The History of the Old American West – 4 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Emerson Hough
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 gentleman 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 cowpuncher does not hold himself as a servant, but as his 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 overseeing. He is his own overseer. He needs no instruction nor advice. No higher type of employee ever existed, 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 precedents were established where there was "lack of woman'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 quiet trot, some who think his crudeness and his wildness should be made his distinguishing features. Rather let us say that his chief traits are his faithfulness and manliness. There is his standard — to he a "square man." If you called him a hero, he would not know what you meant.
CHAPTER XII
THE COWBOY'S AMUSEMENTS
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; hut 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 natural, therefore, that the chief amusements of the cowboy 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 pursuit worn off; moreover, he had his regular duties to perform, so that he had not always time to go hunting. 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 knew nothing at all, and entertained for it a pronounced 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 incredible 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 pleasant when he found himself attached to such a monster. "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 victims 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 individuals of a grand race of animals remain as melancholy reminders alike of a national shiftlessness and an individual skill and daring.
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 buffalo 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 cowboy 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 behooved 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 interesting 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 exciting chase about a narrow circle, with the rope as its radius and the calf as the pivotal point. In two instances 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, that lie 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 country 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 cowboys 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