 
 of the drive, the round-up, the corral, remained much 
 the same. Then, as ever, the life of the cowboy was 
 one taking him far from the settlements and into such 
 narrow solitudes as remained. He still needed his 
 traits of courage, skill, and independence of action. 
 He was still a cowboy. All the nation knew him now. 
 His vogue was greatest at the beginning of the end of 
 his short day. Changed though he was in minor ex- 
 tent, he had now blended with the life of his country. 
 He had become a citizen. He was a part of the warp 
 of an interwoven web of humanity, though still he 
 made a dash of colour upon the growing monotone. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 SUNSET ON THE RANGE. 
 
 THE great law which rules all animate life compels 
 all creatures to wage continual war with their sur- 
 roundings, yet teaches them that they may best win in 
 that war by compromise with the surroundings. Each 
 creature partakes of the soil that bore it. We are all 
 not ourselves, but the reflection of that which was 
 about us. 
 
 The great West, vast and rude, brought forth men 
 also vast and rude. We pass to-day over parts of that 
 matchless region, and we see the red hills and ragged 
 mountain fronts cut and crushed into huge indefinite 
 shapes, to which even a small imagination may give 
 a human or more than human form. In the " frozen 
 music " of the broken buttes there may lie models for 
 some future architect. 
 
 That same great hand which chiseled out these 
 monumental forms and phases laid its fingers upon the 
 people of this region. Rude and ironlikc, their na- 
 ture simulated that of the stern faces set about them. 
 Into their hearts came the elemental disturbance of 
 the storm, the strength of the hills, the broadness of 
 the prairies. They lay in the cradle of solitude, swung 
 by the hand of calm. Those babes of the West were 
 giants, because that was a land of giants. Among 
 their own people, who stood about them unseen and 
 
 337 
 
338 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 unknown, they grew to their full stature. Never 
 shall that stature lessen! Never shall they pass away! 
 The Indian, the hunter, the plainsman, the cowboy 
 will not die. They will but pass back among their 
 people, whence they came. They will vanish again 
 upon the edge of the plains. They will look down 
 upon us from the hills in some immortal form! 
 
 Of all these babes of the primeval mother, the West, 
 the cowboy was perhaps her dearest, because he was her 
 last. Some of her children lived for a century, others 
 for half that time; this one for not a triple decade 
 before he began to be old. Knowing for him that 
 which he did not know, the West foresaw the time 
 when he too would ride away into the hills and never 
 come back again; yet none the less she smiled upon 
 him, with the slow smile of elemental mysteries 
 that smile which rests upon stone lips by the banks 
 of the Nile, and upon the lips of the faces in the 
 Rockies. 
 
 What was really the life of this child of the wild 
 region of America, and what were the conditions of the 
 life that bore him can never be fully known by those 
 who have not seen the West with wide eyes. Those 
 who did not, but who looked superficially and supercil- 
 iously, remembering only their own surroundings, and 
 forgetting that in the eye of Nature one creature is as 
 good as another if only it prevail where it stands, were 
 content with distorted views of that which they saw 
 about them. Having no perspective in thoir souls, 
 how could they find it in their eyes? They saw colour 
 but not form in these wild men of the wild country. 
 They saw traits, but did not see tho diarm-for beneath 
 them. Seeking to tell of that which they INK! not 
 seen, they became inaccurate and unjust. Dallying 
 with the pleasant sensation of exciting themes, they 
 
SUNSET ON THE RANGE. 339 
 
 became grotesque instead of strong in their handling 
 of them. 
 
 The cowboy was simply a part of the West. He 
 who did not understand the one could never under- 
 stand the other. Never was any character more mis- 
 understood than he; and so thorough was his misrep- 
 resentation that part of the public even to-day will 
 have no other way of looking at him. They see the 
 wide hat and not the honest face beneath it. They 
 remember the wild momentary freaks of the man, but 
 forget his lifetime of hard work and patient faith- 
 fulness. They insist upon the distorted mask, and 
 ask not for the soul beneath it. If we care truly to 
 see the cowboy as he was, and seek to give our wish 
 the dignity of a real purpose, the first intention should 
 be to study the cowboy in connection with his sur- 
 roundings. Then perhaps we may not fail of our pur- 
 pose, but come near to seeing him as he actually was, 
 the product of primitive, chaotic, elemental forces, 
 rough, barbarous, and strong. Then we shall love 
 him; because at heart each of us is a barbarian too, 
 and longing for that past the ictus of whose heredity 
 we can never eliminate from out our blood. Then we 
 shall feel him appeal to something hid deep down in 
 our common nature. And this is the way in which we 
 should look at the cowboy of the passing West; not as 
 a curiosity, but as a product; not as an eccentric 
 driver of horned cattle, but as a man suited to his 
 times. 
 
