Waterbury evening Democrat., 1903-03-23
IS STILL A FEATURE.
The Cowboy Has Not Passed En-
 tirely from View.
Great Changes Have Come Over tho Far West, Hut the "Bronco Buster" Is still on
 

| One hears deal of the passing of the cowboy. The idea grows apace that the cowboy is extinct. Because some parts of the west have settled up, be- cause the .nesters" and the sheepmen, the big rancher and the wire fence have come into these sections, some people who write would have it appear that the cowboy is a thing of the past.
 ASa matter of fact, says a acorrespon- dent of the Butte Inter Mountain, the cowboy is very much alive and in the present. It is true he is not tough and bad individual as he used to be pictured, but all of him was not tough and bad even then, 10 more than it is to-day. It may be that greater changes have come over the cowboy of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and the south west than are realized here, but the fact is that the Montana cowboy is much the same happy-natured, pie turesque and reckless individual he al- ways was. Perhaps the fact that this is still an open range country has some thing to do with the result. Though the open range it's passing it still is here and the chances are it will not be gone entirely for several years to come. The roundups are the same as in the old days in Texas and the south west, covering a wild expanse of ter ritory, all unfenced and belonging only to Uncle Sam. True, the fencer, is here, but in small numbers in compari- son with the number of cattlemen.
 The Montana cowboy is not long on fancy attire, broad sombrero, silver spurs and the other tr&ppings that were the heart of the southwestern X cowboy. He is businesslike indiyid- ual in his manner and his appearance, but he likes a wild ride as well as any;. he can sit the toughest bronco that ever was roped,r he knows his business down to the ground, and in his leisure time he can make as much noise and have as much fun as any man who ever rode stock saddle.
 He does not use his gun any more than is absolutely necessary except in play of perfectly harmless nature. For instance, the Montana cowboy has fondness for dropping into little cow towns and shooting loosely into the air and whopping like Piegan Indian with incipient appendicitis. He does this chiefly when an overland train is at the station, and he rides peacefully away, happy in the thought that he has scared trainload of pilgrims into be- heving they were in bad mans coun- try.
 This is about the extent of the cow boys shooting, except for the genuine | lights that come now and then-hard- ly more frequently than they occur in any occupation in the east or west. ! Now and then at a roundup camp or Tn a cow town you will meet grizzled old sinner who will lament the evil ways into which the punching of cows has fallen. He will tell you that the genuine cowboy is hard to find and that the boys who are riding now are "a lot of baby-faced cow-punchers from the east who don't know what ii l is to be real COW hand" Don't you believe him. He forgets that once upon a time he was baby-faced cow-punch- CT himself; that the native heath o1 most of the men who have sung to their herds on stormy night is in the effete east. Because all who appear ir the roundup are not so old or tough, l ened or grizzled as himself he forgets that he once was inStheir class. The baby-faced cow-puncher is the begin ming of the seasoned old COW hand and so he ever was, and so he ever vii I be.
 Quite as picturesque, quite as ardu ous and quite as attractive to the ad venture-loving youths of the land as l ever is the business of handling cattle on the open ranges of Montana. There Is a breadth and freedom about tn, trade of riding the glorious, sunli
 Montana prairies that makes it lur, many a man from more lucrative pur
 suits. Some day, when irrigation shal have transformed the ranges of Mon
 tana into thousands of productiv, farms the cowboy as we know him to
 day will pass, but for the present he i ! here. Here's to him!