NECESSARY COURAGE—BODILY INJURIES—UNCOMPLAININGNESS—CHEERF ULNESS—RESERVE TOWARD STRANGERS—ITS CAUSE—CUSTOMS WHEN MEETING PEOPLE, AND WHEN ENTERING A CAMP—PERSONAL NAMES—ETIQUETTE OF GUN AND HAT—INTRODUCTIONS—CURBING CURIOSITY—ATTITUDE TOWARD WOMEN—ILLNESS AND MEDICAL TREATMENT—SENTENTIOUSNESS—DEFINITIONS—QUIZZICALITY—SLANG—PROFANITY—DEFINITIONS—RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE—POWER OF OBSERVATION—CHARACTERISTIC POSE—USE OF TOBACCO—BOWED LEGS—DEGREE OF HON-ESTY—ESTIMATE OF EASTERNERS—INTELLECTUAL INTERESTS AND SCOPE—SENSE OF DIGNITY—VANITY.
UNIVERSALITY of courage was an earmark of the cowboys’ trade. Bravery was a prerequisite both to entering and to pursuing the vocation.
When a man suddenly “lost his riding nerve,” as he occasionally did from his own serious illness or from witnessing distressing accident to a loved companion, an accident such as plastered Bud Thompson’s face with his brother’s brains, he sometimes lost it forever, and with it his calling. Unless unhorsed by this infrequent cause, he rode until he received injury that promised permanence, or he sooner voluntarily retired.
Physical injury, ordinarily the gift of bucking, and in the form of hernia, allowed to the average man but seven years of active riding. Once dropped from the centaurs, whether through injury or, much rarer, loss of riding nerve, he still lived on horseback, but regretfully, humiliatingly refrained from “hair-pinning” or “forking” at sight “anything on four hoofs,” and restricted himself to such animals as supposedly were not vicious.
Courage was needed elsewhere than on the bucker’s back or amid the cattle. The cowboy by the nature of his work was required, from time to time, to endure the pitiless Northern blizzard, to traverse the equally pitiless Southern desert, to fight the bandit or the Indian, to go ahorse upon the mountain’s cliffs or amid the river’s whirlpools, to ride madly over ground pitted by the gopher and the badger, to face death often, and much of the time when alone.
Some wise old Westerner defined a cowboy as “a man with guts and a horse.”
The puncher rarely complained. He associated complaints with quitting, and he was no quitter. Custom, however, allowed guarded criticisms of the cook, though these strictures were made with an amusing risk. Whoever ragged the cook was subject to be impressed by him for twenty-four hours as an assistant or a complete substitute. Out of this grew the story of the cowboy who, by diplomacy, saved his initial blatancy, for he is reported to have said: “This bread is all burned, but gosh! that’s the way I like it!”
There often was ground for adverse comments on the cuisine. The average ranch cook well might have been defined as a man who had a fire; and who drew the same wages that he would have earned if he had known how to cook. He ordinarily had been a cowboy, and in many instances his ideas of culinary art had originated, seemingly, from atop a bucking horse. A very few establishments had a Chinaman in the kitchen, but such an attempt at luxurious living was not typical of the Cattle Country.
Maintenance of cheerfulness was part of the philosophy of the Range. The Western lands were not smiling ones. Nature in the West offered great riches to whoever had the courage to come and take them, but she was austere and majestic, rarely gentle. The desert, the mountains, the canyons, the quicksands, and the blizzard asked no favors and gave no quarter. Each Western man was forced to hear so constantly the roars of the nature which he regarded with deep, respectful admiration, that he had no wish to listen to whimpers from mere humans like himself.
Andy Downs, imparting social compass-points to a newly arrived tenderfoot, said: “The West demands you smile and swallow your personal troubles like your food. Nobody wants to hear about other men’s half-digested problems any more than he likes to watch a seasick person working.”
This carefully nurtured cheerfulness was, not improbably, the mother of that quality sometimes known as “Western breeziness.”
Reserve toward strangers, a fourth characteristic of the puncher, was due, in part, to the mental effect from rarely seeing any but extreme intimates, and for days together not even any of them, and in part to the fact that any newcomer might prove to be a horse thief or an intending settler, and thus in either case undesirable upon the Range. The moment the visitor established that he was not such an interloper all reticence vanished, and he automatically became a courteously welcomed and bounteously treated guest.
This not illogical suspicion of strangers evoked two customs pursued in common with all frontiersmen. One of these customs required that a man nearing another, particularly when upon a trail, should come within speaking distance and should “pass a word” before changing his course, unless, for self-evident reason, he were justified in a change. The excuse for this usage was the acknowledged right of every person to have opportunity to ascertain the intent of all other persons about him. Its unwarranted violation was interpretable as a confession of guilt, or as a deliberate and flagrant insult.
The other custom, for a like basis, demanded that whoever approached a person from the rear should halloa before getting within pistol-shot, and that a camp should be entered always upon like signal, and if possible from the direction most easily viewable by the camp’s occupants.
There was no prescribed hailing phrase, but there commonly was given at short range to unknown persons, if men, “Hulloa, stranger,” or “Howdy, stranger”; if women, “Good day, ma’am”; and at greater distance to anybody the long-drawn, accented “Whoo-up, whoo-up, whoo-pee”; though at this greater distance to persons whose identity was recognized might float instead the password of the ranching fraternity, a password which was a copy of the shrill, insistent cry of the coyote.
When thus ascertaining the purposes of a stranger, or even when dealing with an acquaintance, one had always to accept at face value whatever name the stranger or acquaintance cared to put forth as his own. It was indefensible to dispute it, unless it were patently assumed for purpose of committing some local impropriety. Moreover, extreme tact was necessary to hurry the announcement of even a pseudonym, for its user admittedly was its natural custodian, and possibly had valid and innocent reason for withholding it. Because “none came West save for health, wealth, or a ruined reputation,” and because traditionally the sand-bars of the Missouri River were made of discarded results of christenings, and because it was recognized that, on the banks of that river, “many a real name had been bucked out of the saddle,” and because many interrogators were themselves on shaky patronymic ground, the West rarely asked one for one’s name, and gravely accepted as it anything one cared to volunteer.
Nevertheless, the West reserved the right to say, behind one’s back: “You know Bill Adams. That’s his name. It’s the name he’s using now. But what’s his real name?” Sometimes the West called the latter his “oncet name.”
The West also reserved the right to select a nickname for a man, and to substitute it for the appellation which he himself had proffered, though in so doing there was intended no reflection upon his truthfulness. Hence each section of the Range had its Shorty, Slim, Skinny, Fatty, Squint, or Red as a prefix to Bill or Jack or Brown or Smith; its Texas Joe, Arizona Kid, and Missouri Jim; its Cat Eye, Hair-Lip, Freckles, or whatever as a prefix to Riley, Jones, or White.
Sand-Blast Pete, now dead and gone, the small-pox that pitted your face and gave you your name never pitted your heart. You proved that one night in the desert, when, although almost exhausted, you went forth alone and obtained help for a stranded party of strangers.
