The Mammoth Book of the West (23 page)

Probably the only salaried cowgirl in the nineteenth-century West was Middy Morgan, an Irish immigrant who wandered to Montana. There her cattle expertise impressed a local rancher who hired her as a hand, then admitted her to partnership on the ranch. In the “bonanza years” of the early 1880s, Middy Morgan advised several British-financed ranches. She caught the eye of
The North British Agriculturalist
, who described her in detail in its June 1880 issue:

At every fair or market may she be seen, with broad-brimmed hat tied down beneath her chin by a bandanna handkerchief, a thick frieze coat with many capes, short skirt, ingeniously gathered into high leather boots, something like knicker-bocker costume. With a long cowhide whip in hand, wending her way with skill between the droves, now stooping low to examine the hoofs, now standing on tiptoe to examine the head of the beast brought to her for valuation; and so great is the reliance placed by farmers on her judgement in these matters, that none would ever seek to cheapen the animal after Middy Morgan has pronounced her verdict.

If cowgirls were few, cowboys were many. Running away from home to become a cowpoke was almost a national disease amongst juvenile males in the 1870s and 1880s. In words which might speak for many, one retired cow waddy remembered his boyish infatuation with cowboying:

I always wanted to be a cowpuncher. When I was a little kid on the farm in East Texas I couldn’t think of nothin’ else . . . Once in a while someone would drive a bunch of cattle by our place. I couldn’t have been more’n eight years old when I followed one bunch off . . . I had an uncle livin’ down the road about four miles. He happened to see me goin’ by his place.

“Whatcha doin’, kid?”

“A-working stock”, says I.

He finally talked me into goin’ on back home with him – I stuck it out until I got to be about fifteen. Then I pulled out for good.

Few questions were asked of a prospective cowboy. His life was nobody’s business but his own. This privacy was part of the cowboy’s code. As Teddy Blue Abbott explained it:

A man might tell as much or as little about himself as he saw fit, or nothing at all. Nobody cared. All that was required of him was to do his work faithfully, and not disturb the peace and harmony of the outfit by ill-temper or viciousness. These men might live together and work together season after season, year after year, without knowing anything about each other personally other than the names they went by.

There were many like Jim Culver, who arrived at the Lang ranchhouse more dead than alive after an adventure
in the icy waters of the Little Missouri. Lang liked him and hired him. He was a young man of about twenty, fearless, of good morals, and with an unusual amount of energy and initiative. When a mean horse side-flopped and killed him two years later, all that was known about him was – “He said his name was Jim Culver”.

Part of the allure of the cowboy was his distinctive dress, which set him apart from mere pedestrian farm hands. “I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy,” runs the line from the song “The Cowboy’s Lament”. Although cowboy clothing sometimes tended towards the fancy, it was mainly designed as a practical work uniform for ranch labour in western climes.

The essential items of cowboy dress were hat and boots. At first, Anglo cowboys wore the sombrero of the Mexican
vaquero
, the enormous brim of which gave the rider shade under the southern sun. When cowboys drifted north to work the plains of Montana and Wyoming, they cut or rolled the brim back so that the hat would catch less wind. Headgear was generally homemade – the favourite material being straw – and of poor quality until the 1860s, when New Jersey hatter John Batterson Stetson went west for his health. Recognizing that a market existed for practical cowboy hats, in 1865 Stetson set up a shop and factory in Philadelphia (which had skilled workers aplenty and good rail links to the West) specializing in headwear for the range. Within only a matter of years, “Stetson” and cowboy hat were synonymous. By the turn of the century Stetson employed a workforce of thousands and turned out two million hats a year. These were in a variety of styles, but the “Carlsbad” was the most popular. The “ten
gallon” hat enjoyed a brief vogue among drugstore cowboys and movie stars, but such extravagant styles were rarely worn by genuine ranch hands. For a cow waddy, a hat was an implement that kept him cool or dry, and which could be used to scoop water for himself and his horse if necessary. It could even be used to slap a bucking bronc.

