LET 'ER BUCK 



to save being gored; to ford a freshet-swollen river; 

 to struggle through a blizzard, while cow-punching in 

 a stampede is not play for a floorwalker. 



Such work demands not only a perfect presence of 

 mind but a perfect co-ordination of mind and action. 

 The picture of the cowboy as he is portrayed in his 

 reckless moments when he crazily careens a-whooping 

 and a-shooting through the town when he rides his 

 horses into saloons, or at the times of his gross merry- 

 making is a distorted one ; and you are likely to for- 

 get in the whoop, the gun-play and the curse, the fringe 

 and the jingle, how much hard work, often under most 

 difficult conditions, he is doing. The cowboy, while 

 a type and adhering to his clan, is a marked individu- 

 alist, and anyone who knows and loves the open and 

 the great range of freedom, knows that the men who 

 live in those great expanses of life, who often must 

 be a law unto themselves, who carry dangerous weap- 

 ons and know that their associates carry them, are 

 usually self-contained and courteous. The cowboy is 

 of a keen-thinking, clear-eyed and resolute clan, far 

 from quarrelsome, but sudden in a fight, though not 

 seeking it, and doubly quick on the draw. This is the 

 true son of the plains, if you eliminate some recent 

 hands who have stepped into his chapps and think that 

 so doing and jamming on a Stetson, and looking tough 

 makes a cowboy. The cowboy is honest, hard-work- 

 ing, truthful and full of resource — and of course brave, 

 not merely in action but in endurance. 



It was logical that when the railroads brought beef- 

 cattle on the hoof to be shipped to Europe by way of 

 the great cattle boats, Boston should become the great 

 port of export and center of this trade. By reason of 

 its great shoe and textile industries it had a very direct 



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