Although every “Greaser” (i. e., Mexican) might, in the Southwest, live under his characteristic Spanish prenomen, Juan, Jose, or what not, he automatically became Mexican Joe for the purposes of the Northwest the instant he reached that section.
A curious phase was that many a man passed always by only his given name, and that none of his associates ever stopped to consider that he must have a surname “cached somewhere.” The ranch foreman, on welcoming Mr. New Yorker, a visitor, would say something like the following: “Mr. New Yorker, shake hands with Hen. Hen, this is Mr. New Yorker from back East. He’s a friend of the boss. Mr. New Yorker, Hen’s been with our outfit for six years, and is generally reckoned to be the slickest rider in this half of the county.” If, after Hen had passed beyond ear-shot, Mr. New Yorker had asked the foreman for Hen’s last name, the questioner would have seen a look of sudden surprise, and would have heard: “Well, I’m damned. I never thought of that. He likely has got one somewhere. I dunno what it is. He’s just Hen, and if he thinks that’s good enough for him it shore is for us, and that’s about the size of it. Say, stranger, let me give you some advice. You’re a pilgrim. Excuse me, that there just means you’re new to this country. If I was you I wouldn’t try to hurry nothin’, and I’d travel on the idee that Hen likely gave a first-class funeral to the rest of his names, and I wouldn’t ask him for no resurrections.”
Onto whatever single names survived the West often tacked descriptive phrases. By this system there was avoided any confusion in identity among the “Johnnie down with the Four Bar K Outfit,” the “Johnnie who rides for the Two Bits Ranch,” the “Johnnie up on the White River Range,” and “that busted-snoot Johnnie.”
As an incident of greetings between strangers it was good form for each to bow to the extent of temporarily removing his hat, or at least to raise his right hand to his hat’s brim. This took the theoretically dangerous hand away from the gun’s position at the belt. Likewise good form required that a man discard his “shooting iron” before entering another person’s house. This latter result usually was accomplished by the man’s unfastening his belt, and hanging it with its attached holster from the horn of his saddle.
Furthermore, even at one’s own table one’s gun was no proper attendant at an indoor meal.
Though a man when entering a dwelling-house had thus to dispense with his revolver, he was not required to take his hat from off his head save during the moments of a bow or two. Behatted heads were common within doors, even at the dinner table, though except in the earlier years they were somewhat frowned upon at dances.
In New Mexico the local law recognized the wisdom of the disarming custom, and forbade the carriage of weapons inside the limits of a town. Wherefore the local official charged with the duty of temporarily impounding the weapons of visitors would greet incomers with a statement which, as phrased by one such official, was “Howdy, gents. Sorry, but no guns allowed in town. Get ’em when you leave. So skin yourselves, skin yourselves!” And thereupon the visitors resignedly would “shuck” their weapons.
When a man was introducing to each other two of his acquaintances, the operation was somewhat formal, though of short duration. For the moment every one, according to sex, was referred to as “Mister,” “Miss,” or “Missus,” and there was employed, without any modification of wording, one of the four conventional phrases which, as adapted to men, ran “Mr.——, shake hands with Mr.——,” “Mr.——, step up and meet Mr.——,” “Mr.——, let me make you acquainted with Mr.——,” or “Mr.——, meet Mr.——.”
In all affairs of ceremony every white male above sixteen years of age was a “gent” unless the matter were one of icy coldness, possibly near to shooting. Then he was a “gentleman,” with syllables slowly spoken and widely spaced.
The title of mister as a token of honor was permanently bestowed upon such elderly men as possessed dignity of carriage and had made brave accomplishment.
The respectful word “ma’am” occurred repeatedly in all conversations with women.
Except for an occasional “Adios,” the universal parting salutation was “So long.”
The cowboy’s reserve and even his suspicion had their corollary in the carefully followed precept that it was not good form to exhibit curiosity. A puncher, passing a stranger or entering the latter’s camp, would not demean himself by seeming to note the stranger’s apparel or equipment. Nor, on leaving, would the cowboy gaze back over his shoulder.
Punctilious as were the ranchmen in compliance with all these customs, their adherence to the code regarding women travelling upon the Range transcended punctiliousness and rested on the plane of highest honor. A woman journeying alone upon the open Range was as safe as though in her own house, excepting only there were danger from Indians or from border Mexicans. Any passing ranchman could be impressed into an escort. Many a schoolma’am has, sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by a conscripted attendant, ridden from the fringe of the settlements to her little school in some hamlet far out on the plains.
Any violation of this code meant the hang-knot of the vigilance committee, or on occasion the latter’s more terrible “staking out,” wherein the culprit, minus eyelids, face to the sun, was laid upon an ant-hill of giant size, wrists and ankles tied to pegs in the ground, to lose in a few minutes his mind, and in a few hours the final vestige of his flesh.
There having been no typical cowboys, there were no typical tastes in which they as cowboys shared; but as men they, like almost all other men of parts, had only restricted admiration for the masculine-mannered female. Years since, some Englishwomen, exaggerated types of the hunting set, visited at their brother’s ranch in the Far West. Horseshoe jewelry and loudest of mannish raiment were predominant. Upon the visit’s close and an hour after the guests, homeward bound, had finally left the ranch, its cook, red-haired, freckle-faced, one-eyed, thus addressed a sympathetic cowpuncher in the hearing of another and unsuspected auditor: “Huh. If ever I have to git married, I’m going to marry a woman what’s all over gol-durned fluffs.”
One of these same women, riding up to a group of cowboys, made to one of them a remark which contained no impropriety beyond that the speaker placed herself and the men upon a common level. There flashed back to her the answer: “For God’s sake, woman, why can’t you let us look up to you?”
Whatever might be any puncher’s treatment of his own womenfolk, woman in the abstract was an object of respect and obeisance.
No ambulance from a metropolitan hospital could have offered more gentleness in the transport of a female patient than was intended by the group of silent men escorting across the snow a figure huddled on a “travois” and bound for a hospital via the railway over a hundred miles away. More rude nurses, more solicitude accompanied this horse-dragged, bumping stretcher than would have done so had its contents been a man.
Feminine sick-beds as compared with those of the other sex attracted a larger quantity of the medicines which, as the news of serious illness passed up the Range, came in on the gallop, and in a variety which embraced not only most of the then current patent remedies, but also numerous unlabelled and unidentifiable pills and liquids. With the last-mentioned items would be vouchsafed: “I disremember just what they is, but they done me a powerful lot of good oncet. Take ’em and try ’em.”
The Range, in medical matters, dosed itself, and took naught but patent medicines; in dental affairs treated itself with blacksmith’s pincers; but, in surgical cases of seriousness, conveyed its patients to the settlements, where real doctors might be found.
Its nursing was faithful and untiring, however amateurish, for a dangerous life tends to make men womanly; and the average puncher was womanly, though Heaven knows he was in no wise ladylike.
The Cattle Country’s self-administered medicines were limited to Jamaica ginger, cathartic pills, “Cholera Cure,” “Pain Killer,” “Universal Liver Remedy,” “Rheumatism and Kidney Cure,” and horse liniment, this last being kept only for human use, and being diluted when administered.
