I actually read this book when I was 14 (a gift from my Uncle Garry) and it was with much pleasure that I have read it again. It is a "fictional" account of a trail drive in 1882 from Mexico to Montana. The author, was an actual cowboy and his accounts and stories from the trail are so authentic that most historians consider this the one most important pieces of literature that would really explain to people of the future what a cattle drive was really like. My guess is that the author put all of his highlights of several cattle drives into one story.
The hero of the story is a teenager who slips into the narrator role and obviously is the author of the story. Most everything you would expect from westerns were in the story, but without the cliche's and exaggerations. There were stampedes, one gunfight, gambling, "dance hall" girls, and an 80 mile dry drive that made you thirsty just reading it. But, the main thing the cowboys dealt with was loneliness and homesickness, in fact, they were so lonely for companionship they would welcome con-men to ride with them for a time, even though most of them lost a lot of money on a horse race one of them set up!
The not so honorable side (when judged by today's standards) of the Texas cowboys, such as racism and shooting a grizzly bear and her two cubs just for sport, was also in plain view. But, overall, especially having grown up in Kansas and being a big fan of westerns as a kid, it made me long to be able to go back in time and go on a cattle drive. A unique time in our history that really only lasted a few decades after the Civil War.
The cowboys after driving the cattle over 3,000 miles weren't at all sorry to see the cows delivered, but they were very sad to sell their horses before their train trip back home. The author put it best as they arrived at the railroad terminus and unsaddled their horses for what they knew would be the last time:
But at no time in my life, before or since, have I felt so keenly the parting between man and horse...For on the trail an affection springs up between a man and his mount which is almost human. Every privation which he endures his horse endures with him, --carrying him through falling weather, swimming rivers by day and riding in the lead of stampedes by night, always faithful, always willing, and always patiently enduring every hardship, from exhausting hours under the saddle to the sufferings of a dry drive...Their bones may be bleaching in some coulee by now, but the men who knew them then can never forget them or the part they played in that long drive.
Last weekend we traveled down to Trail of Tears State Park which is just north of Cape Girardeau, MO. It was an easy drive from our home in suburban St. Louis. We were pleasantly surprised by this park. The museum was nice and explained the story of the Trail of Tears and how this park was part of the trail where the Cherokee crossed the Mississippi River.
