358 
FOREST AND STREAM 
AUGUST, 1917 
could stop him by simply barking in front 
of him; he would simply charge the dog 
down and pass on. It would often take 
two men with their whips to turn him, 
and even then he might break away again. 
But one catch dog, seizing him by the nose 
and worrying him for awhile, could break 
his spirit and convince him of the propri¬ 
ety of trotting along peacefully with the 
herd. Hence the statement I have often 
heard cattlemen make: that a good dog 
was worth the wages of two men and their 
horses. 
There lies the reason for the develop¬ 
ment of the dogs; and it is hard to con¬ 
ceive of a better school for producing an 
unusual animal. With the great numbers 
of cattle in those days and their wild dis¬ 
position, the hardihood, courage and skill 
of the dogs was rapidly developed. They 
risked their lives all the time. The bulls 
and steers often succeeded in goring or 
tossing them. There have been instances, 
it is said, when they tossed a dog and got 
him on their horns again as he fell. Very 
few dogs survived a severe tossing. Even 
if they escaped broken bones and man¬ 
aged to live, they remained invalids. It 
was survival of the fittest, and selection of 
individual excellence, in the most savage 
form. 
But the vast cattle herds of the old days 
are seen no more,; partly, as some suspect, 
from injury to the pasturage; partly per¬ 
haps because in the old days only steers 
and bulls were sold and the cows kept. 
Restriction of the free range and the ten¬ 
dency, which may increase, to buy land for 
cattle and fence it in with wire, have also 
had an effect. The cattle at any rate seem 
to be more easily handled. But some cat¬ 
tlemen think that a few at least of the old 
catch dogs will be necessary always, and 
will survive. 
There is one respect in which the Florida 
cowboy resembles his western brother. He 
prides himself on his big hat, and often pays 
a high price for one. This is a protection 
against rain as well as sun : in that warm 
climate you can stand a good deal of wet¬ 
ting provided the rain does not run down 
your neck. 
“If there i£ anything I hate in the 
world,” said an old cattle king to me as 
he fondled his own broad brim, “it’s a 
leaky hat.” 
The Florida cowboy carries (or carried, 
for the old type like that of the dog is 
disappearing) one of the famous Mack¬ 
inaw blankets strapped to his saddle. It 
is of red wool, with a couple of black 
bands and has been supplied to the Indians, 
trappers and hunters of the south and west 
by a Philadelphia firm for nearly a cen¬ 
tury. It is waterproof, and with one 
wrapped around you under a big hat, you 
can sit your jogging cow-horse quite com¬ 
fortably through a rainy day. Each blan¬ 
ket has short black lines and half lines 
called points at one corner, which enabled 
the Indians and trappers readily to indi¬ 
cate the grade of thickness they wanted. 
The blanket which I have carried on all 
my Florida trips is a “two and a half 
point” Mackinaw. 
Another of the cowboys’ tricks to avoid 
the showers that are so frequent in Flor¬ 
ida, is to flatten himself against the lee¬ 
ward side of a pine tree. I have practiced 
it often when quail shooting, and have al¬ 
ways been surprised at the protection it 
afforded. 
I AM sorry to see the destruction of all 
this old life, by the intrusion of settlers 
and wire fences, and I am particularly 
sorry to see the cattle dogs go, and the 
breed extinguished. I had learned to take 
great pleasure in their high intelligence, 
courage and many charming traits of char¬ 
acter. I had been in the habit every year 
of dreaming that the breed might progress 
until in the course of years it would be¬ 
come fixed and would breed as true as the 
collie or pointer or any other established 
class. I had even imagined that in time 
the bench-show people would take them up, 
prepare a set of numbered points for judg¬ 
ing them, decide the exact proportion of 
head and tail and exhibit the poor crea¬ 
tures in the cities until they were utterly 
degenerate, and would turn tail and run 
if a steer lowered his head. 
On their native heath, however, the 
proudest marks they bear are heavy scars 
on their shoulders, where some old boar 
or bull, that they approached a little care¬ 
lessly in their younger days, had given 
them a savage rip. If the bench show 
people could adopt a point like that for 
championship, all might still be well. 
But my dreams are shattered; and all I 
can do is to hasten to gather up remains 
and recollections. My first impression of 
them, I remember, was their extreme dig¬ 
nity and independence. I would go to their 
master’s house and they would not bother 
to bark at me. They hardly seemed to see 
me, and often took not the slightest notice 
even of a handsome pointer that usually 
accompanied me. This latter trait sur¬ 
prised me; for in a wilderness country 
dogs living by themselves are usually 
eagerly curious about other dogs. 
I soon learned that it was not dullness 
on their part. When I was many yards 
away they had taken my measure and as¬ 
signed me to my niche, in their economy 
of the universe, with unerring accuracy. 
Approaching them with some hesitation to 
see if they could be petted, I was instantly 
greeted with the most overflowing South¬ 
ern politeness and gracious friendliness. 
They became simply delightful; and hav¬ 
ing been properly introduced would often 
gambol with my pointer! 
1 REMEMBER one of them sitting on a 
trail half a mile or more from his mas¬ 
ter’s empty shack, watching for his re¬ 
turn. I was back from a hunt and passed 
within fifteen yards of the dog. My collie 
ran by him a little farther off on the other 
side; and yet he never moved a muscle or 
an eyelash, so far as I could observe, or 
took the slightest notice of either of us, 
although there were no other human be¬ 
ings or animals in sight over the whole 
wide prairie. 
The dog belonged to a negro who had 
been at the shack for some weeks, looking 
after cattle. When he went to the near¬ 
est village—fifty miles away—he had taken 
his hound with him, but left his cow dog 
at the shack. The cow dog stayed there 
for a week and probably much longer—at 
least until I left the locality. The night I 
went home the dog was still by himself at 
the shack. When the little steamboat 
stopped at the landing to tap the message 
box kept there I jumped ashore and ran 
up to the shack. The dog came up whim¬ 
pering to me, but the shack was still de¬ 
serted and tenantless. Observe that the 
dog did not come down to the steamboat, 
or bark; he simply whimpered in a friend¬ 
ly way when I came close to the shack. I 
asked the captain what the dog probably 
lived on and he said he supposed he went 
out occasionally and killed a rabbit. 
This tale is not so surprising to me as 
it will be to those unfamiliar with wilder¬ 
ness dogs. Unkennelled and at liberty 
from birth, shifting largely for themselves 
and yet at the same time in most intimate 
