Saddling Up Anyway: The Dangerous Lives of Old-Time Cowboys (review)

104Southwestern Historical QuarterlyJuly literary parsimony was regrettable, concludes Dary. "One wishes Bailey had had more paper because he tells a good story" (p. xxviii). And that he does. Bailey scrupulously recorded distances traveled each day, the suitability of the land for livestock, important landmarks, and, without fail, the availability ofwater. Self-diagnosed and self-treated health problems also warranted frequent mention. "Pleuresy [sic],'' he noted, "kept me awake" the entire night of September 18 (p. 52), and on August 14, Bean, another drover, was hobbled because of"several bad boils on his set down" (p. 20). Attitudes toward those he encountered spoke clearly to Texas conditions. "Cuss the Indians. I wish they would stay away" (p. 21) easily related to Comanche and Kiowa raiding that then plagued North Texas. The Civil War and Radical Republican Reconstruction also intruded. A Mississippian who bore Confederate arms, he did not mask his loathing of African Americans and Northerners. At Fort Arbuckle, Indian Territory, the sight of the American flag "floating over the heads . . . offlat nosed ignorant" black buffalo soldiers in a country now "governed by Negroe Supremacy" aroused him to the extent that he finally exclaimed, "Enough" (pp. 5-6). In that presidential election year, Bailey referred to a "sore back + [and] one eyed" old horse as "Grant" (p. 67). When camped near a "regular builtYankee family," he and his companions made themselves unpopular "hollering for [Horatio] Seymore [Seymour]," the Democratic candidate, and giving "thunder" to Ulysses Grant and "all Rads" (pp. 81-82). Because of his varied commentary, Bailey produced considerably more than a trail or cow-camp log. His roughly 130-pagejournal—the earliest post-Civil War, Texas-to-Kansas account of a Texas cowboy—establishes the day-to-day routine but also portrays the human condition, warts and all. David Dary's introduction and attention to detail, in more than a hundred footnotes, represent editorial excellence . In closing, Bailey hoped that his "writeing" would "interest some people" (p. 90) . Thanks to thejournal's owner, the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and a superb editor, it most certainly will. Texas State University—San MarcosJames A. Wilson Saddling Up Anyway: The Dangerous Lives of Old-Time Cowboys. By Patrick Dearen. (Lanham, Md.: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2006. Pp. 190. Lexicon, illustrations, index. ISBN 158992238. $22.95, cloth.) Patrick Dearen has published more than a dozen books—novels, children's books, folklore, and histories on the area—and must know more of the history and folklore of the Pecos River, trans-Pecos Texas, and surrounding areas than any other writer living or dead. Paul Paterson and Elmer Kelton could challenge him on that, but they are very good company, indeed. Dearen's latest is a collection of short colorful anecdotes of horse wrecks and other dangerous events and circumstances that compromised cowboy longevity before 1932, along with some related superstitions and an occasional tall tale thrown in for leavening. Based in part on interviews with seventy-six men who were working cowboys as far back as the 1 870s, Dearen also used some 1 50 archived transcripts, manuscripts, and similar materials 2oo7 Book Reviews105 from the Library ofCongress, the Colorado Historical Society, and similar repositories . While there are no footnotes or other citations in die text itself, an excellent bibliography and detailed index permit easy identification of specific sources for the many brief quotes, observations, and reported events. This book is a fun read. The events themselves, at least in retrospect, are often humorous, sometimes inevitable, frequendy improbable, and occasionally fatal. It is remarkable how often a wreck or fall seems like it should be fatal but is not. But then the victim ofa fatal accident is rarely able to tell the story. The most charming characteristic of this book is Dearen's use of the cowboy's own words. One cowboy observing another take a particularly spectacular fall observed, "I thought at first he was hurt, . . . but I heard him sayin' something which was not his Sunday school lesson, and I knew he was all right" (p. 106). Keen insight into people, animals, or circumstances coupled with a little irony and the cowboy habitual economy of words can make a point sharply...