The Cheyenne daily leader. [volume] (Cheyenne, Wyo.) 1870-1884, 1881-06-22
THE MYSTERIOUS cow BOYS"
What Peculiar Ideas Casters People
Have Of Our GsB Boys.

PeeaIfAE ideas Casters PesDIs
HAEs Of Oar Co.'S Bsys.
The following, from the usually well
informed Philadelphia Times, is sftoo
Jimmy for anything
"A new and picturesque figure has
been added to the civilization of the
west. Every days dispatches for a
month or more have borne witness to
the prevalence and steady growing per-
asiveness of the ''cow boy. Unhappily,
ethnology is not as yet the strong point
of the current historian of the breezy
western episodes, the very reading of
which mfngs to mind the airy peaks,
the rolling plains and the countless
glories of nature at her largest and
BEST Whether the ''cow boy'' is a
human of perennial youth and hence
boy" or a creature Of animal form
and hence ''cow,n we have no avail
able data to determine. Whether he is
two in one, a sort of modern Centaur,
the animal half COW and the human,
man or woman, there is no present
means of deciding. That the .'cown
cannot predominant seems inferable
from the sa~nguinary exploits signalz-
ing his, her or its appearance upon the
sceIe. Vague L0m' Lelature is not
commonly counted as a western failing.
A people that has immortalized its
moods and manners by such animated
an~omatopai@ as characterize its towns
on prairie, gulch and mountain, cannot
be accused of lack of imagination vivid
enough to describe ethnographical dis
sidence, howsoeyer anomalous.
That the boy lisa nomad his di-
versions prove. He comes into the
world equipped with a Derringer of six
barrels and a double barred rifle Of long
range. He has something of the red
mans repugnance to civilization and
its troublesome forms, for we always
read of him despoiling the pale faces,
rioting in their household treasures,
and he is particularly antipathetic to
the church and the preacher. The
purpose of the one he thinks, in his cow
boy way, to be for the protection of loot
and the function of the latter, UMPIRE
meditated minuets, at the muzzle of
the Derringer. The COW boy inhabits
those retreats in the far west where the
sheriff and his irksome processes have
little vogue, for it is to be noted that
when a sheriff is mentioned in the dis
patches, the COW boy is performing a
mysterious hegira in the hillsl 1t is
not probable that buffalo BIll' belongs
to the COW boy race, because he is said
TO be susceptible to the enervating lux
ufies of civilization, whereas, the COW
boy born and bred in his battle pelt, seeks
by preference the painless woods, the
snowy Sierras and the lush grasses of
the primeval prairies.
If the telegraph is to be taken up
with the daily processes of COW boy
evolution the interests Of science de-
mand that the government take the
matter in hand. The late LIE Due, who
has an investigating and curious mind,
might be utilized in the classification of
this newly discovered link in the evolu-
tions of the race With him a scientific
apparatus, consisting Of a battalion of
cavalry and a. half dozen field pieces
to enable the explorers to resolve the
COW boy to his component parts, would
be neat and effective. Otherwise we
shall never know why the COW boy,
without warning, appears upon the
scene, ravaging the primitive signs Of
civilization and reducing everything in
the shape Of flesh to grass. 1t is plain
that the Gov boy cannot be the long
predicted seven year ~locusts, as, though
very fleet and, like the flea, elusive to
the grasp, he does not fly when pursued
by the children of men, but takes to
somebody else's saddle. and is far in
the depths of the forest before the in
| quiring sons of men can come up with
him. The theory that the COW boy is
the parent Of o~leomargerine Is crude,
and does little honor to the scientists
who put it forth. Nor is it worth
while to consider the ridiculous pre-
tence that the COW boys are the inven-
tion of the Star route people, designed
to ave the country from the rebels and
the democrats"