[The preceding selection may be fitly followed by the following description of life among the cow-boys, those wild and wilful cattle-guards of the West, whose escapades form an interesting part of the romance of modern times.]
There is a peculiar fascination in the wild life of the cow-boys which tempts many young men of culture and refinement, reared in the enjoyment of every luxury in the East, but of adventurous dispositions, to come and live with these rude spirits on the frontier. Often for thirty-six hours continuously in the saddle, the hardships of their lot are apparent. Cold black coffee, without sugar, drunk whenever the opportunity offers, is the sole luxury of the cow-boy. With a piece of bread in one hand and some jerked beef in the other, he will ride around a stampeded herd, eating as he goes, and as happy as a king on his throne. When night comes, provided his cattle are quiet, he will tie his horse to his leg, and, “covered with his hat,” with a hummock of grass for his pillow, will sleep peacefully on the broad prairie, and dream perchance of his sweetheart far back in “God’s country.”
Perhaps his dreams will be rudely disturbed by the thunder of a thousand hoofs, as his cattle, becoming frightened at some noise, have stampeded, and the grass fairly pops beneath their cloven feet. Then it is he does his tallest riding, and, circling around his cows, brings them back to where they started. If a wild bull becomes obstreperous and unruly, a rider dashes past him, and, seizing his tail as he goes by, gives it a twist around the horn of his saddle, and in a trice the bull is fairly slung heels over head on his back. Two or three applications of this discipline will generally reduce the stiffening in a bull’s tail to a minimum and render him as docile as a calf. An expert cow-boy can rope, throw down, and tie up a cow in just one minute from the time he rides up to her.
But a man knows nothing of “punching the heifers” who has not been through on the “trail” to Kansas. Going for days together without eating, never out of the saddle, mounting a fresh horse as fast as one is broken down, the limit of endurance is reached, and one who has stood the test, and can boast of having “busted the Indian Nation square open,” attains respect in the cow-boy’s eyes, and is considered to have taken his degree.
In 1874 the largest drive to Kansas ever recorded took place, when half a million beeves were driven through. The trail was beaten into a broad path a mile wide and extending fifteen hundred miles in length. For miles and miles the string of lowing herds stretched along, while the keen riders darted hither and thither, keeping them well on the trail. At night the voices of the men singing to their sleeping cattle could be heard all along the line, while the long string of camp-fires, throwing their lurid glare against the black vault overhead, called back to the minds of many old gray-bearded cow-boys the stormy times when similar lines of light glimmered along the Rappahannock, and pierced the murky gloom of some Virginia night. Sometimes the music of a violin, sounding strangely shrill in the calm night air, would mingle with the deep tones of voices singing “The Maid of Monterey,” or “Shamus O’Brien,” the cow-boy’s favorite tunes.
In passing through the Indian Nation it is no uncommon thing for a band of Indians, all painted and varnished up, to ride down on a beef-herd, and, singling out the finest cattle in the bunch, compel the white owners of the stock to cut them out in a separate flock, when the Indians will gather around them and run them off. Some years ago a party of five Indians came riding down on a herd which was resting on the banks of a small creek, and demanded of the boss herdsman ten of the fattest steers he had. The boss was a bold man, and, looking around on his fifteen stalwart cow-boys, swore that no five Indians should take his beeves from him, and, using the polite phraseology of the Plains, told his redskin visitors to “go to hell.” The baffled five retired into the forest, but soon returned with an increased force of fifty men, who charged down on the defiant herdsman, whom they nearly beat to death with his own ramrod, stampeded his cattle, and ran off two hundred of them into the woods.
It is a wild, rough set of men that camp around the herds after they have been driven through the Nation and are resting on the grassy plains of Kansas. Clad in the soiled and dusty jeans of the trail, for weeks in succession no water has touched their hands or faces, and, unshaven and unshorn, they give free rein to their exuberant spirits, taking some quiet Kansas village by storm, setting the tame local laws at defiance, and compelling the authorities to acknowledge the sovereignty of their native State.
The wages earned by these cow-boys are twenty-five dollars a month while they are herding on Texan ranges; but, as the toil and hardship encountered on the trail are so great, they are paid thirty-five dollars a month during the drive, and each man furnished with eight ponies to ride. Some of them return home by rail, visiting the cities of St. Louis and New Orleans, and managing to be despoiled of all their hard-earned money during their brief sojourn in “God’s country;” but the greater number straddle their wiry little ponies and ride back through the Nation to Texas.
Not every one that started out to go up the trail lives to get back, and the nameless mounds that dot the sides of that broad path bear mute but powerful testimony to the danger that every hour surrounds the cow-boy. Whether they fall by a shot from some hostile savage lurking in a ravine near by, or are dropped by a six-shooter in the hands of a fellow-herder, they are hastily buried and soon forgotten. Entirely free from the restraining power of the law, men give free rein to their passions, and the six-shooter or Winchester rifle—the inseparable companions of the stock-drivers—is freely resorted to to settle disputed questions. It is very common for two bosses having charge of different herds to jump down from their horses and proceed to crack away at each other until one has bitten the dust.