"Waal, I don't altogether know about that, Hugh. I don't say as you want to quarrel, quite the contrary, but you made up your mind before you came here that if you got into trouble you were going to fight, and you practised and practised until you got so quick that you are sure you can get the drop on anyone you get into a muss with. So though you don't want to get in a quarrel, if anyone wants to quarrel with you you are ready to take him up. Now if it hadn't been so there wouldn't have been any shooting-irons out the other night. Flash Bill came over to get up a quarrel. He was pretty well bound to get up a quarrel with some one, but if you had been a downright peaceable chap he could not have got up a quarrel with you. If you had said quietly, when he kinder said as how you hadn't come by that horse honest, that Bill here had been with you when you bought him, and that you got a document in your pocket, signed by a sheriff and a judge, to prove that you had paid for it, there would have been no words with you. I don't say as Flash Bill, who was just spoiling for a fight, wouldn't have gone at somebody else. Likely enough he would have gone at me. Waal, if I had been a quiet and peaceable chap I should have weakened too, and so it would have gone on until he got hold of somebody as wasn't going to weaken to no one, and then the trouble would have begun. I don't say as this is the place for your downright peaceable man, but I say if such a one comes here he can manage to go through without mixing himself up in shooting scrapes."
"But in that way a man like Flash Bill, let us say, who is known to be ready to use his pistol, might bully a whole camp."
"Yas, if they wur all peaceable people; but then, you see, they ain't. This sort of life ain't good for peaceable people. We take our chances pretty well every day of getting our necks broke one way or another, and when that is so one don't think much more of the chance of being shot than of other chances. Besides, a man ain't allowed to carry on too bad. If he forces a fight on another and shoots him, shoots him fair, mind you, the boys get together and say this can't go on; and that man is told to git, and when he is told that he has got to, if he don't he knows what he has got to expect. No, sirree, I don't say as everything out in the plains is just arranged as it might be in New York; but I say that, take the life as it is, I don't see as it could be arranged better. There was a chap out here for a bit as had read up no end of books, and he said it was just the same sort of thing way back in Europe, when every man carried his sword by his side and was always fighting duels, till at last the kings got strong enough to make laws to put it down and managed things without it; and that's the way it will be in this country. Once the law is strong enough to punish bad men, and make it so that there ain't no occasion for a fellow to carry about a six-shooter to protect his life, then the six-shooter will go. But that won't be for a long time yet. Why, if it wasn't for us cow-boys, there wouldn't be no living in the border settlements. The horse-thieves and the outlaws would just rampage about as they pleased, and who would follow them out on the plains and into the mountains? But they know we won't have them out here, and that there would be no more marcy shown to them if they fell into our hands than there would be to a rattler. Then, again, who is it keeps the Injuns in order? Do you think it is Uncle Sam's troops? Why, the Red-skins just laugh at them. It's the cow-boys."
"It ain't so long ago," Long Tom put in, "as a boss commissioner came out to talk with the natives, and make them presents, and get them to live peaceful. People out in the east, who don't know nothing about Injuns, are always doing some foolish thing like that. The big chief he listens to the commissioner, and when he has done talking to him, and asks what presents he should like, the chief said as the thing that would most tickle him would be half a dozen cannons with plenty of ammunition."
"'But,' says the commissioner, 'we can't give you cannon to fight our troops with.'
"'Troops!' says the chief; 'who cares about the troops? We can just drive them whenever we like. We want the cannon to fight the cow-boys.'
"That chief knew what was what. It is the cow-boys as keep back the Red-skins, it's the cow-boys as prevent these plains getting filled up with outlaws and horse-thieves, and the cow-boys can do it 'cause each man has got six lives pretty sartin at his belt, and as many more as he has time to slip in fresh cartridges for; and because we don't place much valley on our lives, seeing as we risk them every day. We know they ain't likely to be long anyhow. What with death among the herds, shooting scrapes, broken limbs, and one thing and another, and the work which wears out the strongest in a few years, a cow-boy's life is bound to be a short one. You won't meet one in ten who is over thirty. It ain't like other jobs. We don't go away and take up with another trade. What should we be fit for? A man that has lived on horseback, and spent his life galloping over the plains, what is he going to do when he ain't no longer fit for this work? He ain't going to hoe a corn-patch or wear a biled shirt and work in a store. He ain't going to turn lawyer, or set up to make boots or breeches. No, sirree. He knows as ten years is about as much as he can reckon on if his chances are good, and that being so, he don't hold nothing particular to his life. We ain't got no wives and no children. We works hard for our money, and when we gets it we spend it mostly in a spree. We are ready to share it with any mate as comes along hard up. It might be better, and it might be worse. Anyway, I don't see no chance of changing it as long as there is room out west for cattle ranches. Another hundred years and the grangers will have got the land and the cow-boys will be gone, but it will last our time anyhow."
Hugh was much struck with this estimate of a cow-boy's life by one of themselves, but on thinking it over he saw that it was a true one. These men were the adventurous spirits of the United States. Had they been born in England they would have probably either enlisted or run away as boys and gone to sea. They were men to whom a life of action was a necessity. Their life resembled rather that of the Arab or the Red Indian than that of civilized men. Their senses had become preternaturally acute; their eyesight was wonderful. They could hear the slightest sound, and pronounce unhesitatingly how it was caused. There was not an ounce of unnecessary flesh upon them. Their muscles seemed to have hardened into whip-cord.
They were capable of standing the most prolonged fatigue and hardship, and just as a wild stag will run for a considerable distance after receiving a wound that would be instantly fatal to a domestic animal, these men could, as he had seen for himself, and still more, as he had heard many anecdotes to prove, sustain wounds and injuries of the most terrible kind and yet survive, seeming, in many cases, almost insensible to pain. They were, in fact, a race apart, and had very many good qualities and comparatively few bad ones. They were, indeed, as Long Tom had said, reckless of their lives, and they spent their earnings in foolish dissipation. But they knew of no better way. The little border-towns or Mexican villages they frequented offered no other amusements, and except for clothes and ammunition for their pistols they had literally no other need for their money.
Nothing could exceed the kindness with which they nursed each other in illness or their generosity to men in distress. They were devoted to the interests of their employers, undergoing, as a matter of course, the most prolonged and most prodigious exertions. They were frank, good-tempered, and kindly in their intercourse with each other, as addicted to practical jokes as so many school-boys, and joining as heartily in the laugh when they happened to be the victims as when they were the perpetrators of the joke. Their code of honour was perhaps a primitive one, but they lived up to it strictly, and in spite of its hardships and its dangers there was an irresistible fascination in the wild life that they led.