GLIMPSES OF COWBOY LIFE.

Otago Witness, Issue 1805, 25 June 1886, Page 25

GLIMPSES OF COWBOY LIFE.

A correspondent of the New' York Sun has interviewed John H. Sullivan, known on the plains and cattle-ranges as Broncho John, who is now studying the workings of labour organisations in different Eastern cities and their relations to working men as a class, for the purpose of enlightening his isolated fellow-workers of the trails and ranches on the subject. Sullivan is a cowboy. He donned the sombrero and spurs when he was twelve years old, and has followed every cattle-trail from the Gulf of Mexico to the mountains of Washington Territory in the fifteen years that have passed since then. A man with an experience such as this was able, of course to give an interesting account of the business in which his life had been spent.

TIIF CIIAKAOXJiH OF THE COWBOY.

He began by explaining the grievances of his class and defending their character : —

As near as I can say at a rough guess, there are between 8000 and 10,000 cowboys in the ranges- of the cattle-raising region. No class of men work harder. None are so poorly paid for their services. The tyranny and injustice that they are compelled to submit to at the hands of their employers is as great, it! not greater than that to which any other class of labourers are subjected. No people have ever been so grossly misrepresented and malinged. There is as much differencebetween the genuine, cowboy and the disreputable blusterer andbulldozer, thatwriters for the press have made the cowboy out to be, as there is between the honest and hardworking mechanic of this or any other city and the swaggering rowdy, loafer, or bully that jostles him in the street. A wide-rimmed hat, fringed leggings, ability to sit a mustang well, a sixshoolvr, and a. carcass full of- bad rum do not make a cowboy. A cowboy is not a drunkard. He is not a horse-thief nor a road-agent. The men whose faithful endurance guides and guards thousands of herds

