COWBOYS.

Te Aroha News, Volume XII, Issue 1756, 3 August 1895, Page 3

COWBOYS.

Theodore Booseuelt contributes - an interesting article to the ‘ Country Magazine ’ on life in the Wild West. The following are extracts : Out on the frontier, and generally among those who spend their lives in, or on the borders, of the wilderness, life w reduced to its, elemental conditions. The passions and emotions of these grim hunters of the mountains and those wild rough-riders of the plains are simpler and stronger than those of people dwelling in more com- ~ .plicated states of society. As soon as communities . become settled and begin to grow whippy rapidity, the American instinct for law asserts itself; but in the earlier stages each individual is obliged to be a law to himself, and to guard his rights with a strong hand. Of course the transition stages are full, of incongruities. Men have not yet - adjusted their relations to morality and law with any niceness. They hold strongly by certain rude virtues, and, on the other hand, they quite fail to recognize even as shortcomings not a, few traits that obtain scant mercy in older communities. Many of the desperades, the mankillers, and road-agents have good sides to'their, characters. Often they ’ are people .who in certain stages of civilization do, or have done, good work, but who, when these stages have passed, find themselves surrounded by conditions w hich accentuate their worst qualities, and make their best qualities useless. The average desperado, for instance, has after all, much the same standard of morals that the Norman - nobles had in the days of the battle of Hastings, and ethically and morally he .is decidedly in advance of the, 'Vikings, who were the ancestors of these same nobles, and to whom, by the way, he himsolf could doubtless trace a portion of his blood. If the transition from the wild lawlessness of life in the wilderness or on the border to a higher civilization wero stretched out over a term , of centuries, ho and his descendants would doubtless accommodate themselves by degrees to the changing circumstances. But, unfortunately, in. the . Bar West the transition takes place with marvellous abruptness, and at an altogether unheard of speed,, and many a man’s v nature - is unsfcle to change with sufficient rapidity to alldw him to harmonize witkhx3 environment. -In consequence,unless he leaves for still wilder ■ lands, he ends by getting hung, instead of founding a family which would revere his name as that of a very capable, although not in. all respects a conventionally moral ancestor. : \ Most of the men of whom I was intimately known during my life on the : frontier aad in the wilderness were good fellows, hard-working, • brave, resolute, and truthful.- At times, course, they were forced of necessity y’tb do deeds which would seem startling to dwellers in cities and in old settled.places ; and though they waged a very stern and relentless warfare upon evildoers whose' misdeeds, had immediate and tangible bad results; they showed a wide; -toleration - of-all save the most extreme classes of wrong and were not given , to enquiring too curiously into a strong man’s past, or into" finer ethical questions. Mor®* over, not a few of the men with whom I came in contact—-with some of whom; ‘ my relations were • very close and friendly—-had at diSerent times led rather tough careers. : - ' • Of course, if these-men were asked , outright as to their stories, they would have refused to. tell them, or else have lied about them : but when they had grown to regard a man as a friend and companion, they would often recount various incidents of their past lives _ with perfect frankness., Early one spring, I was out hunting some lost horses, we heard that they were ranging near where a man named Brophy had a ranch, nearly fifty miles from, my own. Fortunately, I was able to reach the ranch all right, to find there one of the sons of a Little Beaver ranchman, and a young cowpuncher belonging to a Texas out-fit, _ whom I knew very well. After putting my horse into the coeral, and throwing him down some hay, I strode into the hul,- and speedily warmed my- , self before'the fire. 1 . We had a good - f warm supper of bread, potatoes, fried ■ vension, and tea. My two companions grew very sociable, and began to talk freely over their pipes'. There were two bunks, one above the other. I climbed into the other, /leaving my - - friends, who- were to occupy the lower, " sitting together on a bench recounting : different incidents in the careers of themselves and their cronies during the winter just passed. Soon one of - them asked the other what had become of a cerfain horse, a noted cutting pony. The question roused the other ,:to a memory of a wrong which still rankled, and he began (I alter one or two of the proper names) :. ‘ "Why > that was the pony that got •6t01|4,. I -'s*4 been workin’ him on roQgh ground when I was out with the Three Bar outfit, and he went ten- ' der forward, so I turned him loose by the Lazy. B ranch, and when I come back to’ get him there wasn’t anybody at the ranch, and I couldn’t find him. The sheep-man who lives about two miles , west, under Bed Clay Butte, • told me he seen a fellow in a wool-skin coat ridin’ a. pinto brone’, with white 'eyes, leading, that pony of mine just two days before ; and I hunted round till I hit his trail, and then I followed to where I’d reckoned he was headin’ for —the Short Pine hills. When I got there a ranger told ine he had seen the man pas® on towards Cedartown;

tnd, sure enough, when I • struck Cedartown I found he lived there in a Mode house just outside the town. There was a boom on the town, and it looked pretty slick. ‘ There was two hotels and I went into the first, and I says, ‘ Where’s the justice of the peace i" says J. to the bartender. ‘ ‘There ain’t no justice of the peace,’says he ; ‘tber justice of the peace got shot.*. 1 Well, where’s the constable ?, says I.