The liniment’s action not infrequently was supplemented by a steam bath taken in Indian fashion. For this purpose there was erected a “wickyup,” a low, dome-shaped framework of sticks covered with hides. On the ground in the middle of the structure were placed red-hot stones. The patient stripped and nestled near them. A bucket of water was thrown onto the stones, and human parboiling forth-with commenced.
Transport of such surgical patients as could not sit the saddle was effected by wagon or by the travois. This latter appliance was adopted from the Indians, and consisted of two long poles, one attached to each side of a horse, and both dragging behind him, just as would a pair of elongated carriage shafts if disconnected from the vehicle’s axle. Behind the horse’s heels there was fastened, between the poles, a basket or framework, and into this container went the comfortless invalid.
Sententiousness was another characteristic of the Range. Sententiousness, which among the earliest cowboys may have come wholly from the loneliness of their life, was in their later generations founded not so much on this cause as on mere convention. Ultimately it became more than fashionable, it became socially obligatory, to speak in terse terms, and when framing a sentence to “bobtail her and fill her with meat.” So adverse was the man of the Cattle Country to unnecessary words that he often advised a discursive conversationalist to “save part of your breath for breathing.” One puncher, when asked for his opinion about his employer, replied: “Can’t put it in words. Give me an emetic!”
This does not mean that the average cowboy was not talkative. It means merely that he was epigrammatic. It also indicates that he could make word-pictures. A tramp suddenly appeared in a Montana cowboys’ camp. After the manner of tramps he had silently, slinkingly, self-effacingly merely arrived. Bug Eye, whatever his last name, one of the punchers, looked up, and to a companion behind him announced: “One no work, much eat just sifted in.” Can there be found a better word than “sift” for the typical, aimless, shifty movement of the tramp?
A man in chaps, taking his first look down into the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, remained quiescent for two minutes, then straightened in his saddle and made a soldierly salute to that great abyss and galaxy of color. All that he later said about it was “God dug that there hole in anger, and painted it in joy.”
Another man, Tazewell Woody, who, while not a ranchman but instead a scout and hunting guide, yet lived in close relationship with ranchmen, was with a companion searching for mountain-sheep. The men had reached the summit of a peak the moment before the morning sun rose from behind another peak, and shot a golden pathway across the intervening field of snow. Woody’s companion, with eyes glued to binoculars which were pointed elsewhere, said at that climactic instant: “There’s a big ram,” and was answered: “Shut up. God’s waking.”
The sententiousness, and still more the reserve, led occasional observers to conclude that punchers, as a class, were taciturn, even morose. This conclusion was erroneous. A few punchers, it is true, were morose, but most of the punchers, like all other old-time Westerners, merely withheld their intimacy from every stranger until the latter should fully have disclosed his nature and have established whether he were a “white man” or else what, if in expurgated form (as it rarely was), was termed a “son of a gun,” the latter either unqualified or else “plain,” “fancy,” “natural born,” “self made,” “pale pink,” “net,” or, worst of all, “double distilled.”
For some inexplicable reason the word “net,” when used, always followed the “gun,” or the word that it displaced, while all the other qualifying expressions, when they appeared, preceded the “son.”
If the Westerner eventually released his intimacy, he took to his heart the stranger and forgot reserve completely, though sententiousness not at all. The stranger by his own worth had, in the language of the Westerner, “gotten under the latter’s skin.”
The cowboy was quite apt to talk in quizzical terms. Jim Stebbins and Joe——(?) accompanied a military detachment during the Sioux campaign of 1876. In a skirmish the horse of one of them fell and laid a stunned rider on the ground. There ran toward this man a squaw armed with one of the stone-headed, long-handled hammers known as “skull crackers,” and used by Indian women for crushing the heads of wounded enemies. The semi-insensible puncher was recalled to action by his companion’s announcement: “Look out, Jim. There’s a lady coming.”
Dave Rudio, of Oregon and Texas, thus described a Texas ranger’s killing of a renegade: “The ranger came up and said quietly: ‘You’re wanted. You’d better come along peaceable-like.’ The outlaw he began to throw talk. The ranger he said: ‘Don’t act up. Be sensible and come along with me.’ The outlaw, still jawing, started to reach. He hadn’t a tenderfoot’s chance at that game, for the ranger he just whirled out his own gun, and that outlaw stopped plumb short talking to the ranger and began a conversation with Saint Peter.”
Digressing for a moment from the cowboys, but still sticking to this quizzical phase and to old-time Westerners, Jake Saunders of Denver was besought by an ex-ranchman for a loan of twenty dollars. Saunders, knowing the man’s proclivity for borrowing, and so curbing his own usual generosity, handed over to the borrower but one-half of the sum requested. The borrower said: “I asked for twenty,” and received the answer: “That’s all right. We’re even. You’ve lost ten, and I’ve lost ten.”
Pop Wyman, deservedly respected in Leadville, Deadwood, and elsewhere for his honesty, was dealing faro. A particularly obnoxious player had been fingering chips, pushing them out on the table and then withdrawing them. Upon the announcement of a winning card, the player claimed that one of his peregrinating stacks of chips was within the lines bounding the paying counterpart of the successful card. He vehemently asked, “Am I on or off?” and was told, “Neither, you’re out.” He was. He landed on the sidewalk, and deserved it.
Among the punchers many words disclosed their intended meaning only from their context. For instance “jamboree” might indicate, among other things, an innocent dancing party, a drunken debauch, or an active event, whether the last were a pistol fight or a stampede of animals. “Clean straw” either denoted exactly what it said, or else it signified fresh bed-sheets.
A few other words and phrases had arbitrary meanings, akin to those employed in the cant of professional criminals. Thus a “blue whistler,” because of the pistol’s blued frame, denoted a bullet, while a “can’t whistle,” for obvious reason, signified a hare-lipped person. A “lead plum” was a bullet, while a “sea plum” was an oyster. Many of these arbitrary expressions had local rather than general usage.
The cowboy’s utterances were permeated with slang. Slang, since the foundation of the United States, has been the natural expression of its youths, and the cowboy, whatever his years, was at heart always a youth. To the slang of ordinary young America the cowboy added by picturesque perversions of technical terms of his business, the whole supplemented everywhere by gamblers’ expressions; in the Southwest by various Spanish words, and particularly in the Northwest by limited extracts from the local Indians’ languages. The Latins’ “hombre,” “mañana,” “pronto,” and “quien sabe” were as useful in Arizona and New Mexico as was the Red Men’s “teepee” (i. e., “tent”) in Oregon.
The farther “quien sabe” drifted northward from the Mexican border, the more damaged became its pronunciation. A few leagues of northing produced “keen savvy,” and a few more leagues “no savvy.”
On some of the Mexican border’s ranches Spanish instead of English was the prevailing language.
Everywhere “waltz” and the French word “chassé” were current as interchangeable synonyms for the English word “go,” though none of the three words attempted to substitute itself for the homely term “git.” “Git” or “you git” was the most affirmative form of Western command for an undesirable person to begin immediate retreat. No qualifying profanity was attached, because custom had decreed that none was necessary. Everywhere it was recognized that “git” and “you git,” if unheeded, were possible curtain-raisers to bullets. Mules might safely disregard “giddap” or “glang,” but they knew that “you mules, git” prophesied the hissing of the whip-lash.