 The study of the cattle trade is essential to a 
 study of the cowboy, and hence the wish to speak 
 broadly of the varying conditions of that trade. Fi- 
 nally we must come to those widespread changes of 
 condition which have changed or will soon havo 
 changed fundamentally the entire industry. We have 
 
340 THE STORY, OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 seen the forces working against the permanency of 
 the great industry of cattle ranching. The small land- 
 holder, the sheep herder, the fence builder and the 
 irrigator are the great enemies of the cattle man. Per- 
 haps of all these the one most to be dreaded is the 
 last one. The man who brings water upon the arid 
 lands of the West changes the entire complexion of 
 a vast country, and with it the industries of that coun- 
 try. This irrigation may be by means of artesian wells 
 or by use of the natural streams. Already there are 
 thousands of acres of soil as rich as any of the world 
 which are now redeemed from the desert and changed 
 into fertile farming lands. These are added to the 
 realm of the American farmer. They are stolen from 
 the realm of the American cowboy. The valleys of 
 Montana and Wyoming, when placed " under the 
 ditch," produce corn as good as any of Iowa or Illi- 
 nois, wheat as good as that of Dakota, oats and barley 
 in similar abundance, and fruits of like size and ex- 
 cellence. Wherever such things are possible, good-bye 
 to the days of grass feed and cattle driving, for their 
 time is past. The old Spaniard who taught us the 
 cattle trade also taught us irrigation; but he handed us 
 the two together, little thinking that the one would 
 destroy the other. 
 
 Not all the open range will ever be farmed, but 
 very much will go under irrigation which is now 
 thought to be irreclaimable. The givnl ark'sinn wells 
 which have been sunk in Dakota, Colorado, and other 
 parts of the West have produced results so strangely 
 vast in their significance that it is impossible to pre- 
 dict where they may finally arrive. Artesian water 
 was first used to open up thousands of acres for the 
 cattle man; but it will take all these acres away agviin, 
 and many more, and give them to the farmer of the 
 
SUNSET ON THE RANGE. 341 
 
 future. The constitution of the chief cattle State of 
 the Union safeguards the title of the running water 
 to the people as a gift of Nature; yet eventually the 
 water will be used by many instead of a few. Each of 
 these will take his share of the wild farm of the cow- 
 boy. These factors remain as yet unformulated, but 
 their suggestion is very strong in its trend, and a re- 
 view of them can lead to but one conclusion. 
 
 Singularly enough, at the time of the writing of 
 these lines, there is in progress at a city in western 
 Nebraska a great " irrigation fair/' the first of its kind 
 in the history of that part of the country. This fair 
 exploits the possibilities of the soil when under irriga- 
 tion. Thousands of people have come together there, 
 among these many Indians and cowboys and old- 
 time men of the plains. In faint imitation of the 
 days of the past, the town is run " wide open." It 
 is reported that the scenes of '69 and '70 are re- 
 peated. The cowboys are riding their horses into the 
 saloons as they did in the days of the early drives. It 
 is sought to revive the spirit of that old West which 
 is really dead beyond the reach of all our lamentations. 
 Do many pause to consider how dramatic a scene this 
 really is, this irrigation fair at which the cowboy is 
 asked to attend as a curiosity, as an attraction? Does 
 he himself know what it is that they are asking him to 
 do? They ask him to disport himself in a Titanic 
 shadow-dance, and to close his play by blowing into 
 its final flare the dwindling flame of his own candle. 
 