The cowboy boot was always made of top grade leather. Even the most impecunious cowhand would somehow find the $20–$30 for a fine pair of handmade boots, preferably from the shop of Joe Austin in Texas. Even more than his hat, a cowboy’s boots were his badge of office. Their high heels kept his feet from shifting in the stirrups (and served as brakes if he was roping on foot), while the high tops protected his calves from chafing the fender of the saddle. Initially boots were plain and straight, but gradually they became more ornate. The first fancy top was a “Lone Star” motif set in a wide red band. Since boots were difficult to don, pull straps were stitched on the inside or outside (“mules’ ears”). Until the 1890s most westerners stuffed their pants legs inside their boots.

Spurs were a necessary accessory, their name deriving from the Spanish
espuela
, meaning “grappling iron”. Many had vicious-looking rowels (serrated spinners) but the first thing a cowpuncher would do with new spurs would be to blunt them down. Spurs were for the control of a horse, never for its punishment.

A bandanna, chaps and slicker were also common cowboy issue. The bandanna, usually blue or red, was a multipurpose tool; it could be tied over the mouth to keep out dust, dipped in water to become a flannel, or used as a tourniquet. Chaps were seatless leg-coverings that protected against ropes, brush and bad weather. Straight-legged leather or “Shotgun” chaps were the familiar style, but loose Bat-wings or Texas legs also had their adherents.
In winter, cowboys wore woolly chaps of Angora or sheepskin. Flamboyant cow waddies even made chaps out of mountain lion, ponyskin and buffalo hide. A yellow slicker saddle coat or “Fish” (after the brand name) was standardly tied behind the saddle, ready to be unrolled in inclement weather. The mail order advertisement for the Fish slicker – cowboys were regular catalogue shoppers – described it thus:

This coat is gotten up especially for horseback riders; made from yellow slicker, very heavy cloth, and makes the most perfect rain coat ever manufactured for the use of the horseman. This coat covers the entire saddle, as well as rider, thus insuring a dry seat, while the lower part is wide enough to cover the length of the rider. It is a combination coat, which can be made from a riding to a walking coat by simply adjusting one of the buttons. The best coat obtainable; has patent eyelet fasteners, non-corrosive zinc buttons; all of the latest improvement. Guaranteed to be strictly waterproof, and the best coat of its kind ever put on the market.

The cost was $2.65.

If these were the characteristic items of a cowboy’s wardrobe, the manner in which he dressed and undressed was no less distinctive. As William Timmons remembered it from his cowpunching days:

A cowboy undresses upward: boots off, then socks, pants and shirt . . . He never goes deeper than that. After he has removed the top layer he takes his hat off and lays his boots on the brim, so the hat won’t blow away during the night. Spurs are never taken off boots. In the morning a cowboy begins dressing downward. First he puts on his hat, then his shirt, and takes out of his shirt pocket his Bull
Durham and cigarette paper and rolls one to start the day. He finishes dressing by putting on his pants, socks, and boots. This is a habit that usually stays with a cowboy long after his days in the saddle are over.

More than hat, boots or any item of clothing, the saddle was the cowboy’s most valuable possession. A stock saddle took many uncomfortable hours to wear in, and might cost more than a horse. One cowboy song went: “Oh a ten dollar hoss and a forty dollar saddle, / And I’m riding out to punch in Texas cattle.” The sturdy stock saddle of the American West weighed around 40–50 pounds and came in a variety of models, but common to them all was a prominent front horn and a high cantle. With a rope looped or “dallied” around it the horn, usually fashioned from iron with a leather cover, was required to withstand the pull of a 2,000-pound bull. Outside of the horn and cantle, there were substantial regional differences in saddle-making. A Cheyenne saddle had a flatter seat than the popular “Brazos tree”, while Texas, Montana and Wyoming saddles were all two-cinch or “rimfire” rigs. “Single-fire” rigs, on the other hand, were common in California and Oregon.

Bridle and bit likewise differed from region to region. Horsemen of the southern plains used the half-breed bit, which was gentle on the horse’s mouth but required the cowboy to tug firmly. His compatriot on the northern plains, influenced by migrating Californian
vaqueros
, preferred a spade bit, the sharp point of which lay across the horse’s tongue. When pulled back, the bit made the horse stop dead. Used roughly, the spade bit would cut the mouth, but in practised hands it could control the horse with the lightest touch. On winter mornings, Montana cowboys would warm the horse’s bit by dipping it in coffee.