“Chasséd into” and “waltzed into” might be equivalent to the phrase “happened upon,” so that, when Joe Edwards, to repeat his own words, “chasséd over to Albuquerque and waltzed into my aunt’s funeral,” it meant merely that he had travelled to the city in question and unexpectedly had come upon his relative’s burial.
Pidgin-English contributed its quota of words and phrases. Its “long time no see ’em” conveniently set forth the status of a searcher for some lost object, while its “no can do” definitely expressed personal impotence.
In the extreme Northwest a few words were borrowed from the Chinook jargon of the coastal trappers and traders. The words most commonly taken from this last-mentioned source were “skookum” (great), “siwash” (an Indian; hence, in secondary sense, not up to white man’s standard, second-rate), “muckamuck” (food, or to eat or to drink), “hiyu muckamuck” (plenty to eat), “muckamuck chuck” (to drink water), “kaupee” (coffee), “cultus” (despicable, worthless), “cuitan” (a horse), and “heehee” (fun or a joke). A “heehee house” was any place of amusement.
Throughout the West references to Indian customs, beliefs, or terms were used commonly, and in a slangy sense. Thus a puncher was apt to describe as “making medicine” his preparations for a journey, or his planning of an enterprise; to state later that this “medicine” had been “good” or “bad,” according as his preparations had proved sufficient or insufficient, or his planning had resulted fortunately or otherwise. His affirmative thwarting of a rival’s project was, by like adaptation, termed “breaking the medicine” of the rival.
The puncher frequently would signify his acceptance of an offer of a drink of whiskey by giving an Indian sign, usually that for medicine, or that for good or that for peace.
The punchers in general knew a number of these Indian signs, and often used them in lieu of spoken slang in order to dress up lighthearted conversation. But only such of the cowboys as were brought into intimate contact with the Red Men made any pretense of mastering the rest of the Indian sign-language, that remarkable, voiceless means of conveying information.
Tobacco often was termed “killikinic” or “kinnikinic,” names given by the Indians to their smoking mixture of willow bark, whether without or with an admixture of tobacco.
Many gambling terms were used in a figurative way. Dice, faro, poker, casino, seven-up, and keno each contributed. The dicer’s “at the very first rattle out of the box” expressed prompt action, while poker’s “a busted flush” pictured plans gone awry, and poker’s “jack-pot” signified either a general smash-up or else a perplexing situation. Poker gave also, among other terms, “showdown,” “freeze-out,” “call,” “see you,” “raise,” “bluff,” “ante,” and “kitty,” all with self-evident slangy meanings, unless the uninitiated should fail to appreciate that “ante” might include any payment for any purpose, and that “kitty” might embrace any public or charitable fund. Thus Lafe Brown, in Oregon, receiving from his mother an appeal to contribute toward the rebuilding of the church in his native Eastern town, advised her that he would “ante ten dollars to the church’s kitty.”
Whatever idea or physical asset was expected when ultimately put in use to bring success was one’s “big casino.” In the class of big casino were included not only schemes for outwitting rivals, but also powerful weapons presumably intimidating to enemies, attractive presents supposedly irresistible by females, speedy horses assumed to be invincible in racing. If, as often, expectations miscarried, the disappointed person ruefully asserted that his big casino had been “trumped.”
Faro’s terms permitted one puncher to “keep cases” on another man, rather than prosaically to observe the latter’s actions or analyze his plans; and further permitted this puncher, if dissatisfied with these actions or plans, to “copper” them by initiating a diametrically opposite sort of performance or scheme. From this same source came “getting down to cases” as an antonym for “beating about the bush.”
Because of seven-up, “It’s high, low, jack and the game” became an exclamation announcing successful accomplishment of any task.
Keno, of which the Sacramento Chinaman said: “Fline glame. Velly slimple. Dlealer slay ‘Kleno,’ and ellybolly ellse slay ‘O hlell!’” though played in the early mining-camps, was not played upon the Range. Nevertheless it lent its name to the ranchmen for exclamatory use when heralding the ending of any act. The throwing of an elusive steer, the breaking of a whiskey bottle, the being thrown from a horse’s back, each might evoke “Keno!”
The average cowboy was a bit ruthless in his treatment of grammar; this, in some cases, from lack of education, in other cases because not satisfied with the amount of damage done to conventional English by slang alone.
Despite this ruthlessness, and despite the cowboy’s generous use of slang, his language was not generally as remote from that of Easterners as many tale-writers have suggested. Except for grammatic lapses the puncher departed from conventional English no more than do the average American newspapers of this year 1922 in such of their articles as describe the game of baseball.
The puncher’s conversation customarily was redolent with profanity; but, if profanity be identifiable from the sense and not the spelling of words, many of the puncher’s expressions, while sacrilegious on the tongues of others, were but slang when used by him. The common misuse of the name of the Deity signified no purpose to revile God. All through the West the word damn descended from the pinnacle of an oath to the lowly estate of a mere adjective unless the circumstances and manner of delivery evidenced a contrary intent. Words could be, according to the tone of their speaking, an insult or a term of affection. Wherefore men frequently were endearingly addressed with seeming curses and apparently scourging epithets. From this sprang the phrase beloved of tale-writers: “Smile, when you say it next. Smile, damn you, smile!”
Damn as an innocent adjective had various quizzical shades of meaning. It was, among other things, synonymous, or semi-synonymous, with “very” or “exactly.” Thus “promptly at one o’clock” and “immediately” might severally come from a puncher’s lips as “at damned one” and “damned now.”
Damn, however, was not the only oath used by the buckayro. He had an impious repertoire which was of amazing length, and contained appallingly blasphemous phrases. Some men devoted considerable thought to the invention of new and ingenious combinations of sacrilegious expressions.
To specialized phrases of this sort the admiring public accorded a sort of copyright, so that the inventor was allowed to monopolize for a time both the use of his infamous productions and the praise that they evoked. These individual creations were known as “private cuss-words.”
Some men held in reserve, as private cuss-words, phrases which sounded as of childlike innocence, but which, having been arbitrarily appointed by their owners as symbols to express the last stages of anger or despair, represented, in fact, the extreme of profanity. To the owner’s acquaintances such phrases were danger-signals. Snake Wheeler, Pinto Bill, or Nebrasky——(?), each could for many consecutive minutes comment upon the topography and temperature of Sheol, upon the probable destination of the souls of the bystanders or of certain cattle or horses, upon alleged irregularities in the descent of various persons, yet the human auditors remained entirely blasé. But when Snake icily said, “My own Aunt Mary!” or Pinto fairly hissed, “My dead sister’s doll!” or Nebrasky quietly but firmly remarked, “Little Willie’s goat!” some individual either ducked or “dug for his cannon,” or else a horse or steer learned how it felt to be martyred.
