10 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
hidicntea atoll 
THE LAND OF THE GENUINE COWBOY, 
THE PECOS COUNTRY OF TEXAS. 
Little Known of Corner of Our Country along the Rio Grande 
Where the Cowboy is yet Real. 
(By M. J. Brown, Editor J ttle Valley, (N. Y.) Hub.) 
There is a sort of a magnet in the 
wild West and a romance around 
the cowboy that reach out to us, and 
as the barbed-wire fence each year 
pushes them back, the more do we 
want to see them and know of them. 
Years ago the Indian had a halo a 
yard wide around him—to my eyes 
—and I passed diys and days in and 
around the Rose Bud reservation, 
seeing the Sioux from a distance 
from the enchanted and romantic 
viewpoint. But one day I caught a 
bunch of them strayed from their 
dignity. They sat around an iron 
stew pot. The pot had a three-day 
old calf. The careass was _half- 
dressed and half-cooked. <A big In- 
dian would go down into that mess 
with a pointed stick, bring the lit- 
tle parboiled carcass out of the 
dirty water, and then the bucks and 
squaws would fight for it, each eut- 
ting and pulling off a piece of the 
slippery commodity until the car- 
cass would work loose from the 
prong and fall back into the stew. 
And my Indian romance went on 
a vacation, and it never came back. 
And in a measure is the cowboy 
a creature of romance, made to or- 
der by imagination, assisted by 
mushy stories and hero footlight 
stunts. 
In introducing this series of ar- 
ticles from the southwest, I want 
to take a photo of the real wild West 
‘“waddie’’ for you, for the articles 
will have much to do with him, and 
you don’t want any goods under 
false pretenses. 
A few weeks ago I attended a 
wild west show in a New York town, 
an aggregation billed as the real 
classy article from where cowboys 
grow. 
The boss hero had his hair cut 
the latest N. Y. fad; his neck and 
face cleanly shaved; he stood as 
straight as Gen. Barnes, reviewing 
his troups; he had a big white Stet- 
son with never a fly speck on it; a 
blue flannel shirt open low at the 
throat; a four-in-hand tie tucked 
under his belt; some patent leather 
stuff for boots; beautiful white 
buckskin pants; a tan belt full of 
six-shooters and cartridges, and 
some gloves with fringe around the 
wrist. This fellow had a voice train- 
‘ed for high, low Jack and the game, 
and the way. he did hero doings 
would make any 18-year-old hope- 
ful want to leave his happy home 
and hot-foot it to the ‘‘Bar L’’ 
ranch. 
In Westorn Kansas and Nebraska, 
in Colorado and Wyoming, I have 
seen the cowboy at home and have 
known him at his best and worst. 
In this country of southwest Texas 
T have lived with them and camped 
with them for nearly two years, and 
I want to spoil a little of your ro- 
mance and show you the cowboy as 
he is, or as he looks, rather. 
Off a horse he is about as far 
away from romance as a hog is from 
a humming bird. From constant 
bending over a saddle he leans for- 
ward when he walks; and from con- 
stant sitting in°a saddle he walks 
stiffened in the hips, and his ear- 
riage is like a rheumatic old farmez. 
Thin—the cowboy is always a 
bundle of bones, no doubt from the 
terrible sun heat. His hat—once a 
costly frame of Stetson felt—is dirty 
and out of shape, and pulled low 
down over the eyes to protect from 
the sun. The length of his hair and 
beard depends on how long he has 
been out, but they have an average 
growth of about three weeks, and 
filled with sand and alkali dust, his 
face is anything but a stage pic- 
ture. His lips are invariably cov- 
ered by great white blisters, caused 
by constantly wetting with the 
tongue and the sun’s heat. His 
pants are $6 corduroys and his neck- 
tie a red bandanna. His boots and 
his gloves are ever the real goods, 
the latter costing from $10 to $20 a 
pair—Rodeman’s hand made. 
And such is the real cowboy when 
on duty. Take his boots and hat 
off and put him on a New York 
farm and you would take him for 
Verdant Green, the last boy of the 
Green family. 
Is he green? 
Well, just come down here and 
start something, and see. 
This lazy-looking, lazy-talking, in- 
dolent, easy-going puncher' ean 
change to steel in just about three 
Texas seconds, and then there is 
‘‘sure something doing.’’ 
This western’ part of Texas—the 
extreme western part, out between 
the Pecos and the Rio Grande—is 
no doubt as genuine a real wild 
west corner as there is in the Unit- 
ed States today, and the cowboys 
who have been born here and have 
grown up in the saddle, are the real 
product, without a bit of tinsel or 
stage make-up. Far out beyond the 
railroads, way back from the towns, 
they live weeks at a time, scarcely 
meeting a human being. Sometimes 
singly and sometimes in pairs they 
ride the range; cooking, eating and 
sleeping in the open—healthy, dirty, 
happy, good-natured sons of nature. 
Where he gets his wild name ig 
in his cow town riots, and I want to | 
Say to the readers of this article if | 
you would follow a waddie in hig — 
work for about six weeks you would 
rob a bank just to break the awful 
monotony of the life—you woul4 
cut loose on something desperate to 
break up the terrible sameness and 
silence. 
You know when a 12-year-old kid 
has sat for three straight hours at 
a desk in school, sat there with the 
brake hard down on impulses until 
it seems he must yell, that when the 
bell finally releases him, why he will 
spit in a comrade’s face for sheer 
delight of action. 
And so with these fellows of the — 
saddle. With pockets full of silver — 
they come into the cow towns, fill — 
up on liquor, and the news dispatch- — 
es tell us the casualities. 
This letter is but an introduction — 
to the stories to follow. After a five ! 
years’ absence from this country I 
have only had time to shake a few — 
cowboy hands and get my bearings — 
—just time enough to hike out to a 
cow camp and have the boys load up | 
a tin plate of frijole beans and see 
if I could stow it under my belt with 
anything like the old-time record. _ 
Just time enough to go over the © 
divide and find the hole where I 
once dug for ten hot hours to find 
the bones of a Ranger who was said — 
to have been buried there in the — 
early wild days, but whose bones I | 
never found. They yet tell the story — 
here. 
Just time enough to hunt up an — 
old camping place by a wind mill 
tank, where I ouce washed my pants 
and hanged them to dry over night 
on the corral. I haven’t time ty 
hunt the cow that chewed them up 
in the night. 
And I note that the old order of 
things is ticking away, out in this 
far west corner, as well as anywhere 
else. Five years ago the trip from- 
San Angelo to Sonora—a 70-mile 
overland trip—was made by the old- 
fashioned four-in-hand stage coach — 
of pioneer days, with stage stations 
and relays 18 miles apart. Now 
the passengers to these back cow 
towns gets into a 1910 model auto 
sy EID HS 
rap ia 
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