The History of the Old American West – 4 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Emerson Hough
of the dreaded Spanish fever which they brought with them, there was a law forbidding the importing into many of the Northern States any Texas cattle which had not been "wintered" on a Northern range, this wintering seeming 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 conditions, 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, undoubtedly the greatest pastoral movement in the history of the world. It came with a rush and a surge, and in ten years it had subsided. That decade was an epoch in the West. The cities of Cihola 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 overcame them. They met the Indians who sought to extort 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 kingdom 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 were 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
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 unmarked 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 knowed 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 disposition to lynch the offender for this; but the foreman, who was a generous-hearted man, overruled the sentence 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, 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 flourishing 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 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 unspeakable 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 ROUND-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 deserved 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.
The system of the round-up, while it retains the same general features over the whole of the cow country, 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