The Story Of The Cowboy

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1914 Edition.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 edition. Excerpt: ...bit of " porterhouse" steak, cut thick, is placed between two steaks of similar size and excellence, and the whole buried under a bed of hot coals. In this way the middle steak retains all the juices of its double envelope, and offers a morsel which might well be appreciated by a man less hungry or more particular than the tired cowpuncher. A pound or so of beef, with some tinned vegetables, taken with a quart or so of coffee, and the cowpuncher is ready to hunt his blankets and make ready for another day. He does not work on the eight hours a day schedule, but works during the hours when it is light enough to see. The end of the day may find him some miles from where the cooks' fires are gleaming, and the swift chill of the night of the plains may have fallen before his jogging pony, which trots now with head and ears down, brings him up to the camp which for him, as much as any place on earth, is home. Such is something of the routine of the round-up, and one day, barring the weather conditions, is like another throughout the long and burning summer, one round-up following another closely all through the season. The work is a trifle monotonous to the cowboy, perhaps, in spite of its exciting features, and is to-day more monotonous than it was in the past, before the good old days had left the plains forever. In those times the country was wilder, and there was more of novelty and interest in the operations of the range. To-day the great plains are but a vast pasture ground for the cattle belonging to the community of cowmen, and the highly differentiated system of the round-up progresses as a purely business operation, whose essential object is the establishment of the individual rights of each member of that community. The...

When Native and Métis unrest escalated into the Northwest Rebellion of 1885, white settlers in southern Alberta`s cattle country were terrified. Three major First Nations bordered their range, and war seemed certain. In anticipation, 114 men mustered to form the Rocky Mountain Rangers, a volunteer militia charged with ensuring the safety of the open range between the Rocky Mountains and the Cypress Hills. The Rangers were a motley crew, from ex-Mounties and ex-cons to retired, high-ranking military officials and working ranch hands. Membership qualifications were scant: ability to ride a horse, knowledge of the prairies, and preparedness to die. The Rangers were resolutely prepared to fight, as mounted cavalry, should the rebellion spread. This is their story, inextricably linked to the dissensions of the day, rife with skirmishes, corruption, jealousies, rumour, innuendo and gross media sensationalizing . . . all bound together with what author Gordon Tolton terms "a generous helping of gunpowder."