‘ Why, it was him that shot the justice o£ the peace,’says he;'he’s skipped the country with a bunch of horses.’

> ‘ Well, ain’t there no office of the law ieft in this town ? says I. ‘ Why, of'course,’ says he; ’thers a probate judge; he is over tending bar at the Last Chance Hotel. * So I went over to the Last Chance Hotel, and I walked in there. ‘ Homin’ ’ says I.

* Mornin’ ’ says he. 1 You’se the probate Judge ? says I. ‘ That’s wha,| I am, says he. What do you want ? says he.’ ‘ I want justice,’ says I. ‘ What kind of j ustioe do you want ? say® he. ‘ What’s it for ?’ ‘ It’s for stealin’ a horse,’ says I.

‘ Then, by——, you’ll get it,’ says he. ‘ Who stole the horse? save he. ‘ It is a man that lives in a ’dodehouse just outside the town there, says I. ‘ Well, where do you come from yourself ? says he. ‘ From Medory, says I. ‘With that he lost interest, and settled kind o’ back; and says he, «There won’t no Cedartown jury hang a Cedartown man for stealin’ a Medory man’s horse, ’ says he. ‘ Well, what am I to do about my horse ?’ says I. ‘ I)o ?’ says he. .. ‘ Well, you know where the man lives, don’t you ?’ says he. ‘ Then sit up, outside his house to-night, and shoot him when he comes in,’ says he, ‘ and skip out with the horse.’

‘ All right, says I; that is what I’ll do,, and I walked oil. So I went off to ki(i house, and I got behind some bushes to wait for him. He was' not at home, but I could see his wife movin’ about inside now and then, and I waited and waited, and it growed darker, and I begun to say to .myself, ‘Now here you are lyin’ out to shoot this man when he comes home ; and it’s gettin’ dark, and you don’t know him, and if you do shoot the next man that edmes into that house, like as not it won’t be the fellow you’re after. at all, but somo perfectly innocent man a-coming there after the other man’s 'wife.’. ' v' ' •... ‘So'I up and'saddled the bronco, and lit ouc for home,’ concluded the narrator, with the air of one justly proud of his own self-abnegating virtue.,;'

One of my valued friends in the mountains, undone of the best hunters .with whom I ever travelled, was a man . who had a peculiarly light-hearted way of looking at conventionally moral . obligations, it was this quality which made him at times a specially pleasant companion, and' always an agreeable narrator. On one occasion when we were out together ..we killed a bear, and after, skinning it, took a bath in a lake. - I noticed that he had a scar on one side of his foot, and. asked him how he got it. To my .question he responded : Oh, that ? Why a man shooting me to make me dance, that was all. I expressed some curiosity in the matter, and he went on : Well, the way of it was this., was when I was k'eepin’ a saloon in New Mexico, and there was a man there by the name .of Fowler, and there was a reward on him of three thousand dollars--

: ' Put on him ;by the State ? I interrupted.

No ; by his wife. Him and her had been keepin’ a faro bank, you see, and they quarrelled about, so she just put a reward oh him, and so Excuse me, I said, but do you mean to say that this reward was on publicly .? . _ , . . Oh, no; not publicly. She had just mentioned it to six or eight ntiinate personal friends. Well, two men come ridin’ in to see me, to borrow my guns. My guns was Colt’s self-cockers. They come to me, and, ‘Simpson,’ says they, ‘We want to borrow your guns; we are going to kill Fowler.’ Well, you may easily believe I felt surprised next day when Fowler come ridin’. in, and says he ‘ Simpson, here’s your guns.’ He had shot them two men.

Well, they up and they took Fowler before the justice of the peace. The justice of the peace was a Turk. Now, Simpson,- what do you mean by that ? I interrupted. Well, he come from Turkey, said Simpson; that Fowler was a funny fellow. The Turk committed Fowler, and Fowler he riz up and knocked him down , and tromped all over him, and made him let him go.

Well, that Turk he got nervous for fear Fowler he was going to kill him, and so he comes to me and offers me • twenty-five dollars-a day to protect him from Fowler : and I went to Fowler, and, ‘ Fowler,’ says I, ‘ that Turk’s offered me twenty-five dollars a day to protect him from you. Now, I aiii‘t going to get phot for no twenty five dollars a day, and if you are going to kill the Turk, just say so and go and do it; but if you ain't going to" kill the. Turk, there's no reason why I shouldn't earn that twenty-five dollars

a day.’ And Fowler, says he, ‘ I ain't going to touch the Turk ; you just go right ahead and protect him. So Simpson protected the Turk from the imaginary danger of Fowler for about a week, at twenty-five dollars a a day. Then one evening ho happened to go out, and met Fowler. ‘And,’ said he, ‘the moment I saw him I knowed he felt mean, for he begun to shoot at my feet;’ which certainly did seem to offer presumptive evidence of meanness. And this is the way he accounted fo r the scar.