The ranchmen were so permeated with profanity that, though most of them endeavored to refrain from it when in the presence of decent women, but few of the men were able long “to keep the lid on their can of cuss-words.” An Eastern woman, riding on a forest-girt Wyoming road, rounded a corner and trotted into the full blast of blasphemy flowing from the lips of the driver of a bogged mule team. The moment the driver saw the woman, he curbed his tongue, and apologized sincerely and in these very words: “Excuse me, ma’am. I didn’t know there was ladies present. If I had, I wouldn’t a swore. Hi there, you mule. Hell’s roarings be damned, ma’am. How in hell can a man keep from dropping out a cuss-word now and then when a lot of ———mules jack-knife on him. Excuse me, ma’am. I sure begs your pardon. It just slipped out. Hi, there, you lead mule, you ———————.” And the woman fled, pursued by first a plaintive wail of “Excuse me, ma’am,” and next by another “Hi there, you mule” and its unprintable codicils.
Nevertheless the puncher’s swearing was, to no small extent, a purely conventional exhibition of very human and quite boylike desire to impress bystanders. Humor rather than wickedness was its principal source. Where in the wide world, other than in the West, would grown men have ridden miles to engage in a competitive “cussing match,” with a saddle for the prize, or a person been held forth as probably the State champion in blasphemy?
Western tradition was that much the best judges of profanity were mules, and that these animals instantly could detect the difference between the bold, swinging blasphemy of a “regular” and the timorous “parlor swearing” of a “pilgrim.”
“Regular,” the antonym of “tenderfoot,” began early in the decade of the seventies to be wholly supplanted by the terms “Westerner” and “real Westerner.” As between these latter terms, a “real Westerner” was merely a “Westerner” who had unusual force of character, and thus, in another phrasing by the Range, was a “he man.”
The subject of profanity suggests the subject of religion, as regards which the cowboys as a class were negative. Some of them, either atheistic or merely agnostic, were open scoffers, and with unction displayed to all newcomers a certain vicious, stupid, and hopelessly vulgar printed parody on the Bible. This particular parody was scattered all over the Far West, and was one of its recognized fixtures, along with the lariat, tin can, and sage-brush. But most of the men, whatever their inner feelings may have been, touched lightly, if at all, upon religious matters. “Sunday stopped at the Missouri River,” and many of the men never had opportunity either to enter a church or to talk with a clergyman. A fair statement is that, never having been religiously awakened, they were religiously asleep.
Very marked was the power of detailed and accurate observation of such things as were within the realm of the cowboys’ interests, and, from the things observed, simple inductions were instantly, if unconsciously, made. Then, too, the puncher by training had the eye of a hawk. He had no need for field-glasses.
Whatever he “raised” upon his solitary rides, he diagnosed at a single glance.
When an object suddenly appeared within an observer’s horizon, this observer, if a Westerner, would state that he had “raised” the object; while an Easterner, under like circumstances, would say that the object had risen.
Did the cowboy “raise” a horseman, however far away, an instant’s glimpse told whether this horseman were an Indian or a ranchman. The differing poses in the saddle were unmistakable; the Indian always squatting and seated like a sodden bag of meal. Closer inspection would disclose that the Indian’s toes were pointed outward, and that his heels drubbed on his horse’s sides at every step the poor brute took.
The lope could not carry a rider so rapidly past five or six closely bunched animals that he would not note and remember all the beasts’ identifying points.
Were his progress slower, his observation would be much increased. There approached each other upon the trail a man and thirty horses, the latter herded by men behind. The horses, some on the trail, some beside it, here one, there two or three abreast, interrupted their steady walk only by stops for an instant to snatch a grass tuft or to place a kick. These movements of the head and heels momentarily so turned the animals as to show all their markings to a practised human eye. The man swung off the trail, around the band, and to its herders at its rear. Two minutes of conversation and he resumed his way. Then and for days thereafter he could have described with certainty the color, marking, sex, size, and brand of every animal. One brute did not attempt to dodge before receiving a kick upon its left shoulder. The man, of course, noticed that, and it forthwith informed him that the animal was blind on that side.
At the conversation behind the band there doubtless occurred a simple but characteristic act. At least one of the men, to rest himself, would have thrown a leg over his horse’s neck and sat in the saddle, either with one knee crooked about the horn, or else squarely sideways, with a stirrup flappingly hanging from one toe. That was a typical Western pose.
Smoking, while universal, was practically restricted to cigarettes, which were pronounced cig-a-reets, and were made by the smoker. Although in fact the great majority of cowboys had to use both hands in the operation of rolling and lighting, consummate elegance dictated that but a single hand should be employed; and that the rolling should be effected by the finger-tips of this single hand, or, better still, through a method which was successfully followed by some of the cowboys and was studiously attempted by all of them.
In this latter method, the paper, laid above the knee, received a charge of tobacco, and then, without change of position, was rolled into shape by a quick sweep of the ball of the thumb. Next, with the finished cigarette held between the fourth and fifth fingers of the rolling hand, the thumb and forefinger of that hand grasped one loop of the tobacco-sack’s draw-string, the puncher’s teeth seized the other loop, and a whirling of the sack like a windmill closed its aperture. A dab by the tongue along the papered cylinder, a match drawn by that same rolling hand across tightened trousers, and the cigarette was “working.” The performance of this feat was one of the conventional ways of exhibiting ostensible nonchalance when on the back of a bucking horse.
“Eating and spitting tobacco” was in common but far from universal use.
Bowed legs were a sign of the puncher’s craft. The Westerner, from his earliest boyhood, when not sitting on a chair sat on a horse. With no small number of men, did a pedestrian journey out of doors rarely exceed the ten feet between the house-door and the horse-rack. So habited were these men to riding, that a projected trip to another building, two hundred feet away, would send them into saddle. Nature, as her price, subtracted symmetry from their legs, strength from their ankles, and created a gait akin to that of a sailor ashore. Dear old Wedding Ring Charlie bore a sobriquet descriptive of his nether contour, and, though ever able firmly to sit his saddle through twenty-four consecutive hours, could only with greatest difficulty walk for twenty yards.
The feet at the ends of such curved legs were very apt to toe in, not to “track” as the West, in wagon builders’ language, described a deviation from normal pointing.
The ranchmen, whether owners or employees, in common with all other then Westerners, while thoroughly honest in their mutual dealings, had a very easy conscience as regards accepting Eastern, and particularly English, money in return for what was sold. They at times would go so far as ostensibly to convey large rivers and huge tracts of governmentally owned land.
This attitude was not due to affirmatively intended dishonesty for personal gain, but arose from a combination of factors which largely were in the nature of erroneous assumptions.
First of all, the West, as an undeveloped section, was in such dire need of money for the development of natural resources that “bringing money into the country” was regarded as a particularly public-spirited act. Each new fund, when put into circulation, aided so many men that the arrival of any fund obscured the inducement offered for its coming.
A second factor was the Westerner’s unflattering opinion of Easterners and Englishmen, this opinion having, as regards Easterners, a not illogical tang of bitterness.
The West, despite its progressiveness in most matters, was thoroughly unregenerate in its clinging to prejudices of the sort by which early Anglo-Saxon America was beset, and consequently affected a contempt for “foreigners,” the West including Easterners in that category. From this view-point the Range had toward the financial trimming of some “effete” person the same complacent attitude as the world has ever maintained toward the misfortunes of such people as had forfeited public respect, as for instance toward the excessive gambling losses of gilded youths.
