Ranch Life 95 



make the finest irregular cavalry in the world ; but 

 they are and always will be — Ishmaelites. They 

 are profoundly ignorant of everything outside their 

 own calling, and always laugh disdainfully at a 

 tenderfoot's blunders. It is best to laugh with 

 them, but sometimes the tables are turned. I know 

 a man, now famous, who once silenced a camp full 

 of cowboys. He had made some trivial blunder — 

 I forget what — which provoked the jeers of the 

 " boys." " My God ! '* he exclaimed, " is it possible 

 that you fellows, born and bred in this cow coun- 

 try, laugh at me ? Look here, I have been twice 

 round the world, I speak half a dozen languages, I 

 have lived, lived, mark you, in half the States of your 

 Union, I have met your famous men ; and you, you 

 dare to laugh at me because I do not know the one 

 little thing which you know. Well, laugh away, 

 boys. What I don't know about cow-punching is 

 worth a laugh, but what you don't know about 

 everything else in the world is enough to make a 

 man cry." 



I have found a warm welcome in dozens of cow- 

 boys' camps and never, but once, anything else. On 

 that occasion my brother and I were the unpremedi- 

 tated cause of the " trouble." We had been camp- 

 ing out in the mountains, and had with us in our 

 spring-waggon a small demijohn of whisky. This 

 demijohn we carefully hid, at the special request of 

 the foreman of the ranch, but the cook, who had 

 not been to town for many moons, found it and an- 

 nexed it as treasure-trove. It seems that this cook 

 had had " words " that morning with the " boss," 

 and our whisky, in large undiluted doses, fanned 



