Hough The Chronicles of the Old West - 4 Historical Books Exploring the Wild Past of the American West

(Illustrated) Western Collection, Including The Story of the Cowboy, The Way to the West, The Story of the Outlaw & The Passing of the Frontier
1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-80-268-7399-0
Verlag: e-artnow
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 818 Seiten

'The Way to the West' tells the story of the opening of the west, including the accounts of three early Americans Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett and Kit Carson. 'The Story of the Cowboy' is a historical book about the cowboy in the American West close to the end of 19th century. 'The Story of the Outlaw' is a study of the western desperado, with historical narratives of famous outlaws, the stories of noted border wars, vigilante movements, and armed conflicts on the frontier, including the profiles of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett. 'The Passing of the Frontier' explains the part of the frontier in history and what Lewis and Clark came up against when they passed it on their great expedition across the continent. Emerson Hough (1857-1923) was an American author best known for writing western stories, adventure tales and historical novels. His best known works include western novels The Mississippi Bubble and The Covered Wagon, The Young Alaskans series of adventure novels, and historical works The Way to the West and The Story of the Cowboy.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hough, Emerson

Weitere Mitwirkende

Russell, C. M.

Remington, Frederic

Norton, John W.

Leseproben

CHAPTER II
THE RANCH IN THE SOUTH
Table of Contents Description of the Western cattle industry, whether in regard to its features, its characters, or its environments, must be largely a matter of generalization. The cattle country itself covers a third of the entire territory of the United States. We have sought roughly to divide it into the two sections of the North and South, but it would trouble one to say where even a broad and indefinite line should be drawn which should act as a fair boundary between the two. Should we place that boundary, loosely speaking, somewhere at the central or southern line of the State of Kansas, we shall have established a demarcation at best arbitrary and in many ways inconclusive and inaccurate. Even if we presume that this indefinite line be sufficiently accurate, we shall have left, for our Southern ranch region, a domain many times larger than the entire territory of Great Britain, with a few of her choice provinces thrown into the bargain. Over so large a region there must prevail some divergence of people and things; and in turn we must remember that all these people and things, more especially as they pertain to the story of the cattle man, have in late years been subject to much change. It would be very natural for any one who had but a partial acquaintance, or one limited to a few sections of so large a region, to consider as incorrect any specialized description which did not tally with his own observation in his own locality. Still more inaccurate might such an observer consider a description which covered accurately twenty years ago a section which he first sees to-day, in the last quarter of the century. For instance, a citizen of the type our friend the cowpuncher is wont to term a "pilgrim," might go to-day to some railroad point in the vast State of Texas, expecting to find there in full swing the rude ways of the past. He might expect to see the ranchman an uncouth personage, clad in the border garb once pictured in lurid literature or still more lurid drama, his speech full of strange oaths, his home a dugout or a shanty. Much surprised might this stranger be to discover his ranchman a comfortable individual, of well-cut business dress, guiltless of obvious weaponry, and plain and simple in speech. Still more surprised he might be to learn that this ranchman does not live upon his ranch at all, but in the town or city, perhaps many miles therefrom. The ranchman may have an office in the bank, and may be chief stockholder in that institution and other leading concerns of his town. He may be a member of the Legislature, or sheriff of his county, or candidate for higher office. His family may have a son in college, a daughter in the art school of a distant city. The ranch itself, if discovered, may be simply a vast and partly tilled farm, with white-painted buildings, with busy tenantry, and much modern machinery in intelligent use. This would be accurate description of a ranch in the South to-day. But it would be accurate only in particular, not in general, and it would never satisfy the inquirer who knows something of what ranch life once was and is to-day in ft wide and wild portion of the Western region. If we sought to be more general in the outlook for a ranch fit to be called typically Southern, we should certainly have much latitude afforded us. Suppose it to be in the Indian Nations, taking it at that time before the Indians had grown wise in their day and generation, and before the United States Government had evicted many of those opulent tenants, the cattle men of the nations. Let us picture our ranch as lying along some timbered stream, such as the Cimarron, which flows just above the "black-jack" country of the Cheyennes and Arapahoes. Here the land lies in long swelling rolls and ridges, with hills of short oak scrub, and wide intervals of prairie. Into the main stream of the river flow many smaller tributaries, and among these are some little creeks heading back among the hills in fresh, unfailing springs, whose waters flow always sweet and abundant throughout the year. Fancy