 The West has changed. The old days are gone. 
 The house dog sits on the hill where yesterday the 
 coyote sang. The fences are short and small, and 
 within them grow green things instead of gray. There 
 are many smokes now rising over the prairie, and they 
 are wide and black instead of thin and blue. 
 23 
 
34:2 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 As we look out in the evening light from where we 
 stand, we may see the long shining parallels of the 
 iron trail reaching out into the sunset. A little busy 
 town lies near, flanked with fields of grain ready for 
 the harvesting. There are cattle; not those of " de- 
 formed aspect/ 7 which Coronado saw when he walked 
 across this country in the gray of other days, but sleek, 
 round beasts, which stand deep in crops their ancestors 
 never saw. In the little town is the hurry and bustle 
 of modern life, even here, upon the extreme edge of 
 the well-settled lands. For this is in the West, or 
 what is now known as the West. It is far out upon 
 what may now, as well as any place, be called the 
 frontier, though really the frontier is gone. Guard- 
 ing its ghost, watching over its grave, here stands a 
 little army post, once one of the pillars, now one of 
 the monuments of the West. 
 
 The routine of the uncomplaining men who make 
 the army goes on here still, as it does all over the 
 land. One has seen the forming of the troops to-day, 
 over there, upon the parade ground. As evening 
 comes he can hear the song of the trumpets, music 
 to tingle in his hair. As the sun drops to the edge 
 of the plains there comes the boom of a cannon at the 
 fort, and fluttering down its staff falls the flag which 
 waves over East and West and South and North alike, 
 alike over the present and the past. 
 
 Out from the little " settlement " in the dusk of 
 evening, always facing toward where the sun is sink- 
 ing, rides a figure we should know. He threads the 
 little lane among the fences, following the guidance 
 of hands other than his own, a thing he would once 
 have scorned to do. He rides as lightly and as easily 
 as ever, sitting erect and jaunty in the saddle, his reins 
 held high and loose in the hand whose fingers turn up 
 
SUNSET ON THE KANGE. 343 
 
 daintily, his whole hody free yet firm in the saddle 
 with the seat of the perfect horseman. His hat still 
 sweeps up and back in careless freedom of fashion. It 
 is dusk, and we may not see his trappings. Let us 
 hope his belt is still about his waist, his spurs still jin- 
 gling as he rides. His pony is the^ame or much the 
 same as when we saw it many years ago coming up 
 the street of a very different town. It trots steadily 
 forward, with the easy movement of the animal accus- 
 tomed to long distances. The two, man and horse, 
 show up strongly in the unreal light of evening on 
 the plains. They seem to rise and move strangely as 
 one looks, seem to grow strangely large and indistinct. 
 Yet they melt and soften and so define; and at length, 
 as the red sun sinks quite to the level of the earth, the 
 figures of both show plainly and with no touch of 
 harshness upon the Western sky. 
 
 The cowboy as he rides on, jaunty, erect, virile, 
 strong, with his eye fixed perhaps on the ridge miles 
 away, from which presently there may shine a small 
 red light to hold his gaze, now looks about him at the 
 buildings of the little town. As the boom of the can- 
 non comes, and the flag drops fluttering down to 
 sleep, he rises in his stirrups and waves his hat to the 
 flag. Then, toward the edge, out into the evening, 
 he rides on. The dust of his riding mingles with the 
 dusk of night. We can not see which is the one or 
 the other. We can only hear the hoof beats passing, 
 boldly and steadily still, but growing fainter, fainter, 
 \ and more faint. 
 
ADDENDA. 
 
 Page 40. 
 
 IN the early days of the northern range the rancher had a 
 double reason for the dirt roof which he put upon his house. It 
 was not only the warmest and most easily constructed roof pos- 
 sible for him in his remote part of the world, but it was also the 
 safest. In the frontier times the outlying ranch houses were 
 often attacked by Indians. Even yet there are ranch houses 
 standing on the range whose sides are pierced by the loopholes 
 which were once so necessary. Against the dugout of the cow- 
 man the Indian was well-nigh powerless. He dared not ap- 
 proach under the deadly rifle fire of the defenders, nor could he 
 set on fire the roof of the ranchman's castle, one of the sturdiest 
 and most effectual fortresses that ever formed the outposts of a 
 civilization. Sometimes the cowman had a tunnel dug back 
 from his dugout, connecting it with another building not far 
 away, or leading farther back up the hill to a better fighting 
 place. Such precautions were not common, but they instance the 
 skill and determination of these men, who never intended to 
 relinquish their grip upon the land they had discovered. 
 
