BOOK REVIEWS 



The Cowboy, by Philip A. Rollins (Scrib- 



ner's. New York. Price $J.50. 



What the forest fire means to the forest 

 ranger the prairie fire meant to the cow- 

 boy of the Western cattle range, so says 

 Philip Ashton Rollins whose book "The 

 Cowboy," is now being eagerly read by 

 everyone interested in the West and par- 

 ticularly in the cowboy, his life and his 

 habits. Mr. Rollins, whose book is a real 

 contribution to the liistory of western de- 

 velopment, says : 



"The prairie-fire sometimes produced ex- 

 citing duties. Fires were frequent; but 

 usually were of small importance, and, if 

 promptly attacked, easily exterminated. At 

 other times however they were terrifying. 



"For successive weeks an arid heat and 

 a lifeless air, at 10 o'clock acrid whiflFs 

 and a blurred horizon, but at 12 o'clock a 

 biting smell and the horizon gone. Out 

 there, somewhere, was a line of grimy 

 men desperately fighting to stop the march 

 of the advancing flames that the latter 

 might burn themselves out upon their self- 

 selected battle ground. . Punchers with 

 eyebrows and eyelashes gone, with wet 

 handkerchiefs over mouth and nose, in mad 



haste, but with cool reasoning, 'straddled' 

 the fire; two mounted men, one on either 

 side of the flames, dragging behind them 

 at their lariats' ends a green hide or wet 

 blanket. Other men either mounted or 

 afoot, scarred and intrepid like their 

 brothers, beat upon the fire's side lines 

 with similar utensils or with bunches of 

 brush. 



"The thickness of the grass or the veloc- 

 ity of the wind might generate heat or 

 movement such as to make straddling un- 

 feasible, and then the only remedy was to 

 'back-fire' across the enemy's prospective 

 line of march. Along the zone selected for 

 the 'back-fire,' a horseman trailed a bun- 

 dle of burning fagots. The flames thus 

 started were held in check on their home- 

 ward side by straddling them. 



"In the early stages of the contest, liv- 

 ing warnings intermittently came out of 

 the wall of smoke, for an occasional deer 

 or antelope, a solitary horse or steer would 

 rush, wild-eyed past the toiling men. Thus 

 the best experts on the subject of danger 

 had advised human retreat, but such re- 

 treat was not to be considered. 



"The last of these fleeing animals had 

 passed through the line of fire fighters. 



There was a sudden puff far in the rear, 

 and in an instant the prairie behind the 

 men was ablaze. It was mount and reach 

 the shelter given by a projecting hill, by 

 the bottom of a coulee, by a grassless 

 'buffalo wallow,' or, in the language of the 

 craft, it would be 'fried gent,' 'no break- 

 fast forever,' and the 'long trail to Kingdom 

 Come.' 



"With safety thus attained, the next and 

 an immediate task was to gallop down 

 to leeward, again to move out before the 

 flames, and to re-enegage the enemy upon 

 the same tactics as before. 



"There was peril in the extensive fires, 

 for they would sulk and make slow prog- 

 ress for a time, and then would leap for- 

 ward in irregular frontage more rapidly 

 than a horse could run. They, on occasion, 

 would travel for many miles. The peril 

 was particularly for such as had to fight 

 the flames and so, having to stand their 

 ground, could not materially shift position. 

 But any one who merely sought escape 

 would find that, through the average fire, 

 ran here and there safe lanes made up of 

 interrupted and quite dissimilar elements, 

 a stream's bed, a rocky ledge, a t)lt of grass- 

 less earth." 



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