Nor did the West see any ground for pity for the victims. The Westerner, having started life when financially “flat broke,” and having lived in a country where lands were given to the asker and natural products belonged to the finder, confidently assumed that the victim’s monetary losses could be fully compensated by his “hunting up” a mine or other national largess of value. Thus the West, from personal experience, believed that “going bust” or “being busted” was not a serious state and was terminable at any time by the insolvent’s initiative. Incidentally, this was why the West always was ready to do what the East often could not risk, to “take a chance” in a business operation.
Next, each Westerner arrogated, not to himself but to his fellow Westerners, the possession of the major portion of the nation’s brains, and took the stand that, if weaklings chose to invade the country of men and to trade with them, the weaklings should look out for themselves. The Range made no allowance for the fact that the settled business customs of England and the East, and the established significance of the trade expressions used there might differ from such as obtained within the Cattle Country. It assumed that its own customs and its own construction of technical terms were exclusively controlling. With this tacit creation of a seemingly fair field for contest, the West viewed a business transaction of intersectional or international application as being to no small extent a competitive trial of intellect, and considerable local pride was aroused among the friends of a ranchman who had “shown some Easterner or Englishman how to think.” This ranchman’s success was measured, not so much by the amount of his financial profit, as by the extent to which he cleverly had outwitted his “effete” victim; and, if the latter had been made to appear ridiculous, so much the better.
Furthermore, the Westerner, in addition to relegating Easterners to the impersonal status of foreigners, stored up against them three affirmative grievances. The Westerner resented, first, the East’s lack of interest in the former’s country, resented, second, the East’s so largely profiting from a rehandling of the West’s productions, and, third, to some extent believed that the latter condition spelled more than unfairness, and that he, the Westerner, ever was being affirmatively defrauded by the East. Thus he countenanced recoupment from individual Easterners.
The puncher’s intense admiration for the scenic beauties of his Western country, and the failure of Easterners in general to visit it contributed largely to the creation of the puncher’s antipathy toward the East. Every Easterner who went to Europe instead of to Colorado or to California, every Easterner who mentioned the Alps instead of the Rockies fertilized this prejudice. The West’s censure of the East in this regard was based, not on the theory that the moneys spent in European travel might otherwise have gone Westward, but on the fact that the Easterner preferred admiration of the sights of Europe to worship of Western landscapes.
The Westerner had never been brought face to face with great buildings, great paintings, great statues, and thus he did not sense their possibilities, did not realize that there could exist objects of this sort worth crossing the Atlantic to see, and that Europe was their storage place. The single beauty field of which he knew was natural scenery, and he sincerely believed that, in this, nature had given her best to America’s West, to “God’s Country,” as all its dwellers termed it.
The salient scenery of the West consisted of mountains, canyons, and waterfalls, punctuated by the geysers of the present Yellowstone National Park.
The puncher confidently matched the Rockies against the only foreign range with the existence of which he was familiar, the Alps, and against the only Eastern range the character of which he kept in mind, the White Mountains of New Hampshire. With his back confidently braced against the Rockies, anchored as they were to the Arctic and Cape Horn, he called the Alpine “Mount Blank” a badger-hole; and, discovering that the bottom of a deep depression in a plain in Colorado had exactly the same altitude above sea-level as had the summit of New England’s highest peak, joyfully named the bottom of that hole Mount Washington.
The West was particularly rich in majestic waterfalls, their least one more important than any Europe had. Wherefore the puncher, with indignant partisanship and great enthusiasm, berated Lauterbrunnen and the falls of the Rhine. Even America’s Niagara at times was scolded. One night, below the great cataract of the Snake River, one of the tremendous spots of North America, Jim, i. e., Jim whatever his last name may have been, having dismissed the Staubbach Fall of Switzerland as “a mere watering-pot,” announced with exultant pride: “European waterfalls. Hell! Bring over the biggest of them, and this here real one will squirt it to a finish.”
Did a tenderfoot mention canyons to a Westerner, the latter merely grinned, said, “Yellowstone, Colorado,” and, if he chewed tobacco, bit his plug.
As for geysers, the West knew that there were three principal fields: New Zealand (“how did one reach there?”), Iceland (“nobody went there”), and the Yellowstone. Europe and the East had no geysers. From the cowboy’s view-point, they did not deserve any.
In the railroad yard at Green River, Wyoming, one hot afternoon, there ran between a complacent native son of Utah and a homesick ex-Bostonian a bitter debate on the comparative scenic beauties of New England and the West, and the relative merits of the inhabitants of those localities. The debate bumped along now in favor of this side, now of the other, until suddenly terminated and conclusively won by this uncontrovertible argument: “By G——, if your Eastern folks ever had guts, why didn’t they get their own geezers?”
The cowboy could not understand why the Easterner should prefer to stay on the Atlantic coast or to go to Europe when, as the Cattle Country thought, ordinary common sense should have taken him Westward.
And when the Easterner did go Westward, he could not properly saddle a horse, he could not properly ride the beast, he could not find his way through a trackless wilderness, he could not take care of himself in the open, he expected some non-existent woman to do his cooking and to wash his clothes, he carried a very shiny and very small-bore pistol, and, while tracking big game, he stepped on every dry stick within his reach. He called the corral a barnyard; and, though he had seen the West, he permitted his relatives to remain “back East.” The Range, realizing that the Easterner was very bungling in every attempt to do any of the particular, technical things that every Westerner had of necessity mastered, looked, when gauging efficiency, no farther than the boundaries of the Cattle Country, and did not appreciate that beyond those boundaries might be an important field of activity and thought with which the West was not conversant, and that the very tenderfoot who called the corral a barnyard might be a leader in that field.
The Cattle Country complained that the West exerted itself to produce the nation’s raw materials in the way of meat, hides, wool, wheat, and precious metals, that the East was wholly unproductive, but that nevertheless the East, by ownership of the factories and by control of the markets, unfairly reaped the major portion of the profits from the raw products which the Westerners laboriously had originated. The cowman berated commissions and stock-yard charges upon the sales of his cattle.
The Westerner, who was accustomed to obtain through federal gift whatever lands, water, grass, fuel, building wood, and wild meat he needed, did not pause to consider that in the West alone did the government make such gifts; and, on reading in his newspaper that some little parcel of New York City realty had fetched a tremendous price, he vaguely or more definitely concluded that “Wall Street” was allowed all the cream of the federal benefactions, and that in some undisclosed manner the West had been cheated out of its fair share of the profit. The puncher assumed that, if land at the corner of Wall Street and Broadway in New York brought fifty dollars per square foot while productive tracts in the Cattle Country rarely rose above ten dollars for each acre, there was some dishonesty in the situation, and he gave the blame for it to the East.
The Cattle Country had for itself the same kind of complacent self-satisfaction that the then contemporary Atlantic coast had for what the latter called the United States; the United States, according to the Atlantic coast’s then view-point, consisting of three thousand miles in width of territory which might or might not contain inhabitants living westward of Chicago.
