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DRAP HIS ROPE ON HER
4^9
on the town. "Shucks, that boy's busier than a torn cat on a January night." Perhaps they'll tell you that the busy one returned home and flopped in his bunk just like a rooster. In case that one puzzles you, it means with his spurs on!
LAUGHTER from deep down, laughter rich and earthy, is in a cowboys blood. He laughs at you, at his fellow cowhands, at himself, at the world in general. Often the laughter has a bite in it. An old cowboy once remarked of his boss, "If I worked as hard for thet man as he expects me to, he'd be rich and Fd be daid."
Sometimes hard luck strikes the cattle country, as in the instance when a virulent fever descended upon the Square Dot ranch, putting most of the cowboys in their bunks. Ordinarily, two dozen men had been kept busy from sunup to sundown. Now their work was handled by three sweating, swearing, laughing hands. The work was done — and well. When the siege was over and the owner complimented the three on their amazing achievement, they grinned in embarrassed silence, until one of them saved the day. Rubbing his scalp briskly, he confessed, "Shucks, t'weren't nuthin' to it. All we had to do was just work twenty-fore hours the day."
As everyone knows, the state of Texas covers a lot of territory. A traditional tale tells of a tourist who inquired of a strolling cowhand if the natives considered themselves Southerners or Westerners.
"Neither, ma'am," was the empliatic reply. "We're Texans!"
The same fierce state loyalty, typical of all cowboys in any of the cow country states, is evident in the story of a visitor who remarked,
"You cowboys really think this is God's country, don't you?"
"Lady," came the answer, "I've heard tell that there are bigger and better places but I ain't seen 'em." A pause, then with conviction, "And neither have you."
Humor the cowboy undoubtedly has, and generosity well mixed with gentleness, too. Carolyn, the eleven year young daughter of a cowhand, was kitten crazy. She collected pictures of them and spent hours poring over magazines looking for still more kitten illustrations. "Oh!" she'd squeal, "I wish God would send me an adorable kitty just like this one."
One Saturday night a couple of the cowpokes drove into town, bought a beautiful Persian kitten and deposited it in Carolyn's room with a note attached to the ribbon: "To Carolyn, with love, from God."
Among themselves, the bucaroos enjoy a bit of healthy sarcasm. A roper once disgraced himself by repeatedly missing his throw at a steer. Face beet red, he tried again — and missed.
"Keep a-tryin'," urged his friend, "maybe by sundown he'll git tired and squat."
Above all else, your true cowboy remains unfailingly optimistic.
"No use kickin'," he'll advise you, "leastways, less'n you're a mule!"