 As time wore on the old-time cowman might be so wedded 
 to the dirt-covered house which had served him in the past that 
 he would never seek to change it. The cowman who remained an 
 " old batch " was very apt to find his dugout or his cabin good 
 enough for him. If, however, he married and was urged to take 
 a step or so up in the world, he might build him a better ranch 
 house, perhaps making his roof on the home ranch building of 
 shingles or using sawn lumber about the place to an extent 
 which would have been impossible in the early days. The new 
 
346 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 man from the East, who had not grown up in the cattle trade, 
 and who had been accustomed to better houses in his youth than 
 had the old-timer, would be very apt to go to some extent of 
 expense and trouble to put himself up a ranch house a little 
 more ambitious than the dugout or the rude cabin, this more 
 especially for the home camp where he intended to reside when 
 on the range. The line camps or out-dwellings for the men 
 would still be of the old style the walls perhaps of logs or sod, 
 the roof being perhaps laid with rude half tiles hollowed out of 
 divided saplings, and laid so that they " broke joints," the edges 
 of two convex ones fitting in the hollow of one concaved, so that 
 the water would thus be carried off as it is on a tiled roof so fitted. 
 A covering of dirt usually completed this rude provision for the 
 shedding of the rain. In the later days boards were used in 
 fitting up a roof, but the commonest way was to lay a rude cov- 
 ering of small logs or poles, then a thin thatching of willow 
 boughs and grass, covering the whole with a layer of dirt. Such 
 a roof was very apt to leak, but, as the cowboy had not very 
 much need for the roof at best, he did not mind so trifling a 
 thing as that. 
 
 Page 48. 
 
 It is a peculiarity even of the wildest range cattle that they 
 must have water at frequent intervals. The more they lose their 
 wild quality, the more often they need water, and the wilder they 
 are the safer they are in their contest with the elements. The 
 horses will paw through the snow, but the cattle will not. The 
 horses will stay out on the hills, where the snow is thin, feeding 
 there and not crowding down to the valleys and creek beds after 
 water. The cattle have not so much sagacity, and it is a com- 
 mon sight to see the valleys of the water ways crowded with them 
 during the winter time at the very points where the snow lies 
 deepest. Here they will huddle up and silently starve, hanging 
 about the watering place and refusing to go out on the hills to 
 feed. A part of the work of the cowboys at such a time is to 
 drive these animals away from the valleys up to the broken coun- 
 try back from the streams, where they can find a little feed. 
 Sometimes trails are broken up from the valleys by the cowboys, 
 who ride their plunging ponies back and forth and finally form 
 
ADDENDA. 347 
 
 a roadway over which the cattle can be driven out from the 
 death trap into which they have come and which they refuse to 
 abandon. It has even been the case in more recent days that a 
 rude snowplough has been made and used to open a trail for the 
 cattle back from such a deadly valley where they were perishing. 
 The instinct of the cattle thus appears to be not always a wise 
 one. Sometimes, in their eagerness to get at the coveted water 
 which is sealed away from them by the ice, they crowd in num- 
 bers out upon the ice of a considerable stream. It has happened 
 that the ice in such an event has broken, many scores of cattle 
 thus being drowned. 
 
 The salvation of the cattle upon a wide extent of the north- 
 ern range lies in the Chinook wind, that strange, warm current 
 of air which sometimes in the winter season comes over the sum- 
 mit of the upper Rockies, suffusing far out to the east of the 
 mountains the mild breath of the Japan current of the Pacific 
 Ocean. Its effect may be felt perhaps nearly across the State of 
 Montana, and in some cases as far south as Wyoming or parts of 
 Colorado. When the ranchman who has been witnessing his 
 cattle perishing about him in the snow sees the mountain tops 
 begin to look black and ominous, he sighs in relief, for he knows 
 that the " black wind " of the Indians is coming. Violently this 
 wind blows, and suddenly all the air is soft and mild. The snow 
 does not melt, but simply vanishes, passing away as though by 
 magic. Then the cattle may drink and may feed. It is the 
 armistice offered them by Nature. Feebly the living abandon 
 the dead and seek to gain what strength they may for the con- 
 tinuance of the battle when it shall again close in upon them. 
 
