CLEAVELAND, AGNES MORLEY. No Life for a Lady, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1941. Best book on range life from a woman's point of view ever published. The setting is New Mexico; humor and humanity prevail.
COLLINGS, ELLSWORTH. The 101 Ranch, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1937. The 101 Ranch was far more than a ranch; it was a unique institution. The 101 Ranch Wild West Show is emphasized in this book. OP.
COLLINS, DENNIS. The Indians' Last Fight or the Dull Knife Raid, Press of the Appeal to Reason, Girard, Kansas, n.d. Nearly half of this very scarce book deals autobiographically with frontier range life. Realistic, strong, written from the perspective of a man who "wanted something to read" in camp.
COLLINS, HUBERT E. Warpath and Cattle Trail, New York, 1928. The pageant of trail life as it passed by a stage stand in Oklahoma; autobiographical. Beautifully printed and illustrated. Far better than numerous other out-of-print books that bring much higher prices in the second-hand market.
CONN, WILLIAM (translator). Cow-Boys and Colonels: Narrative of a Journey across the Prairie and over the Black Hills of Dakota, London, 1887; New York (1888?). More of a curiosity than an illuminator, the book is a sparsely annotated translation of Dans les Montagnes Rocheuses, by Le Baron E. de Mandat-Grancey, Paris, October, 1884. (The only copy I have examined is of 1889 printing.) It is a gossipy account of an excursion made in 1883-84; cowboys and ranching are viewed pretty much as a sophisticated Parisian views a zoo. The author must have felt more at home with the fantastic Marquis de Mores of Medora, North Dakota. The book appeared at a time when European capital was being invested in western ranches. It was followed by La Breche aux Buffles: Un Ranch Francais dans le Dakota, Paris, 1889. Not translated so far as I know.
COOK, JAMES H. Fifty Years on the Old Frontier, 1923. Cook came to Texas soon after the close of the Civil War and became a brush popper on the Frio River. Nothing better on cow work in the brush country and trail driving in the seventies has appeared. OP. A good deal of the same material was put into Cook's Longhorn Cowboy (Putnam's, 1942), to which the pushing Mr. Howard R. Driggs attached his name.
COOLIDGE, DANE. Texas Cowboys, 1937. Thin, but genuine. Arizona Cowboys, 1938. Old California Cowboys, 1939. All well illustrated by photographs and all OP.
Cox, JAMES. The Cattle Industry of Texas and Adjacent Territory, St. Louis, 1895. Contains many important biographies and much good history. In 1928 I traded a pair of store-bought boots to my uncle Neville Dobie for his copy of this book. A man would have to throw in a young Santa Gertrudis bull now to get a copy.
CRAIG, JOHN R. Ranching with lords and Commons, Toronto, 1903. During the great boom of the early 1880'S in the range business, Craig promoted a cattle company in London and then managed a ranch in western Canada. His book is good on mismanaged range business and it is good on people, especially lords, and the land. He attributes to De Quincey a Latin quotation that properly, I think, belongs to Thackeray. He quotes Hamlin Garland: "The trail is poetry; a wagon road is prose; the railroad, arithmetic." He was probably not so good at ranching as at writing. His book supplements From Home to Home, by Alex. Staveley Hill, New York, 1885. Hill was a major investor in the Oxley Ranch, and was, I judge, the pompous cheat and scoundrel that Craig said he was.
CRAWFORD, LEWIS F. Rekindling Camp Fires: The Exploits of Ben Arnold (Connor), Bismarck, North Dakota, 1926. OP. The skill of Lewis F. Crawford of the North Dakota Historical Society made this a richer autobiography than if Arnold had been unaided. He was squaw man, scout, trapper, soldier, deserter, prospector, and actor in other occupations as well as cowboy. He had a fierce sense of justice that extended to Indians. His outlook was wider than that of the average ranch hand. Badlands and Broncho Trails, Bismarck, 1922, is a slight book of simple narratives that catches the tune of the Badlands life. OP. Ranching Days in Dakota, Wirth Brothers, Baltimore, 1950, is good on horse-raising and the terrible winter of 1886-87.