San Marcos free press. [volume] (San Marcos, Tex.) 1877-1892, 1883-08-30
THE GENUINE COWBOY.
,o,bo,,s wife Details Their Good Points
Inc WV and Draws Comparison.
Corr. New York sun.

toif' %No" ASiA
have been reading Frank Wilke,
ans letters from Medicine Bow
s ss and find them very interest
no and a tride amusing. l have
lived on a ranch for six years. l an
the wife of a cowboy. l see hundreds
oicowboys yearly. l talk with them
Obserye their ways, and know then
habits, their modes of dress, and
their style of speech. Cowboys are
universally proclaimed to be all thai
;s bad and cruel. say it is not so,
Your correspondent asks: els it a
matter of surprise that cowboys are
.rnel and brutal?" He includes all
cowboys. If any one should say that
all negroes are Williams because one
If the race assaulted Miss Slocum
near Salem, N. Y, short time ago,
his communications would be consid-
cred utterly devoid of sense. Why
NOT saw that all divines are unworthy
10 be called divines because a few of
them fall from grace? Would it be
as lust and right to say that all our
presidents are cheats because one
man occupied the presidential chair
nv fraud, OF that all editors are liars
because some of them have been
found guilty of libel? I say no.
A cowboy goes into town. He be-
comes intoxicated on bad whisky, and
grows merry and jolly, and fires his
pistol into the air for fun. Perhaps
he grows vicious and brutal, and fires
his pistol promiscuously at chimneys
and lamp-posts or anything else he
sees. A sheriff's posse surrounds
him. The air is thick with bullets
and buckshot. Cowboy returns the
fire. He breaks a leg OF an arm, or
perhaps he kills the sheriff. Some
times he is riddled with bullets.
Sometimes he is captured, given a
fair trial and hanged. Well and
good. We say that he gets his just
deserts, and there we hope it will
rest; but it does not. His whole
outfit Tin cowboy language, all the
boys who worked with him, including
the inoffensive cook;) are branded as
Williams of as deep q dye, as the
murderous offender himself.
A short time ago an ARRAY occurred
in Ogalalla, Neb. A cowboy became
senseless from drink. He fired his
pistol right and left, and frightened
the town out of it's wits. At the out
set he intended to do damage to no.
body. The sheriff and his posse
opened fire on him. He returned it
and shot the sheriff in the leg. Then
he fled followed by a number of arm
ed men. They followed him to the
camp, where he was captured while
trying to catch a fresh horse on
which to flee. But before he was Ia
ken the sheriff's posse fired volley af-
ter volley into the camp, which was
manned by a smooth faced boyish
cook alone, whose only weapon was
a dish cloth, and whose only crime
against mankind lay in dealing out
indigestible biscuits, and badly cook
ed meat and beans to the boys. He
escaped harm, but had he been slain
the brave posse would have carried,
back the news to town that two VII.
lians had been captured, one dead
and the other alive.
What your correspondent said
about the cattle owners is undoubted-
ly true. They turn cattle loose on
the prairies, knowing well that some
of them will succumb to starvation or
die of thirst before the spring opens.
They know, too, that it is cheaper to
lose some than to feed all. Of the
horror and shame of it enough can
not be said; but I say let the blame
lie where it belongs on the Eastern
owners, not on the men who are hlr-
ed to do their work as they are told
to do it. Frank Wilkeson speaks OF
"the brutes who live in log cabins.
Now, the real brutes live back in our
Eastern cities, in fine mansions,
drinking wines, while the cattle de,
pendent on them are thirsting and
dying. Will l be fore iven, if L say
in charity, that their neglect is more
the outgrowth of carelessness than OF
"callousness of heart" as your cor
calls it? The owners are
seldom present when their cattle are
dying, SO is it strange that, not see
ing their suffering, they are not I'M
pressed by it?
AS for the wolves killing poor COWS,
We think Mr.. Wilkeson is mistaken
about the "poor cow" In our ezpe-
hence it is often the fat calf or year
ling or even the fat COW that is over