FRONTIER TYPES 



89 



of quarrel was adjusted, a fierce race struggle took its place. It was soon 

 quelled by the arrival of a strong sheriff's posse and the threat of inter- 

 ference by the regular troops, but not until after a couple of affrays, each 

 attended with bloodshed. In one of these the American cowboys of a 

 certain range, after a brisk fight, drove out the Mexican vaqiicros from 

 among them. In the other, to avenge the murder of one of their num- 

 ber, the cowboys gathered from the country round about and fairly stormed 

 the ''Greaser" (that is, Mexican) village where the murder had been 

 committed, killing four of the inhabitants. My two friends had borne a 

 part in this last affair. They were careful to give a rather cloudy account 

 of the details, but I gathered that one of them was "wanted" as a par- 

 ticipant, and the other as a witness. 



However, they were both good fellows, and probably their conduct was 

 justifiable, at least according to the rather fitful lights of the border. Sitting 

 up late with them, around the sputtering fire, they became quite confidential. 

 At first our conversation touched only the usual monotonous round of sub- 

 jects worn threadbare in every cow-camp. A bunch of steers had been 

 seen traveling over the scoria buttes to the head of Elk Creek ; they were 

 mostly Texan doughgies (a name I have never seen written ; it applies to 

 young immigrant cattle), but there were some of the Hash-Knife four-year- 

 olds among them. A stray horse with a blurred brand on the left hip had 

 just joined the bunch of saddle-ponies. The red F. V. cow, one of whose 

 legs had been badly bitten by a wolf, had got mired down in an alkali spring, 

 and when hauled out had charged upon her rescuer so viciously that he 

 barely escaped. The old mule, Sawback, was getting over the effects of 

 the rattlesnake bite. The river was going down, but the fords were still 

 bad, and the quicksand at the Custer Trail crossing had worked along so 

 that wagons had to be taken over opposite the blasted cottonwood. One 

 of the men had seen a Three-Seven- B rider who had just left the Green 

 River round-up, and who brought news that they had found some cattle on 

 the reservation, and were now holding about twelve hundred head on the 

 big brushy bottom below Rainy Butte. Bronco Jim, our local flash rider, 

 had tried to ride the big, bald-faced sorrel belonging to the Oregon horse- 

 outfit, and had been bucked off and his face smashed in. This piece of 

 information of course drew forth much condemnation of the unfortunate 

 Jim's equestrian skill. It was at once agreed that he "wasn't the sure- 

 enough bronco-buster he thought himself" and he was compared very 

 unfavorably to various heroes of the quirt and spurs who lived in Texas and 

 Colorado; for the best rider, like the best hunter, is invariably either dead 

 or else a resident of some other district. 



These topics having been exhausted, we discussed the rumor that the 