of valuable cattle through dangerous passes and lonely trails, and who place their lives between their charges and the many enemies they encounter from rauche to dead-line, arc not selected from the outcast criminal scum of the country. It is not the cowboy's favourite pastime to ride through border towns and empty his revolver at unoffending and helpless citizens. On the contrary, the true cowboy is a terror to evil-doers of all kinds, TIMIDITY OF MEXICAN COWBOYS. The merits claimed for the Mexican cowhoy are not admitted by the narrator. The Mexican cowboy", you know, is generally regarded as the master of the horse and lasso, and it is the custom of people to say, "He is as smart with the rope as a Mexican." Taking it all in all, I think the white cowboy is superior to the Mexican. I have known a herd of 3000 cattle in charge of Mexicans to be stampeded in a thunderstorm because the Mexicans were afraid of the thunder and lightning, and threw themselves from their horses, stripped themselves, and lashed their naked body with cactus as a penance for some sin; while the herd rushed wildly away in all directions, and hundreds were lost. It \ is not an uncommon thing for Mexican cowboys to stop on the trail to punish themselves for their sins. Frequently their wild cries cause a disastrous stampede of tho cattle in their charge. I have seen these Mexicans walk • barefooted for rods over patches of prickly cactus, while a companion followed them and lashed their naked backs with the same thorny plant. HOMESTEADS 'WKECKKD AND VLUXDKKI3I) ! BY CAT.TLE. The great blizzards and snowstorms of the west are among the best agents the big landgrabbers have in Montana, Wyoming, and other territories. In Montana especially the cattle of all brands are turned loose in the fall after the beef-gathering has taken place and the fat cattle sent off. to market. When whiten comes on the herds drift together until there will be maybe twenty-live or thirty thousand bunched. By-and-bye there comes a snowstorm, and the bunch-grass is covered up beneath two feet of snow. The storm is sure to be followed by a big fall in temperature. The mercury will go to maybe .'JO degrees below zero. Then all nutriment leavc-s the tall prairie-grass on which the cattle have fed since the bunch-grass was snowed under. The herd becomes crazed with hui>ger, and a stampede follows.' The great body of the starving cattle start south like an avalanche, heading straight for localities where homesteads have been takeu up in the greatest number. They bear down on the settlements and besiege the homesteader?, who vainly try to keep them back with their rifles. They shoot the hungry animals down by the hundred, and sometimes manage to hold them in check until their ammunition is exhausted. Then the flight must end. The cattle sweep down on the homesteads. and not only eat up every vestige of hay tho homesteaders have stored up for their own small herds, but tear down the houses and outbuilding which the settler builds out of the prairie sod, and devour the roots of tho grass that remain succulent in the sod. Homesteads, hundreds at the time, are cleanet I up by a herd of hungry cattle, quickly an.l thoroughly on a single stampede. Then tho herd continues on its way, taking the homesteader's herd of two or three hundred with it, and leaves him a homeless, ruined man. The homesteader is discouraged. The \vak<>. of the stampeding herd is quickly followei I •by the agent of a big landowner. He makes the discouraged settler an offer for his claim, and the settler nine times out of ton, is glad to accept the offer. That) is one way in which the rich cattle raisers obtain such extensive tracts of the most available land. STAMPEDES. It is surprising what a trifling thing will start a stampede that may co.st many lives and the loss of hundreds of cattle before :'■' can be controlled. I was coming up the Texas trail once wilh a party of other cowboys. We lva/i 400') cattle in the bunch. One of the cowboy-; opened his tobacco-pouch to got a chew. The wind blew a shred or twouf the fine-cut, out of his fingers. The tobacco floated away and lodged in a steer's eye. In a moment the eye began to smart, and the steer got wild. Its antics started others, and in ten seconds the whole herd was surging and dashing about, out of all control. Jt was two days before we got the herd working quietly again. Two of our best boys wero trampled to death, and 400 cattle lost. Ilail■storms are greatly dreaded by cowboys on the trail, especially if they come at night when the cattle an sleeping. If a hailstone happens to strike a steer in the eye a stampede is sure to follow. It is diiiing stampedes that the cowboy has work lo do. His one great object is to keep the Hying herd together. He urges his mustang- dead against the advancing column of frantic cattle at the constant risk of his life, and works the cattle gradually in a circle. The cowboys all ride to the right around a stampeding herd. If they can get the cattle to running in a circle the first important step in controlling them is accomplished. I have bsen with v. pai ty in a stampede when vvj were obliged to ride around a herd for a distance of over 200 miles before we got it under control, and then it was only 25 milcH from where the stampede started. In all that time not one of us took a moment's rest or a bite to eat. Such things can't be thought of during a stampede. THE " MILLING OF CATTLE "' Next to a stampede, the cowboy dreads the taking of a herd of cattle across astreara The cattle are taken across in bunches of 25 or 30. The cowboy strips all his clothing off, and swims his^orse along with the cattle. Sometimes the bunch may be taken across and landed on the other side without aly trouble ; but the cowboy is always exp '.cting to have a case of " milling " on his h mds before he gets the bunch across. I h ive before now brought a bnnoh of cattle safely to almost wiUrin reach of tho opposite s lore, when the sudden appearance of a jack r bbit on the bank would scare a steer, and b ick he would turn. In a moment !,h« whole b inch would be swimming wildly round and ro md in the middle of the stream. This is ©ailed milling,- and it is the work of. hours to

break up the mill and got the cattle started for the shore again. In doing this it is often necessary for the cowboy to plunge from his horse and swim about among the cattle, oCtbn getting on their horns or astride of them. The water is generally filled with running ice, but the sun is scorching hot. The bunch drifts down stream sometimes for miles before the milling is broken. The cotton-wood trees along these streams arc usually loaded with hornet's nests. Tho moment a hornet sees the cattle floatingdown the stream under the trees he drops down on them, followed by numbers of his fellow-colonists, and they plant their stingers wherever they drop. I have been so badly htung while fighting a mill that my head would swell so that I could not wear my hat. A raid of hornets generally breaks up the milling of the cattle attacked ; for the animals can't, stand the stings, and they make for shore. Many a good cowboy has been drowned in trying to break up a mill in midstream. It is not uncommon for a party to spend three weeks or a month in getting a herd of 4000 cattle across a stream.