The Cattle Country extended, out of its self-complacency, a friendly interest to so much of the Middle West as did not lie eastward of Chicago; but, beyond the easterly boundary of that city, the curiosity of the Cattle Country did not go, save on occasional trips either to gather diverting bits of information like a jumping from the Brooklyn Bridge or Captain Webb’s attempt to swim through Niagara’s whirlpool, or else to obtain a grievance against the East. A considerable amount of admiring interest was incited both by the rapid growth of Chicago and by the heights of its successively erected “skyscrapers,” particularly in so far as they promised an ultimate, hopeless outdistancing of the City of New York in both population and tall buildings.
A friendly interest was extended also to the Pacific slope.
Very definite acquaintance was had with Mexico, its geography, industries, and political affairs.
The rest of the world did not function on the Cattle Country’s map except in so far as, even back in the early eighties, a few prophets said that some day California might have trouble with Japan. The only news the Cattle Country received from Europe was that which, from time to time and in squib-like form appearing in Western newspapers, was largely of the Captain Webb variety, or else related to royal assassinations or the burning of cities.
In all this, the West was relatively not a whit more insular than the rest of the United States. America has ever restricted its intensive interest to itself, and has saved its most burning curiosity until a new family should move into the house next door.
Of its own affairs the Cattle Country had an astonishingly definite and accurate knowledge. The West’s own geography down to its minutest details was at the finger-tips of everybody upon the Range. Whatever visitor might wish information as to the crossings of the Rio Grande could obtain reliable information at Sumpter, Oregon, or at Medora in Dakota, information no less specific and trustworthy than he could procure at Laredo upon the stream’s very bank. Texas knew as much about the Gallatin River as did Bozeman, Montana, past which it flowed. Even every little creek had Rangewide notoriety. Arizona had no more knowledge about her San Francisco peaks than had Wyoming, while the dwellers by the Bitter Root Mountains of Idaho and the people who lived in the shadow of Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo Range knew every principal trail and canyon in both these chains.
This geographical knowledge had causation other than merely abstract interest. The Range dweller was called upon in connection with the business of his live stock to travel often and far. He never knew when and whither he next might journey. Distance never balked him. The school of the Texas Drive taught the meaninglessness of miles. And yet, though he saw many places, he could not visit every place upon the map. His intimate knowledge of these unseen spots he obtained from the descriptions given him by other Westerners, descriptions such as could be given only by frontiersmen and by engineers, descriptions by which his brain received through the medium of his ears a picture and topographical plan as vivid and detailed as his eyes might otherwise have procured.
The Cattle Country kept somewhat close track of all its people. Ranchmen on Montana’s Musselshell knew in general as to who was raising cattle in the Texan county of Palo Pinto, while “down in San Antone,” one not improbably might learn the names of almost all the outfits along Nebraska’s Platte.
Cattlemen on some of Oregon’s Grant County ranges, making an onslaught on local sheep, drove hundreds of the “woollies” into the forests of the Blue Mountains, and fire did the rest. Presently the entire Cattle Country knew all the details, just as it promptly knew all the details when “lumpy jaw” appeared in the Neutral Strip, “hoof and mouth disease” crept in at North Park, drought struck Judith Basin, or Green River was “up,” i. e., in unusual flood. A ranchman scarcely could move his thousand steers at Laramie without their transit being eventually reported along the Pecos.
A man would alight from a train in Nebraska at Grand Island or in Kansas at Abilene. Some local resident in chaps would give him a second glance, a searching if a hurried one, and would thus address the train’s conductor: “Captain, ain’t that Angus, the new sheriff over in Johnson County, Wyoming? I ain’t never seen him, but a feller down in Texas told me what he looked like.” Thus, in another phase, the frontiersman’s descriptive power had functioned, and Sheriff Angus’s picture had been painted with accuracy as pronounced as had obtained when a mountain range and the trails across it had by word of mouth been set with vivid clarity before some inquirer.
Incidentally the Cattle Country obtained its news not so much through the media of its newspapers and the mails as it did through the spoken words of men who, meeting in the open country, stopped their ponies and “passed a word.”
The Cattle Country was interested, of course, in things other than those above enumerated; but, unless these latter matters involved mechanical inventions, or either discoveries or theories in science, or else epoch-making events, they usually, to obtain a hearing, had first to prove that more or less directly they would affect the Range. International relations could find no audience.
The Cattle Country, as regards the intellectual subjects that interested it, had a very lively curiosity, was little disposed to be mentally lazy and to take anything for granted. Nor was it apt, without investigation of its own, to accept as conclusive other people’s opinions and to rely upon them. It directed to these subjects painstaking, tireless, and extensive consideration. The loneliness of the life gave ample time for thought, none of which was wasted on neurotic introspection or was subject to interruption.
The constant working of this curiosity, the habitual exercise of the powers of accurate observation and of mental concentration collectively produced, from time to time, data valuable in the field of science. The range and habits of the several species of wild animals, the location and area of the way stations used by the different varieties of migratory birds, the latters’ several migration time-tables, the situs of fossil deposits, marked abnormalities in geological formations, peculiarities in the dress and customs of various Indian tribes, and other matters of like character were observed, and frequently were reported to the Smithsonian Institution, to a local university, to some locally operating scientific expedition from an Eastern university, to some field party of the federal government’s Geological Survey, or, occasionally and strange to say, to the nearest United States marshal.
Though most of these reports brought no additions or amendments to scientific knowledge as it then existed, some did, and laid real foundation for new theories to be created in scholarly laboratories, or else confirmed theories previously so made but then not as yet conclusively established, or else they caused either a doubting or a complete rejection of theories that had obtained.
It is safe to say that no equal number of amateur investigators in any other section of the United States would have produced anywhere nearly the same quantity of useful data.
The Cattle Country, thus committing its mind actively to concrete, tangible matters, was not prone to interest itself in abstract, intangible, philosophical subjects. It sympathized with the view-point of Steve Hawes, a cook with convictions: “Such things, they don’t bring no facts to nobody. The feller that’s a-goin’ to do the talkin’, he just natcherally begins by pickin’ out a startin’ pint that rully ain’t nowhars at all. He brands that startin’ pint ‘Assoomin’ that,’ so he can know it if he runs acrost it agin. Then he cuts his thinkin’ picket-rope, and drifts all over the hull mental prairie until he gits plumb tuckered out. And when he gits so dog-gone tired that he can’t think up no more idees to wave around and look purty in the wind, he just winds up with ‘Wherefore, it follows.’ Follows. Hell! It don’t follow nothin’. It just comes in last.”
Then, too, the Cattle Country, with its directness of thinking, was apt to content itself with ascertaining the merely proximate cause of the phenomena that attracted interest, and to consider that attempts to trace further back into the chain not only were futile, but also took one into purely speculative channels and away from “facts.”
That same Steve Hawes, after patiently listening to two college graduates academically discuss the cause of Julius Cæsar’s death, thus summarized the whole affair: “What did recurrin’ desire for constitooshanl guvnment, return of democracy, and them other vague things you’ve bin talkin’ about have to do with it anyhow? All there was to it was that Cæsar, he didn’t draw in time, and got in front of that feller Cassius’s dofunny, while Brutus he come in with the sweetener. Now it appears to me that them was the facts, leastwise the true facts and all that’s wuth considerin’.”
