At a station called Alpine were several cowboys, all armed with
revolvers and cartridge belts, and some with dagger knives too; their
mustangs were hitched up close by.
These cowboys are some old and some
young men, some wild and some cultivated, some never educated, some have
gone through Harvard, or Oxford, or Cambridge, some the sons of English
county gentlemen and noblemen - but all cowboys, i.e., men who live on
ranches where large herds of cattle or horses are bred, and whose duty
it is to ride over the wild rough country to know where the herds of
cattle and horses are feeding, so that if they need to be ridden up for
cutting or branding, or selling, they may be found. I was told that this
was one of the "hardest" places for a cowboy, i.e., one of the
wickedest, meaning that when they visit it, it is for a "spree," and
they get drunk, and fights and murders follow. I was pointed to a little
cemetery on a hill, enclosed by a white fence, and was told that it
contained 150 bodies, and that only 50 had died a natural death; the
others had been shot or otherwise murdered in drunken frays and other
ways. Many strange little histories were told me about these men, but
which I have no time to record here. In some parts of the country where
water was very scarce, there seemed to be no vegetation, and the cattle
seemed to wander solitarily along, a mere heap of hide and bone.
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