A RANCHMAN'S RECOLLECTIONS 



out there on the ranch, and I'll stay hired a long time 

 if I get a chance." He got it. 



After all, he had it right: it is what you have at 

 the end of the month. Perhaps the reaction in favor 

 of farm and ranch may come through that channel; 

 there can be no question about the health end. 



Cowboys are ultra-sensitive, diffident and supersti- 

 tious about anything that they do not understand. 

 I do not mean the supernatural; I mean things out 

 of their own groove. They possess a quality that is 

 not necessarily courage, but rather the absence of 

 fear. They are not the lawless, gun-toting element 

 of the movies, or the long-ago frontier. They are 

 law-abiding, good, hard-working citizens, with a 

 greater respect for the chastity of a good woman 

 than any other class of men in America. I have 

 studied them for twenty years. I have asked hun- 

 dreds of cowmen and cowboys if they knew of a 

 single case of seduction, and have yet to hear of one. 

 I saw a line in one of the films recently disclosing 

 that some easterner had followed a girl whom he 

 was in love with to a ranch, where she was visiting. 

 Finding his case hopeless, he began to shine up to a 

 country girl. The girl whom he had followed had 

 caught the spirit of the country. She said to him: 

 "Ned, the things men do where we came from and 

 are dismissed as wild oats, they kill for out here." 

 A country mother once said to me: "I would rather 

 trust my girl with one of these boys any distance alone 



[ii8] 