The essayist’s type of presentation found small favor. For the essays upon light subjects the Range had little sympathy, and for the frothy ones that not only delighted many an Eastern dilettante but also marked the limit of his intellectual research, the Range had an unmitigated and robust contempt.
The West pinned its faith and its interest to “facts.” Incidentally, the salient, important, controlling elements in any matter of fact were called the “true facts,” or the “real facts,” while the occurrence or existence of immaterial elements was acknowledged and dismissed by the statement: “That might be,” or “That might be so.”
Reddy Rodgers, a Gallatin Valley hunting-guide, having, in company with a tenderfoot sportsman spent an entire day in unsuccessful quest for game, came toward nightfall upon a bear. The tenderfoot became excited, broke a branch lying on the ground, and the bear thus alarmed disappeared forthwith. Upon the men’s return to camp the tenderfoot, when giving to one of his fellow sportsmen a recital of the event, described in minutest detail and with strictest accuracy every happening before the bear had been sighted, while it remained in view, and for some time after it had left. There was not a single statement that was not absolutely truthful. When he had finished, Reddy summed up in these words: “All that mought be so. But the true facts was. The bar thar. The dude he stepped on a stick. Skiddoo.”
The West desired that persons, when describing “facts,” should do so with definiteness and accuracy, but it did not require that any effort be made to dress the presentation in an artistic way. The West contained such endless quantity of beauty in its natural scenery, that, as already stated, whoever upon the Range hungered for the beautiful turned instinctively to nature and not to art. The result was that the Cattle Country tended to ignore most of the human attempts to create beauty, and so brought upon itself the Easterner’s averment as to lack of cultivation.
The Westerner, with his methods of thinking and his uninterrupted opportunities for thought, was able in each subject that interested him to arrive ultimately at a clearly cut conclusion, and to hold in definite mental storage all the argument that had led him to that end.
Along would come an Eastern or English tenderfoot, and, in the ordinary course of conversation, one of the Westerner’s favorite topics would arise. It very likely would be one to which the tenderfoot had previously given little heed, perhaps none at all. The Westerner under such conditions often had good reason to think that the tenderfoot in his discussion made a sorry presentation as compared with the Westerner’s well-ordered offerings. The difference in extent of preparation suggested itself to nobody, and the tenderfoot, himself chagrined, was by the Westerner classed as mentally his inferior and possible as markedly stupid.
On the other hand, was there put forward a topic in which the tenderfoot was well prepared and in which the Westerner took no interest, one of two things would promptly happen. Either the topic would be summarily changed, or the Westerner would rid himself of an unwelcome phase in the conversation by hastily forming an opinion and stating it in very positive terms. He would assume both that the subject was not worth his expenditure of thought and also that nothing that the tenderfoot might say about it would have any value.
The Easterner had his own social customs, and these were largely predicated on urban life. Practically none of them were compatible with, or were adjustable to, the style of living which conditions in the West locally compelled. And yet the fact that Easterners, even when in their Atlantic coast homes, should not attempt to follow Western standards, was a bit complained of by the Cattle Country as against the East.
The Cattle Country did not resent the individual Easterner so long as he stayed in the West and tried to fit into the life. It merely pitied him for his fancied total inefficiency. But the Cattle Country did resent, and deeply resent, the fact that neither the man’s relatives, his “folks,” as the Range termed them, nor the vast majority of all Easterners either came to the West or showed any interest in that section. The people of the Cattle Country were aggrieved at having their own existence as human beings overlooked and at being abstractly considered as merely so many annual pounds of wheat, silver, gold, leather, wool, and meat. In other words, that which the West really most resented was being ignored, and this resentment was the fundamental motive for the specific and affirmatively made complaints enumerated above.
The Western skin, despite its sunburn, was very thin and very easily hurt.
The resentment was a bit augmented by a secret dread that adverse criticism of Westerners might come from the Atlantic coast when the latter should eventually direct its attention to the Cattle Country. Previously and for years, the East had had the same fear of Europe. In each case, it was the latent anxiety of a virile, youthful civilization lest it be judged severely by an older people; and, in each case, the anxiety came to the surface in the shape of defiant antipathy. The Cattle Country’s “tenderfoots” and “effete East” spoke the same language as did the East’s prior railings against “effete monarchies” and “worn-out Europe.”
But the cowboy, although he did not understand the Easterners, although he branded them as “effete” and “stuck up,” and very stupid, although he objected to their governing themselves by their own settled customs, this last despite the fact that he himself unconsciously was ruled by convention as much as consciously were the Easterners, although he ruffled when they ran counter to his code, nevertheless welcomed them to his country; and, if they expressed true admiration for it and fitted into it, he became their undying friend.
The moment an Easterner settled in the West, his sins of birth were forgiven him. He was assumed to have recanted from his iniquity, and to have travelled in search of light. His new companions did not arrogate to themselves any idea that he had sought to be taught by them. Merely he had come to “God’s Country,” to learn from it and from all that was in it how contemptible his past had been, how great his then present privilege was.
Not even a large minority of Westerners would themselves commit the sharp practices described above, but to such men as were successful in pursuit of them was extended the admiring and well-nigh unanimous sympathy of the Cattle Country. However, these overreachings usually were launched against only such persons as, either not living in the West, were regarded as impersonal and hence as fair targets, or else, residing in the West, were generally disliked and so were considered legitimate victims.
As a whole, the matter represented principally a desire to teach the disliked East and England “another lesson.”
The sharp practices rarely were aired in the courts. The denizens of the Cattle Country engaged in formal litigation and entered the courts only under either one of two conditions; i. e., when they were dragged in by some aggrieved tenderfoot victim of an abortive local promotion scheme, or they, with confident reliance on the bias of a jury of friends, served process on an Easterner or Englishman. The tenderfoot victim rarely thus dragged a Westerner into court, because the stanch partisanship of the local juries was well advertised.
Such disputes between Westerners as were not settled by private treaty or on occasion across a gun’s sights were quite apt to be submitted for adjustment to the local sheriff. He, jovial but firm, very friendly but sternly just, always courageous and everywhere regarded with esteem, arbitrated many such contests, and his decisions had morally the same effect as they would have had if he had been a circuit judge.
The cowboy had a very clearly defined regard for what he conceived to be the dignity of his calling, and would brook neither disparagement of his trade nor any act or statement which tended materially to belittle himself. He deeply resented seriously offered derision.
Easterners in general, wholly ignorant of the West, thought the cowboy wofully conceited. He was not so.
Many of his statements about projected action may have sounded boastful to such as were unacquainted with his capabilities, but these statements usually were launched as matter-of-fact announcements of readily performable plans. When the puncher said that he was about to ride what seemed to his tenderfoot auditors an unconscionable distance, he not only was going to do so, but doubtless had done so many times before.
Admittedly the cowboy was vain in a feminine way and displayed his vanity with boylike naïveté, but his apparent blatancy was not a direct bragging about himself. It was enthusiastic advocacy of his Cattle Country and of the people whom he loved. That he might be included among those people by his auditors was of course no drawback. But really the country and the people came first; and, when he thought of them, he instinctively gambolled like a lamb.