MILLING WITH THE NIGHT HERD 



one has often to scratch much deeper to find beneath 

 the veneer of a more effete order. 



The light filters its golden way through the half- 

 wafting fog of tobacco smoke onto the great baize 

 tables sprinkled with their ivories like drops of a rain- 

 bow on a lawn of green; upon forward tilted sombre- 

 ros with a cockeyed slant shading keen eyes, deep set 

 in shadowed sockets; upon the sheen of colored shirt 

 as the strong figures reach in their play with the cue, 

 their clean-cut faces chiseled by a life and work in 

 which they ask of nature no compromise. All is a great 

 delicious, impressionistic splash of color on a canvas 

 soon to be grayed with that dull mediocrity we call 

 civilization. 



The smoke grew thicker, the background turned to 

 a dark nothingness, the murmur of men's voices merged 

 with it and only the shirted, chapped, sombreroed fig- 

 ures moved across my vision. The lights were the 

 lights of campfires, the shadows on the men's faces 

 those cast by them, and time filmed backward a space 

 of years. I saw the western plainsmen on the great 

 stage of their calling. Perhaps no type of men or call- 

 ing have ridden into publicity and the interest of people 

 of all countries more completely than the vaquero and 

 particularly the vaquero of our western plains — the 

 cowboy. No vocation is so constantly spiced with ro- 

 mance, adventure, fight and fun as that of the cow- 

 boy — those elements which make an inherent appeal 

 to mankind. 



Nor is any "getup" used in practical everyday work 

 more picturesque than the broad-hatted, chapped, care- 

 free, spur- jingling one of the American cowboy. One 

 of its charms lies in the fact that it is worn for business 

 and not for effect, and you know it. Look about this 



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