The History of the Old American West – 4 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Emerson Hough
Читать онлайн книгу.The History of the Old American West – 4 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition) - Emerson Hough
change. It was as though the model of the cowboy had been cast in bronze, in a heroic mould, to which all aspirants were compelled to conform in line and detail. The environment had produced its type. The cowboy had been born. America had gained another citizen, history another character. It was not for the type to change, but for others to conform to it.
He who sought to ride by the side of this new man, this American cowboy, needed to have courage and constitution, a heart and a stomach not easily daunted, and a love for the hard ground and the open sky. There were many who were fit so to ride. Of these the range asked no questions. If there had been trouble back in the "States," trouble with a man, a sweetheart, or a creditor, it was all one, for oblivion was the portion offered by the hard ground and the sky. Let us not ask whence the cowboy came, for that is a question immaterial and impossible of answer. Be sure, he came from among those who had strong within them that savagery and love of freedom which springs so swiftly into life among strong natures when offered a brief exemption from the slavery of civilization. The range claimed and held its own. The days of the range were the last ones of American free life. They preceded the time of commerical life, that stage of civilization when all men must settle down to wear, patiently or impatiently, the yoke that is imposed by the artificial compact of society.
It is probable, then, that we should see small difference between Jim, the foreman of the T Bar ranch in Wyoming or Montana, and the Jim who was foreman of the Bar Y, or of the Star D, or of the Circle Arrow in the Southwest country. It is still uncertain where Jim lived before he came on the ranch, and it is still immaterial, for it is certain that he is a good cowman.
In appearance Jim is a man of medium height, with good shoulders, none too square, but broad enough. He is thin in flank, lean and muscular, with the firm flesh of the man not only in perfect physical health but in perfect physical training. Life in the saddle, with long hours of exercise and a diet of plain food, has left not an ounce of fat to prevent the free play of the firm muscles one above the other. His skin is darkened and toughened by the wind and sun and alkali. His hair is not worn long, as persons of a certain class would have us believe was the correct thing for scout or Westerner in the "old times." Jim's hair is hid under his big hat, but very likely hangs in a rough mop down from under his hat and upon his forehead, like the forelock of a pony.
Jim's eye may be of the red hazel of the ready fighter, or the gray of the cold-nerved man, or the blue of the man who is always somewhere about when there is fun or trouble afloat in whatever corner of the world. It is hard to see Jim's eyes, because the bright sun causes him to hold them well covered with the lids, with a half squint to them. His mustache may have been tawny or brown or nearly black at first, but now it is sunburned and bleached to a yellow, faded hue. Upon his feet Jim makes a very poor figure. He is slouchy, awkward, and shambling in his gait, for his feet, in the vernacular of the range, do not "track," but cross each other weakly. His legs are bowed, with the curve which constant horseback riding in early youth always gives. His toes turn in distinctly as he walks. He does not stand erect, but stoops. But in the saddle he sits erect, and every action shows strength, every movement the grace of muscles doing their work with unconscious ease and sureness. The world can produce no horseman more masterly. With the "rope" he can catch the running steer by whichever foot you shall name. He can "roll a gun" with either hand, or with both hands at once. He has a perfect knowledge of the nature of the steer, and knows the trade to the last detail. He has all the hardihood and courage which come of long familiarity with trouble, hardship, and peril; for what is called courage is very much a matter of association and habit.
With his employer Jim is as honest and faithful as any man that ever breathed. In his conversation he is picturesque and upon occasion volcanic of speech. In his ways of thought he is simple, in his correspondence brief. It was perhaps this same Jim, foreman of the T Bar, who wrote to the Eastern ranch owner the quarterly report which constituted for him the most serious labour of the year, and which is said to have read as follows:
"Deer sur, we have brand 800 caves this roundup we have made sum hay potatoes is a fare crop. That Inglishman yu lef in charge at the other camp got to fresh an we had to kill the son of a –. Nothing much has hapened sence yu lef. Yurs truely, Jim."
It was possibly Jim, the foreman, who licked the young cub whom everybody called "Kid" into the shape of a cowboy, and it may have been he who taught the wealthy cattle owner something of the essentials of the business as they have come down in the traditions of the range. Grim, taciturn, hard-working, faithful, it was this cowboy of the range who made the mainstay of the entire cattle industry. Without him there could never have been any cattle industry. He was its central figure and its reliance, at the same time that he was its creature and its product.
If it make small difference who the cow puncher was or whence he came, it will make little difference, either, at what exact portion of the vast empire of the Northern cattle range there was located the home ranch of the T Bar outfit. It might have been at any point within a circle of five hundred miles, and still have had the same general characteristics. Let us suppose the ranch building to be located upon the upper portion of some one of the great rivers of the Yellowstone system, in that region so long the range of the buffalo and the home of the red ranchers who never branded their cattle. This river debouches from the great and snowy mountains which are plainly visible beyond the foothills of the chain. The soil of the river valley, the detritus of ages carried down and spread out by the waters, is deep and rich. The river, subject as are all the streams of the region to sudden freshets or to seasons of low water, is well fed and regulated in its upper waters by the deep snows which each season fall upon the mountains and which hardly melt entirely away throughout the year. Into this larger stream flow other streams at intervals, these heading back into the high grounds of the plains. Along the stream in this upper valley the red willows grow densely. They form a heavy bank of shelter at the arm of the river where the ranch house is built. Below this point the valley spreads out into a wide natural meadow, and here the water has been led out in an irrigating ditch, so that a considerable extent of hay land has been established. All that this soil needs is water to make it fruitful as any in the world. The ranch owner has realized this, and at times a tiny, scraggy garden gives rich reward for all the care bestowed upon it, though here, as all over the cow country, the tin can is the main dooryard decoration. Wheat, oats, and corn could be raised here also, but the ranch man hopes that fact will be long in its discovery by others. His own concern is the raising of cattle.
Over all the high plains back from the river valley the sage brush and the bunch grass grow, as they do all over the "arid belt," and give no promise of the vegetation that needs water at its roots. Not far from the ranch there may be small green valleys, six or seven thousand feet above sea level, each with ten or twenty miles of grazing ground,, where the grass grows tall and green as it does in the "States"; but contrary to what the tenderfoot would expect, the cattle do not crowd in to feed upon this luxuriant and fresh-looking grass, but range far out upon the desolate bunch grass country where, to the eye of the novice, there is no food at all for them. The big flies go with the tall grass, and in these green valleys neither cow, horse, nor human being can endure their vicious and continuous assaults. The green grass is forsaken utterly. Early teamsters who crossed the plains, freighting to Denver in the days before the railroads, often struck such valleys where the greenhead flies made life for their horses or oxen almost unbearable. The valley of the Rawhide, in Nebraska, was such a,spot. Here the flies were so bad that the horses had to be kept in darkened barns all day, and at night the mosquitoes swarmed upon the unprotected horses of the freighters in such numbers that the poor groaning creatures could not rest and were driven nearly frantic.
Below our ranch house the river marches on, broadening out and flowing more and more gently, until it in turn passes into some other affluent of the Yellowstone-Missouri system. At the point where the ranch house is located, or a little way above it, the waters have not yet lost the colour they bore in the mountains, a bright, bluish green. There are fine mountain trout within a day's journey that the cook sometimes catches when he is not too lazy to go out after them. But soon after leaving this elevation, and reaching the red soil of the lower plains, the river becomes tinged and discoloured, then red, roily, perhaps full of quick-sands, and no longer beautiful to behold. Here the cottonwoods, those worthless yet indispensable trees of the plains, troop in along the water and spread out their brittle, crooked arms. They