Cowboy Life: Reconstructing an American Myth

Alfred Henry Lewis "He becomes deeply and famously drunk"

Alfred Henry Lewis "He becomes deeply and famously drunk" 1902 A Cleveland, Ohio, attorney turned newspaperman, Alfred Henry Lewis spent time in New Mexico and Arizona and became popular through his collections of range stories narrated by a character known as the Old Cattleman. Lewis wove fiction on a fabric of fact and seems to have known whereof he spoke. In the following passage, taken from his Wolfville Nights, Lewis set out to introduce the reader to the subject of cowboys. While the farms in their westward pUShing do not diminish the cattle, they reduce the cattleman and pinch off much that is romantic and picturesque. Between the farm and the wire fence, the cowboy , as once he Hourished, has been modified, subdued, and made partially to disappear. In the good old days of the Jones and Plummer trail there were no wire fences, and the sullen farmer had not yet arrived. Your cowboy at that time was a person of thrill and consequence. He wore a broad-brimmed Stetson hat, and all about it a rattlesnake skin by way of band, retaining head and rattles. This was to be potent against headaches-a malady, by the way, which swept down no cowboy save in hours emergent of a spree. In such case the snake cure didn't cure. The hat was retained in defiance of winds, by a leathern cord caught about the back of the head, not From Alfred Henry Lewis, Wolfville Nights (New York, Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1902), 7-15. 155 COWBOY LIFE under the chin. This cord was beautiful with a garniture of three or four perforated poker chips, red, yellow, and blue. There are sundry angles of costume where the dandyism of a cowboy of spirit and conceit may acquit itself; these are hatband, spurs, saddle, and leggins. I've seen hatbands made of braided gold and silver filigree; they were from Santa Fe, and always in the form of a rattlesnake, with rubies or emeralds or diamonds for eyes. Such gauds would cost from four hundred to two thousand dollars. Also, I've encountered a saddle which depleted its proud owner a round twenty-five hundred dollars. It was of finest Spanish leather, stamped and spattered with gold bosses. There was gold-capping on the saddle horn, and again on the circle of the cantle. It was a dream of a saddle, made at Paso del Norte; and the owner had it cinched upon a bronco dear at twenty dollars. One couldn't have sold the pony for a stack of white chips in any faro game of that neighbourhood (Las Vegas) and they were all crooked games at that. Your cowboy dandy frequently wears wrought steel spurs, inlaid with silver and gold; price, anything you please. If he flourish a true Brummel of the plains his leggins will be fronted from instep to belt with the thick pelt, hair outside, of a Newfoundland dog. These "chapps," are meant to protect the cowboy from rain and cold, as well as plum bushes, wire fences and other obstacles inimical, and against which he may lunge while riding headlong in the dark. The hair of the Newfoundland, thick and long and laid the right way, defies the rains; and your cowboy loathes water. Save in those four cardinals of vanity enumerated, your cowboy wears nothing from weakness; the rest of his outfit is legitimate. The long sharp heels of his boots are there to dig into the ground and hold fast to his mother earth while roping on foot. His gay pony when "roped" of a frosty morning would skate him all across and about the plains if it were not for these heels. The buckskin gloves tied in one of the saddle strings are used when roping, and to keep the half-inch manila lariat-or mayhap it's horse-hair or rawhide pleated-from burning his hands. The red silken sash one was wont aforetime to see knotted about his waist, was used to hogtie and hold down the big cattle when roped and thrown. The sash-strong, soft and close-could be tied more tightly, quickly, surely than anything besides. In these days, with wire pastures and branding pens and the ALFRED HENRY LEWIS fine certainty of modem round-ups and a consequent paucity of mavericks, big cattle are seldom roped; wherefor the sash has been much cast aside. The...