第52章

ON COWBOYS

Your cowboy is a species variously subdivided.

If you happen to be traveled as to the wild countries, you will be able to recognize whence your chance acquaintance hails by the kind of saddle he rides, and the rigging of it; by the kind of rope he throws, and the method of the throwing; by the shape of hat he wears; by his twist of speech; even by the very manner of his riding.Your California "vaquero" from the Coast Ranges is as unlike as possible to your Texas cowman, and both differ from the Wyoming or South Dakota article.I should be puzzled to define exactly the habitat of the "typical"cowboy.No matter where you go, you will find your individual acquaintance varying from the type in respect to some of the minor details.

Certain characteristics run through the whole tribe, however.Of these some are so well known or have been so adequately done elsewhere that it hardly seems wise to elaborate on them here.Let us assume that you and I know what sort of human beings cowboys are,--with all their taciturnity, their surface gravity, their keen sense of humor, their courage, their kindness, their freedom, their lawlessness, their foulness of mouth, and their supreme skill in the handling of horses and cattle.I shall try to tell you nothing of all that.

If one thinks down doggedly to the last analysis, he will find that the basic reason for the differences between a cowboy and other men rests finally on an individual liberty, a freedom from restraint either of society or convention, a lawlessness, an accepting of his own standard alone.He is absolutely self-poised and sufficient; and that self-poise and that sufficiency he takes pains to assure first of all.After their assurance he is willing to enter into human relations.His attitude toward everything in life is, not suspicious, but watchful.He is "gathered together,"his elbows at his side.

This evidences itself most strikingly in his terseness of speech.A man dependent on himself naturally does not give himself away to the first comer.

He is more interested in finding out what the other fellow is than in exploiting his own importance.Aman who does much promiscuous talking he is likely to despise, arguing that man incautious, hence weak.

Yet when he does talk, he talks to the point and with a vivid and direct picturesqueness of phrase which is as refreshing as it is unexpected.The delightful remodeling of the English language in Mr.

Alfred Lewis's "Wolfville" is exaggerated only in quantity, not in quality.No cowboy talks habitually in quite as original a manner as Mr.Lewis's Old Cattleman; but I have no doubt that in time he would be heard to say all the good things in that volume.I myself have note-books full of just such gorgeous language, some of the best of which I have used elsewhere, and so will not repeat here.[4]

[4] See especially Jackson Himes in The Blazed Trail;and TheRawhide.

This vividness manifests itself quite as often in the selection of the apt word as in the construction of elaborate phrases with a half-humorous intention.Acowboy once told me of the arrival of a tramp by saying, "He SIFTED into camp." Could any verb be more expressive? Does not it convey exactly the lazy, careless, out-at-heels shuffling gait of the hobo?

Another in the course of description told of a saloon scene, "They all BELLIED UP TO the bar." Again, a range cook, objecting to purposeless idling about his fire, shouted: "If you fellows come MOPING around here any more, I'LL SURE MAKE YOU HARD TO CATCH!""Fish in that pond, son? Why, there's some fish in there big enough to rope," another advised me.

"I quit shoveling," one explained the story of his life, "because I couldn't see nothing ahead of shoveling but dirt." The same man described ploughing as, "Looking at a mule's tail all day." And one of the most succinct epitomes of the motifs of fiction was offered by an old fellow who looked over my shoulder as I was reading a novel."Well, son," said he, "what they doing now, KISSING OR KILLING?"Nor are the complete phrases behind in aptness.Ihave space for only a few examples, but they will illustrate what I mean.Speaking of a companion who was "putting on too much dog," I was informed, "He walks like a man with a new suit of WOODENUNDERWEAR!" Or again, in answer to my inquiry as to a mutual acquaintance, "Jim? Oh, poor old Jim! For the last week or so he's been nothing but an insignificant atom of humanity hitched to a boil."But to observe the riot of imagination turned loose with the bridle off, you must assist at a burst of anger on the part of one of these men.It is mostly unprintable, but you will get an entirely new idea of what profanity means.Also you will come to the conclusion that you, with your trifling DAMNS, and the like, have been a very good boy indeed.The remotest, most obscure, and unheard of conceptions are dragged forth from earth, heaven, and hell, and linked together in a sequence so original, so gaudy, and so utterly blasphemous, that you gasp and are stricken with the most devoted admiration.It is genius.

Of course I can give you no idea here of what these truly magnificent oaths are like.It is a pity, for it would liberalize your education.Occasionally, like a trickle of clear water into an alkali torrent, a straight English sentence will drop into the flood.It is refreshing by contrast, but weak.

"If your brains were all made of dynamite, you couldn't blow the top of your head off.""I wouldn't speak to him if I met him in hell carrying a lump of ice in his hand.""That little horse'll throw you so high the black-birds will build nests in your hair before you come down."These are ingenious and amusing, but need the blazing settings from which I have ravished them to give them their due force.