 Page 214. 
 
 If it be during the springtime, the cowpuncher may meet 
 yet another curious feature of the range life as he rides on his 
 daily round. As he passes over a patch of the short gray sage- 
 brush or a bit of grass longer than the average, perhaps even a 
 piece of ground apparently almost bare, his trained eye may 
 catch a glimpse of an object which the inexperienced observer 
 would never note at all. Something in the look of the motion- 
 less, shapeless thing lying flat on the ground invites a second 
 and sharper gaze. The cowpuncher dismounts, and pulls up by 
 
348 THE STORY OF THE COWBOY. 
 
 the ear a little young calf, which has been lying sprawled out 
 as close to the ground as it could lie, making not the slightest 
 sound or movement to attract the attention of any creature 
 passing by. The cattle of the range are almost as wild as the 
 elk or antelope or deer, and their ways are very similar in many 
 respects. The mother of this little calf has perhaps found it 
 necessary to go five or ten miles to water, and she has told the 
 calf to lie down and keep perfectly still, no matter what may 
 happen, knowing very well that this is the safest way for it to 
 escape the eye or the nose of the wolf, the coyote, or any other 
 enemy which would be apt to assail it during her absence. Thus 
 does the mother deer or antelope " cache " her offspring while 
 away feeding or at water, and it is astonishing how effective is 
 this ruse of the mother heart. The hunter may pass within a 
 few feet of the little antelope and never see it, so closely does it 
 blend in colour with the surrounding tone of the landscape. The 
 young calf may be betrayed by its redder coat, but it will be as 
 motionless as the antelope kid. The cowboy picks it up with 
 his rude playfulness, but as soon as he lets it go it falls flat and 
 motionless again, hugging the ground as tightly as it can and 
 obeying to the letter the injunction of instinct. But the little 
 calf has not yet learned more than what instinct has taught it. 
 Its mother has been gone for some time, and in its confused 
 young mind it thinks that perhaps this other big creature has 
 come to take charge of it in place of its mother. If the cowboy 
 stays about the calf long, picks it up several times, or pays it 
 much attention, the little thing will after awhile come toddling 
 along after him, its long legs wobbling and stumbling as it 
 walks. At times the cowboy finds it wise to earmark this calf 
 where it is found, if he be clear in his own conscience that it be- 
 longs to his outfit ; but even after the cutting with the knife the 
 little calf may not understand that it should not follow away 
 this big creature, and will come after the cowboy even after he 
 has mounted and started to ride away. Then the cowboy gets 
 down again from his horse and pushes the calf down on the 
 ground again, and teaches it as well as he can that it must stay 
 there and wait for its mother. He knows how quickly the young 
 of wild animals, the antelope, the deer, or even the buffalo, will 
 lose the instinctive wildness at this period of its life, and follow 
 
ADDENDA. 349 
 
 away a captor without any compulsion. The writer has seen 
 young buffalo calves, which were left loose and were suckling 
 domestic cows about camp, refuse to run away and join the wild 
 buffalo, a herd of which were standing less than a quarter of a 
 mile away. Two weeks later one of these calves would follow 
 the wagon without being tied, and showed no disposition to es- 
 cape. A hunter who takes young wild animals for the Zoolog- 
 ical Gardens at Washington says that a fawn which is found 
 cached by its dam will often follow its captor within a few mo- 
 ments, and that the kids of the antelope need but very little 
 attention to make them entirely docile and reconciled to cap- 
 tivity. 
 
 But if it chances that the cowpuncher finds his calf cached 
 near by a little bunch of cattle, or perhaps sees several calves 
 surrounded by a few cows or a number of other range cattle, he 
 does not get off his horse and attempt to handle the calves. He 
 knows that should he do so he would be charged furiously by 
 the band of cattle, and that he would be fortunate if he escaped 
 serious injury. If he is thus charged, his one concern is to get 
 to his horse as fast as possible, for once he is mounted the cattle 
 will leave him alone. They understand him then, though when 
 he is on foot he is to them simply a wild animal and a probable 
 enemy. 
 
 THE END. 
 

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