Sometimes they roped him and wished they could let him go, for a grizzly bear is uncommonly active and straightforward in his habits at close quarters.The extreme difficulty of such a combat, however, gave it its chief fascination for the cowboy.Of course, no one horse could hold the bear after it was roped, but, as one after another came up, the bear was caught by neck and foot and body, until at last he was tangled and tripped and hauled about till he was helpless, strangled, and nearly dead.It is said that cowboys have so brought into camp a grizzly bear, forcing him to half walk and half slide at the end of the ropes.
No feat better than this could show the courage of the plainsman and of the horse which he so perfectly controlled.
Of such wild and dangerous exploits were the cowboy's amusements on the range.It may be imagined what were his amusements when he visited the "settlements." The cow-punchers, reared in the free life of the open air, under circumstances of the utmost freedom of individual action, perhaps came off the drive or round-up after weeks or months of unusual restraint or hardship, and felt that the time had arrived for them to "celebrate." Merely great rude children, as wild and untamed and untaught as the herds they led, they regarded their first look at the "settlements" of the railroads as a glimpse of a wider world.They pursued to the uttermost such avenues of new experience as lay before them, almost without exception avenues of vice.It is strange that the records of those days should be chosen by the public to be held as the measure of the American cowboy.Those days were brief, and they are long since gone.The American cowboy atoned for them by a quarter of a century of faithful labor.
The amusements of the cowboy were like the features of his daily surroundings and occupation--they were intense, large, Homeric.
Yet, judged at his work, no higher type of employee ever existed, nor one more dependable.He was the soul of honor in all the ways of his calling.The very blue of the sky, bending evenly over all men alike, seemed to symbolize his instinct for justice.
Faithfulness and manliness were his chief traits; his standard--to be a "square man."Not all the open range will ever be farmed, but very much that was long thought to be irreclaimable has gone under irrigation or is being more or less successfully "dryfarmed." The man who brought water upon the arid lands of the West changed the entire complexion of a vast country and with it the industries of that country.Acres redeemed from the desert and added to the realm of the American farmer were taken from the realm of the American cowboy.
The West has changed.The curtain has dropped between us and its wild and stirring scenes.The old days are gone.The house dog sits on the hill where yesterday the coyote sang.There are fenced fields and in them stand sleek round beasts, deep in crops such as their ancestors never saw.In a little town nearby is the hurry and bustle of modern life.This town is far out upon what was called the frontier, long after the frontier has really gone.
Guarding its ghost here stood a little army post, once one of the pillars, now one of the monuments of the West.
Out from the tiny settlement in the dusk of evening, always facing toward where the sun is sinking, might be seen riding, not so long ago, a figure we should know.He would thread the little lane among the fences, following the guidance of hands other than his own, a thing he would once have scorned to do.He would ride as lightly and as easily as ever, sitting erect and jaunty in the saddle, his reins held high and loose in the hand whose fingers turn up gracefully, his whole body free yet firm in the saddle with the seat of the perfect horseman.At the boom of the cannon, when the flag dropped fluttering down to sleep, he would rise in his stirrups and wave his hat to the flag.Then, toward the edge, out into the evening, he would ride on.The dust of his riding would mingle with the dusk of night.We could not see which was the one or the other.We could only hear the hoofbeats passing, boldly and steadily still, but growing fainter, fainter, and more faint.For permission to use in this chapter material from the author's "The Story of the Cowboy," acknowledgment is made to D.
Appleton & Co.
