MILLING WITH THE NIGHT HERD 



in Colorado, a curious and delightful society arose. 

 The ranchman was "only a cowboy in chief. ... In 

 particular it was noticed in El Paso and Denver in the 

 most high and palmy state of the cattle business that 

 cow-punching was a sure recipe for reducing the Bos- 

 tonian morgue." In fact there are many delightful and 

 social colonies of ranchers composed in greater part 

 of Eastern college and educated men and their families 

 who have formed delightful communities, as for in- 

 stance, the famous fruit region of Hood River Valley 

 where they have a better University Club than in many 

 a large city. Thus the call of the West of yesterday 

 echoes into today and will re-echo into tomorrow ; and 

 the call will be answered. 



But I forget — this is not "the other night" and I'm 

 not sitting in this corner alone. The figures I see in 

 the smoke are not phantoms of the campfires or sil- 

 houettes against the horizons of time, but real, honest- 

 to-God plainsmen and ranchmen of now on the real 

 stage of their today. 



The murmur of men's talk about me has softened — 

 vibrated away into almost a node of silence, only a 

 single voice, a voice you feel has breathed the fullness 

 of great distances, chronicles an episode in the life of 

 the buckaroo 



The band it plays, 



And a cowboy sways 

 On the back of a bucking horse. 



He looks around, 



Then he hits the ground, 

 But the bucker keeps his course. 



Thundering applause shakes the whole structure. 

 The reason ? Why, Tracy Lane, the cowboy poet laur- 



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