Cowboy Songs | Page 4

stir up lagging cattle, but also during the long watches the night-guards,
as they rode round and round the herd, improvised cattle lullabies
which quieted the animals and soothed them to sleep. Some of the best
of the so-called "dogie songs" seem to have been created for the
purpose of preventing cattle stampedes,--such songs coming straight
from the heart of the cowboy, speaking familiarly to his herd in the
stillness of the night.
The long drives up the trail occupied months, and called for sleepless
vigilance and tireless activity both day and night. When at last a
shipping point was reached, the cattle marketed or loaded on the cars,
the cowboys were paid off. It is not surprising that the consequent
relaxation led to reckless deeds. The music, the dancing, the click of the
roulette ball in the saloons, invited; the lure of crimson lights was
irresistible. Drunken orgies, reactions from months of toil, deprivation,
and loneliness on the ranch and on the trail, brought to death many a
temporarily crazed buckaroo. To match this dare-deviltry, a saloon man
in one frontier town, as a sign for his business, with psychological
ingenuity painted across the broad front of his building in big black
letters this challenge to God, man, and the devil: The Road to Ruin.
Down this road, with swift and eager footsteps, has trod many a pioneer
viking of the West. Quick to resent an insult real or fancied, inflamed
by unaccustomed drink, the ready pistol always at his side, the tricks of
the professional gambler to provoke his sense of fair play, and finally
his own wild recklessness to urge him on,--all these combined forces
sometimes brought him into tragic conflict with another spirit equally
heedless and daring. Not nearly so often, however, as one might
suppose, did he die with his boots on. Many of the most wealthy and
respected citizens now living in the border states served as cowboys
before settling down to quiet domesticity.

A cow-camp in the seventies generally contained several types of men.
It was not unusual to find a negro who, because of his ability to handle
wild horses or because of his skill with a lasso, had been promoted
from the chuck-wagon to a place in the ranks of the cowboys. Another
familiar figure was the adventurous younger son of some British family,
through whom perhaps became current the English ballads found in the
West. Furthermore, so considerable was the number of men who had
fled from the States because of grave imprudence or crime, it was bad
form to inquire too closely about a person's real name or where he
came from. Most cowboys, however, were bold young spirits who
emigrated to the West for the same reason that their ancestors had come
across the seas. They loved roving; they loved freedom; they were
pioneers by instinct; an impulse set their faces from the East, put the
tang for roaming in their veins, and sent them ever, ever westward.
That the cowboy was brave has come to be axiomatic. If his life of
isolation made him taciturn, it at the same time created a spirit of
hospitality, primitive and hearty as that found in the mead-halls of
Beowulf. He faced the wind and the rain, the snow of winter, the
fearful dust-storms of alkali desert wastes, with the same
uncomplaining quiet. Not all his work was on the ranch and the trail.
To the cowboy, more than to the goldseekers, more than to Uncle Sam's
soldiers, is due the conquest of the West. Along his winding cattle trails
the Forty-Niners found their way to California. The cowboy has fought
back the Indians ever since ranching became a business and as long as
Indians remained to be fought. He played his part in winning the great
slice of territory that the United States took away from Mexico. He has
always been on the skirmish line of civilization. Restless, fearless,
chivalric, elemental, he lived hard, shot quick and true, and died with
his face to his foe. Still much misunderstood, he is often slandered,
nearly always caricatured, both by the press and by the stage. Perhaps
these songs, coming direct from the cowboy's experience, giving vent
to his careless and his tender emotions, will afford future generations a
truer conception of what he really was than is now possessed by those
who know him only through highly colored romances.
The big ranches of the West are now being cut up into small farms. The

nester has come, and come to stay. Gone is the buffalo, the Indian
warwhoop, the free grass of the open plain;--even the stinging lizard,
the horned frog, the centipede, the prairie dog, the rattlesnake, are fast
disappearing. Save in some of the secluded valleys of southern New
Mexico, the