Helena weekly herald. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1867-1900, 1883-05-10
A JOURNALISTIC JAUNT.
The Coming Southern Cattle Drive--
The Typical Cowboy.
[Curtis in Chicago Inter-Ocean.

Curtis in Chicago Inter-Ocean.
The old Santa Fe trail needs II historian.
We live rapidly and forget easily. The cow
boy and the harvester have wiped out the
traces of the pioneer, and now that the
wire fence has come the cowboy must 60.
A COWBOY INTERVIEWED.
AT Fort Dodge, the great cattle market of
Kansas, "the end of he.drive," where the
herds leave the trail and the gramma grass
and take the cars for the packing-houses of
Chicago, had an interview with the festive
cowboy. He has a jaunty air, and wears his
broad gray sombrero with its cord of gold
around the crown with as much grace as the
belle of Michigan avenue bears her new
spring bonnet. He was just in from the
range, and the way in which he answered
my questions proved that he can talk as well
as he can ride and shoot.
l asked him about the spring round up
and he said it would take place as soon as
the convention of ranchmen which meets at
Fort Dodge on the 18th, 18th, and 18th was
over.
"Will the spring drive be large this year ?'
eyes," he replied, "a right smart bunch O
cattle will be drove in."
"How many will come here?'l
"Three or four hundred thousand head,
he replied, and then he went on to explain
that it would be the last great drive and
"rOund up" in that section. The intrOduc-
ton of wire fences by the ranchmen to pro-
tect their ranches from scattering and home
less herds prevented the cattle from going
across the country as they formerly did, and
the extension of the railroads made it un-
necessary.
THE WINTER LOSSES
among the cattle had been very small, un-
usually so, he said. Although the cold was
severe there had been little snow, and the
grass had been good and accessible all winter.
"How about the cowboys strike ?" l asked.
"That's pretty we'll settled" he responded,
'and the boys have compromised on S42.5O a
month. We were getting $50 month, and
struck for $50, but we only wanted fair
show, and were willing tosplit the difference
I asked him about the moral condition of
Fort Dodge, which has had the reputation of
being "the hardest town on the line," and
he said it was getting better. There were a
few decent women there now, he said and
three or four children.
l told him some of the stories that were
printed in the Eastern papers last winter
about the cowboys, and he said they were
the inventions of newspaper "rustlers," who
were hard up for something to write about.
The duel between twelve cowboys reported
to have taken place here last winter, in which
eight of the participants died with their
boots on, was a pleasant little fiction; and
he sententiously remarked that the cowboys
were no such blank fools.
THE MURDERED MARSHAL.
"But didn't they murder the City Marshal
of Fort Dodge 2" asked.
"Waal, yes" he replied with smile.
''The Marshal of Fort Dodge did 60 to glory
last winter"
"How did that happen?"
"Waal, you see," he said "the Marshal
was rustler, and he played his game on the
wrong party. He used to catch tender-foot
with rocks now and then, lock him up in
the cooler, pinch his Doodle (rob him of his
money!, and then order him to leave town.
That would do as long as he played it on
tenderfeet, but cowboy went East for a
spell, and when he came back here with a
long horned collar and a bald-face shirt the
Marshal tried the game on him, and that
was the end of it."
What did you do"
1--WE only plugged him."
"Was he killed %
"That's what the coroner said"
"Then you do shoot sometimes?"
Eyes, there's considerable shooting going
on now and then. When a man comes out
here and punches cows for three or four
years it won't do to play no games on him."