some such little nook, well up in the hills, a half mile from the river, and in imagination surround it with the forest trees which should grow at such a spot. Well down the hillside, sheltered alike by the hill and by the forest from the cold winds which come from the north in winter, stands the ranch house. It is made of logs, much in the style of the lumberman's log house in the pine woods, except that the structure is more careless and less finished. The door is made of a single thickness of unplaned and unmatched boards. It hangs loose upon its rough wooden hinges, and its lock is a rude wooden latch the string whereof literally hangs upon the outside. Wide cracks are open about the edges of the door and about the windows and between the logs at the sides and ends of the room — for there is but one great room in the ranch house proper. Along the wall of this vast apartment are built sleeping bunks, similar to those used by the cabin dwellers of the pine woods. There is little furniture except a rough table or two, and a few stools or broken chairs. The clothing of the men lies under the bunks or hangs on pegs driven in the wall; for trunks, wardrobes, or private places for individual properties are unknown and unnecessary. The saddles, bridles, ropes, and other gear hang on strong pegs in the covered hallway or open-front room which connects the ranch room with the cook house. This connecting room or open hall is also the lounging place of the many dogs and hounds which make part of the live stock of the place. These dogs are used in the constant wolfing operations, and are a necessity on the ranch, but with them a continual feud is waged alike by the cook from whom they steal, and the foreman with whom they continually endeavour to sleep at night — this by reason of an affection much misplaced; for the foreman is a man of stern ideas of life. The cook house is also the dining hall, and here the same rude arrangements prevail as in the main apartment. There is a long pine table, two or three long wooden benches, perhaps a chair or two. There is a good cook stove, and the dishes are serviceable and clean, though not new or expensive. The cook has his bunk in the kitchen, and is left alone in his own domain, being held a man with whom it were not well to trifle. The country of the Nations Has a climate hot in summer, though not extremely cold in winter, except for occasional cold storms of wind and snow. Such a storm is called a "norther"; by which we may know that we are upon a Southern ranch or one manned by Southern cowmen. In the North the same storm would be a "blizzard." On this range shelter for the cattle is never considered, and they fare well in the timbered hollows even in the roughest weather. Hay is of course something little known. It is a wild country, and game is abundant. The nearest railway point is one hundred miles to the north, let us say, at least at the time of our visit. The ranchmen do not see civilization more than once a year. They are lonely and glad of the company of an occasional deer hunter who may blunder down into the forbidden Indian lands. All men are welcome at the ranch, and no questions are asked of them. Every visitor goes to the table without invitation, and there all men eat in silence. One has seen at such a meal a hunter, a neighbouring ranchman bound for his place fifty miles below, and two suspected horse thieves, bound for some point not stated. No questions were asked of any of them. In this region, where news is the scarcest of commodities, the idea of gossip is unknown. The habit or the etiquette of the cowboy is not to talk. He is silent as an Indian. The ranch boss is the most taciturn of all. The visitor, when he comes to take his departure, if he is acquainted with the ways and the etiquette of ranch life, does not think of offering pay, no matter whether his stay has been for days, weeks, or months. If he be plainsman and not "pilgrim," no matter whether he be hunter, ranchman, or horse thief, he simply mounts, says "So long," and rides away. The taciturn foreman says "So long," and goes back to work. The foreman's name may be Jim, never anything more, about the place and among his own men. On the neighbouring ranges or at the round-up he is known perhaps as the "foreman on the Bar Y." Some of the cowboys on the Bar Y may be diagnosed to have come from Texas or some Southern cattle country. The foreman may once have lived in Texas. It is not etiquette to ask him. It is certain that he is a good cowman. This may indicate one phase of ranch life south of our imaginary boundary line. It is, however, not comprehensive, and indeed perhaps not typically Southern. Let us suppose that the traveller has fared far to the south of the Indian Nations into the country along the Gulf coast of Texas. Here he is still on the cattle range, hut among surroundings distinctly different from those of the Indian Nations. The hardwood groves have disappeared and their place is taken by "mottes" of live oaks, whose boughs are draped in the dismal gray of the funereal Spanish moss. There is no word now of swamp or brush or timber, but we hear of chaparral and cactus and mesquite. We are at the southern extremity of the great cattle range. Here the cattle even to-day are not so large as those of the North. They run wild through a tangle of thorn and branch and brier. For miles and leagues — for here we shall hear also of "leagues" — the wilderness stretches away, dry, desolate, abominable. Water is here a prize, a luxury. A few scanty streams trickle down to the arms of the salt bays. Across some such small stream the cattle man has thrown a great dam, costing perhaps a small fortune, and built by an engineer not afraid to use masonry, for he...