The Modern Cowboy: Second Edition

3. The Cowboy’s Wife

24 Chapter Three The Cowboy’s Wife It has been said that the West was hell on horses and women. As far as the cowboy was concerned, it was also hard on the institution of marriage. Not only were women in short supply in the Old West, but the cowboy who lived in an isolated cow camp and ventured into town once a month was in no position to go courting. And even if he had been able to go courting and had managed to find the girl of his dreams, he would have taken a wife and lost a job. Most of the old ranches were not set up to accommodate wives and families among the hired hands, and when the cowboy married, it was understood that he would have to move on. This practice began in the earliest days of the cattle industry when life on a frontier ranch was too Spartan for women and children, and later, say by 1890, it evolved into ranch policy and endured because of its economic benefits to the rancher. Single men were “good keepers”; their needs were simple and they required no special luxuries. In the case of the headquarters cowboys, four or five of them could room together in the same bunkhouse, and they could be fed the same fare at the same table. In the case of camp cowboys, one or two men lived in a line-camp shack and prepared their own simple meals. In neither case did the ranch have much of an investment in room and board. In those days, it probably cost more to keep and feed a good saddle horse than to maintain a good cowboy. The Cowboy’s Wife — 25 The introduction of women into this environment would have complicated things. A woman would have wanted her own house and yard. She would have wanted to add on a spare bedroom or a screenedin porch, which would have required the rancher to come up with lumber, paint, and nails. Bachelor cowboys were preferred because they made fewer demands than married men, and they cost less money. But there were other factors that tended to discourage the cowboy from taking a wife. His way of life was just not suited to the schedules of children and the needs of a wife. The isolation, the long hours, the low wages, and the hazards of the job tended to attract a type of man who wasn’t ready to marry and settle down. Sure, he made up mournful songs about the girl he left behind, but instead of going back to marry her and build her a little house, he chose to sing about her in a place where there was no danger that he would have to give substance to his poetry. His life as a cowboy was simple and carefree, and he was there because that’s what he wanted. As far as I can determine, the bachelor cowboy began to disappear from small and medium-sized ranches after World War II. Motorized pickups had replaced wagons, tractors had replaced teams of horses, and machinery had begun doing jobs which, up until then, had been done by manual labor. Large crews of men were no longer necessary. One man with a pickup and stock trailer could feed and look after five Kris Erickson: wife, mother, photographer, and cowboy-when-needed. (2000) 26 — The Modern Cowboy or six hundred cows, an operation that once had required the efforts of three or four men. With this increase in productivity made possible by machinery, the rancher was more inclined to spend money on a permanent house for the hired hand, and to offer a few conveniences that would attract the kind of man who was married, stable, and settled. Today, the old bunkhouse has either rotted into the ground or has become a storage shed that catches the overflow from the rancher’s house. The bachelor cowboys were replaced by married men, and the bunkhouse gave way to the tenant house, a small, simple dwelling that could accommodate a woman and children. There was another side to this. The men who had gone off to the war had seen Paree and a few other cities, and perhaps the lure of the cow camp had begun to fade. The postwar economy was booming, high-paying jobs could be had, and the American dream of a little...