The History of the Old American West – 4 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Emerson Hough
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, longing, 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 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 today 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 nature perhaps silent or apparently surly, at times inflammable 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 features of his daily surroundings and daily occupation — they were intense, large, Homeric.
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