lariat—­or mayhap it’s horsehair or rawhide pleated—­from burning his hands.  The red silken sash one was wont aforetime to see knotted about his waist, was used to hogtie and hold down the big cattle when roped and thrown.  The sash—­strong, soft and close—­could be tied more tightly, quickly, surely than anything besides.  In these days, with wire pastures and branding pens and the fine certainty of modern round-ups and a consequent paucity of mavericks, big cattle are seldom roped; wherefor the sash has been much cast aside.

The saddle-bags or “war-bags,”—­also covered of dogskin to match the leggins, and worn behind, not forward of the rider—­are the cowboy’s official wardrobe wherein he carries his second suit of underclothes, and his other shirt.  His handkerchief, red cotton, is loosely knotted about the cowboy’s neck, knot to the rear.  He wipes the sweat from his brow therewith on those hot Texas days when in a branding pen he “flanks” calves or feeds the fires or handles the irons or stands off the horned indignation of the cows, resentful because of burned and bawling offspring.

It would take two hundred thousand words to tell in half fashion the story of the cowboy.  His religion of fatalism, his courage, his rides at full swing in midnight darkness to head and turn and hold a herd stampeded, when a slip on the storm-soaked grass by his unshod pony, or a misplaced prairie-dog hole, means a tumble, and a tumble means that a hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of cattle, with hoofs like chopping knives, will run over him and make him look and feel and become as dead as a cancelled postage stamp; his troubles, his joys, his soberness in camp, his drunkenness in town, and his feuds and occasional “gun plays” are not to be disposed of in a preface.  One cannot in such cramped space so much as hit the high places in a cowboy career.

At work on the range and about his camp—­for, bar accidents, wherever you find a cowboy you will find a camp—­the cowboy is a youth of sober quiet dignity.  There is a deal of deep politeness and nothing of epithet, insult or horseplay where everybody wears a gun.

There are no folk inquisitive on the ranges.  No one asks your name.  If driven by stress of conversation to something akin to it the cowboy will say:  “What may I call you, sir?” And he’s as careful to add the “sir,” as he is to expect it in return.

You are at liberty to select what name you prefer.  Where you hail from? where going? why? are queries never put.  To look at the brand on your pony—­you, a stranger—­is a dangerous vulgarity to which no gentleman of the Panhandle or any other region of pure southwestern politeness would stoop.  And if you wish to arouse an instant combination of hate, suspicion and contempt in the bosom of a cowboy you have but to stretch forth your artless Eastern hand and ask:  “Let me look at your gun.”