FRONTIERSPIECE 



"What! Don't you know V ? He's not a 



bad sort, but I had to send him up last spring for two 

 years — horse rustling." 



"Speaks well for him that he is out so soon." 



"Out ? He's not out. You see, he's one of the best 

 riders in the valley and the people hereabouts wouldn't 



stand for keeping V in jail while this bucking 



contest is on. But he goes back tonight." 



This episode not only prefaces this book and my 

 own experiences in the life and sports of the old West, 

 but epitomizes those great human virtues with which 

 the West is replete — courage, daring, belief in work, 

 love of play, optimism, and above all, that balance- 

 wheel of life, humor; virtues which were not only nec- 

 essary to the winning of the West, but were those com- 

 posite constituents which enabled the early pioneer to 

 cement later the great Northwest into our national 

 body politic. 



Five nations for two centuries, seeking the Oregon 

 country, tried to discover the great rumored "River of 

 the West." Then the New England skipper, Captain 

 Robert Gray of Boston, first cargoed by Boston mer- 

 chants and later sent by General Washington, let fall 

 the anchors of his two vessels the Columbia and Lady 

 Washington in the long sought River of the West, 

 later christened after the name of his flagship — and 

 Oregon was found. This great River of the West as 

 expressed in the poem picture of Bryant's imagina- 

 tion is supposed to be the waterway mentioned in 

 Thanatopsis in the line "where rolls the Oregon." 



A scant three hundred years ago, the Atlantic sea- 

 board was the frontier of Europe. But that eternal 

 urge, that migratory instinct — wanderlust — found 

 from man to butterflies, saw the eastern settler push 



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