ANIMAL INDUSTRIES 239 



costumes of the men, where they were gambling, 

 crowding about the bronco-riding contests in the 

 bull ring, or lined thick the race course. Scattered 

 among these hundreds of native Californians were 

 always a few score Americans, bearded, heavy-booted 

 miners; skin-clad, leather-faced trappers from the 

 Sierra; ranchers, cowboys, and bronco-riders, these 

 latter outgauding even the natives with bridle-bits 

 and spurs inlaid with silver, sombreros and stirrup- 

 leathers embroidered with silver and gold, pistol- 

 butts set with twenty-dollar gold pieces every last 

 man- jack of the gringos more or less heavily and 

 gaudily armed. For the bitterest enmity was con- 

 stantly burning between the natives and the intrud- 

 ers; and while the former were still chiefly armed 

 with only their traditional reatas and knives, their 

 majority was so heavy that the latter would have 

 been up against hopeless odds without their artil- 

 lery." * 



This was only the training school which made for 

 skill and prowess; the application of both to the 

 business in hand is, of course, the quality on which 

 the fame of the cowboy rests. The same writer 

 gives this suggestion of it: "The great intermoun- 

 tain region between the Sierra Nevada and the Coast 

 Range was then a boundless field of wild oats upon 

 which ranged and fattened uncounted thousands of 

 wild cattle and horses. The exigencies of the situa- 

 tion produced a class of daring, clever horsemen 

 never excelled in the world's history, habited always 



1 "The Vanguard" by E. B. Bronson. George H. Doran Co. 