Such care for the horse was not occasioned by sentiment.
Contrary to myth, cowboys tended to view horses as mere instruments, and changed them several times a day, much as a carpenter might move from saw to chisel to plane. A horse which was comfortable with its bit was a more efficient, less troublesome horse. This is not to say that cowpunchers never felt affection for their horses. Andy Adams, at the end of the long drive to Montana, found he had come to like and admire his mounts:

At no time in my life, before or since, have I felt so keenly the parting between man and horse as I did that September evening in Montana. For on the trail an affection springs up between a man and his mount which is almost human. Every privation which he endures, his horse endures with him – carrying him through falling weather, swimming rivers by day and riding in the lead of stampedes by night, always faithful, always willing, and always patiently enduring every hardship, from exhausting hours under saddle to the sufferings of a dry drive.

Now, when the trail is a lost occupation and reverie, and reminiscences carry the mind back to that day, there are friends and faces that may be forgotten, but there are horses that will never be. There were emergencies in which the horse was everything, his rider merely the accessory. But together, man and horse, they were the force that made it possible to move millions of cattle which passed up and over the various trails of the west.

The American cattle business enjoyed a gilded age in the late 1870s and early 1880s. Slaughter by hunters had reduced the buffalo that competed with their cattle for grazing to a few scattered herds. The power of the Plains Indians was being challenged by the cavalry. The tables of the East were desperate for beef, and there was a growing demand for American beef in Europe. By the end of 1881, 110 million pounds of frozen beef were being shipped to Great Britain alone. And best of all, there were thousands of acres of free grass on the northern plains, there for the taking for those who could claim it or hold it with a gun. The profits that could be made from raising livestock on the grasslands of the West seemed almost unlimited.

Investment in the ranching business became a mania in America and Europe. Men and women begged and borrowed money to invest in steers and spreads. The finance-drumming letter of Connecticut’s Judge Sherwood was typical. “The profits are enormous,” wrote Sherwood to potential backers. “There is no business like it in the world, and the whole secret of it is, it costs nothing to feed the cattle. They grow without eating your money. They literally raise themselves.”

Even responsible stockbreeding journals caught the delirium. The
Breeder’s Gazette
enthused: “A thousand of these animals [cattle] are kept nearly as cheaply as a single one, so with a thousand as a starter and an investment of but $5,000 in the start, in four years the stock raiser has made from $40,000 to $45,000.”

Probably the man who was most responsible for promoting the beef boom was James S. Brisbin. A Pennsylvania schoolmaster who joined the Union army in 1861, Brisbin had stayed on after the Civil War to fight the Indians. Impressed, however, by the way cattlemen drove a herd into a reservation and left with a bag of money, Brisbin appointed himself the proselyte of ranching. He wrote glowing reports for the sporting paper
Wilke’s Spirit of the Times
, and eventually wrote a book,
The Beef Bonanza, or How to Get Rich on the Plains
, published in 1881. Urban readers were fascinated by his purple, rousing prose, one paragraph of which read:

The West! The mighty West! That land where the buffalo still roams and the wild savage dwells: where the broad rivers flow and the boundless prairie stretches away for thousands of miles; where new States are every year carved out and myriads of people find homes and wealth . . . where there are lands for the landless, money for the moneyless . . .

The would-be rich who pored over Brisbin’s book were equally hypnotized by his examples of those who struck it rich in the cow business:

Mr R. C. Keith of the North Platte, Nebraska, began raising cows in the fall of 1867 with 5 American cows. Each year he and his partner bought more cows. The total cost of the cattle from 1867 to 1873 inclusive, was under $50,000.
This did not include expenses of ranch, herding, etc. . . . which, however, were small, as they had no land or timber to buy. They had several employees; their men cost $50 per month plus board . . . They have sold and butchered cattle which brought them $12,000 profit. They have, remaining on hand, cattle worth $93,000. Thus they have made an enormous profit.