The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-09-10
TEXAS COWBOYS AT PLAY.

| High links on the Head Waters of the | Brazos-Bronk-B Busting, Steer Rop- ing, Barbecue, Dance-Plenty of Ex- | citement, but No Shooting-Feats oi l Horsemanship and a Feast After l wards -- Cowboy Wall Flowers = A
 Great Week for Seymour.
 Seymour has had it's arst cowboys
 reunion, and as is claimed by the origi-
 nators, the first ever held in the United
 States, which practically means the | first ever held at all
 The project was started at Seymour which Is a town that has all the push
 and rustic for which the west is famed
 It is the terminus of the Wichita Val
 ley railway, a spur fifty-one miles long
 from the Fort Worth and Denver. | This makes Seymour the nearest rail- road town to all the great stock-raising ] country on the head waters of the Bra
 EOS. It is reached by rolling, jerky train that is described in the railroad l advertising folder as mixed" Noth- | ing strikes the traveller more forcibly
 than the brutal accuracy of this state | ment. Sometimes 1t is nearly all ] freight cars and sometimes cattle I cars, and sometimes it Is nearly al- ways ''miXed''
 When the train pulls out of Wichita Falls and heads away toward the southwest up the Wichita valley one feels that he is getting into the heart of the cowboy country. The prairie dogs gaze solemnly at the train as it clat- ters along, and they have so far ac- cepted this necessity of civilization that they calmly continue to endeavor to maintain the parity between dogs and dog holes without allowing it to cause any interruption in the delibera- tions.
 Seymour, like other towns in the
 west, once enjoyed a big boom which
 provided 1t with buildings that would
 be an ornament to many towns ten times its size A huge three-story
 stone building with about eighty feet front stands with sashless windows
 and doorless doors, a grim skeleton like monument over the grave of some body,s investment Not far from 1t is a. two-story stone opera house with rooms for business houses on the ground floor. It has never had an oc- cupant except dirt-daubers and bats. But as the man who is intoxicated l feels sad and repentant the next day and begins to feel better on the third l day, Seymour had reached her third | day after her intoxication, or perhaps | the fourth; any way, she Is feeling all i right again, as is demonstrated by her | people being willing to subscribe up ward of one thousand dollars to enter | tain the cowboys When the project was first started five hundred and thir- | ty dollars was subscribed in half an l hour.
 | The idea of the reunion was taken up l in April last, and men from there went
 out through the ranches of the pan- 1 handle telling what sort of an enter 1 tainment 1t was to be. The Seymour people expected that there would be 1 2,000 or 2,500 people in attendance and
 were gratified to find that there were l fully that number in town on Wednes- day morning, the first day of the meet | ing, when the Texas Cowboys associa- | ton was organized.
 1 All day Wednesday the people kept | coming in. Cowboys on horseback, | with their camp outfits, and prairie l schooners with sun-bleached canvas ] covers came drifting over the ridges l from the long iron bridge over the l salty, turbid Brazos from the east and south. Wednesday night the town was | crowded and Alex Benge, who was looking after the barbecue pits, was heard to observe that nobody had ex- Tod ,al, much larger the supply of barbecued | meat would have to be increased. After seeing about all the people | there were in attendance massed on the prairie at the roping contest on | Thursday morning the committee on | barbecued meat got together and deci- | ded that more beef would have to be cooked. Jo Dickson, Judge Glasgow and Alex Benge then went to work to 1 get the beeves and soon had them
 ready for the slaughter Campers were supplied with meat free of charge by the citizens of Seymour. All the wells, public and private, were also placed at their disposal for stock water.
 Wednesday night the biggest crowd of the reunion was in town. Fireworks
 were set off and the air was laden with the shrill cowboy yells. However, eve rything was remarkably orderly. Not | an arrest was made or a disturbance reported.
 The scene Thursday morning at the roping and riding contests was inspir- ingly grand, and was in many respects
 most remarkable spectacle.
 The spot selected for the contests
 was in a gentle depression west of the
 "dogy" stock pens. "Dogy'' is the l cowboy term for east Texas cattle, and these pens are where the east Texas
 cattle are kept in quarantine when l they arrive.
 South of the pens a grand stand seat 1 ing about fifteen hundred people had
 been erected. An hour before the rop- ing contest was to begin this stand was
 jammed with people. and the fences of the neighboring stock pens and the box