The Kinsley graphic. [volume] (Kinsley, Kan.) 1890-1940, 1898-01-14
HOLIDAYS AMONG coweoYs.
The Rough Westerners Celebrate
Thanksgiving and Christmas.

nevertheless, a store of it. On ordinary
occasions it is not much in evidence
perhaps, and a chance observer spend
ing a month among the men ON
ranch might think it lacking alto
gether. For he might break bread
with them for week without hearing
dozen words interchanged between
any two of the company. Certainly
the traveller would think such lot OF
men the last in the world to look to Tor
sentiment, but let him wait till Thanks
giving time approaches. He will see
change.
Thanksgiving and Christmas are
feast days little too close together.
AS it is, one or the other suffers
through interference or absorption.
With the cowboy in the northwest, at
any rate, Thanksgiving has all the best
of it for the simple reason that it comes
first. 1t is with the turkey as with
other things. first come first served;
and although Christmas day is cele-
brated handsomely, it has by no means
the eclat of Thanksgiving. because it
lags month behind.
AS the great feast day approaches
the chief idea with the cow-puncher is
to make things look like home. He
knows what home means better than
most folk, because for years and years
he has not had one. When this home
feeling creeps over him no one need
doubt his sentiment-he is manifestly
choke-full. He would risk his neck,
his horses neck, too, which is more, to
get pumpkin for an attempt at pie
such as "they used to make back at
home"
The pie when made is hardly such a
one as mother would display with
pride. If it was no cow-puncher would
admit it. He would just eat it.
Pumpkins are often scarce near the
cowboys camp, and to procure one
means a long, hard ride, and possibly
some finesse, but when it comes to gun
work the cowboy is all finesse. He
would better get two while he is about
it. for they will balance better over his
saddle.
One cowboy, who had been sent off
on a recruiting expedition a few days
before Thanksgiving, found few
days before starting back for camp
that he ''was going to have - of 4
time if he ever got them two bottles O
bug juice through without Dustin"
After much cogitation and experiment.
ing with the various bundles he had
accumulated he tapped his pumpkins
and dug them out. Then he put the
liquor where the seeds had been,
plugged the holes and went on his way
swearing.
1T was little rough on the liquor"
he allowed afterward, ''but we had
the best pies as ever was eat"
Sometimes pumpkin is not easily
managed, and two would be impossible,
for the northwestern curcurbita pepo
attains diameter of three or four feet
if it is not watched. When raiding one
of these monsters, as he must do when
smaller fruits cannot be found, the
cowboy puts a double hitch on the
stem with his rope, which is fast to the
saddle horn and tugs it along on the
ground, trusting to God and guess
work" to bring enough of it into camp
for the making of at least one pie.
With three-foot pumpkin tagging
behind, double blanket stuffed with
whatever odds and ends of sustenance
were in sight when he reached his for
aging ground, and rolled up, army
style, into loop and hung about his
neck, bag of corn over the other
shoulder or Rugged close to him in
front, sundry canteens and saddle bot
ties dangling about him, and possibly
winter cabbage in his hat, the cowboy
is an object to contemplate as he steals
toward camp in the early morning
moonlight.
OF course in the northwest there IS
plenty of game and even turkeys, where
the hills are grown with brush and
woods. Whatever can be got in the
way of bird or beast or fish, if trout or
salmon are running, will be brought in.
Everything but horsefesh. That would
be worse. than cannibalism to the cow
boy thinking. Sometimes a bear is
bagged, but not often NOWADAYS.
though, and he cooks stringier than he
used to-
A tenderfoOt surveyor volunteered %
rustic up something one day lust be-
fore Thanksgiving. He would be shoot
ing that bear yet if one of the bows had
not found him, for he was putting the
nineteenth bullet into a ia: fellow thai
had just risen on the trail ten wards
ahead OF him. He was very white and
pumping lead" as fast as a Gardiner
gun. In the whole world there was no,
a deader bear, nor a heavier,