True Grit

To me, the word “COWBOY” calls to mind a long and noble tradition of hard work and honesty. But every time I turn on the news, I hear it thrown around as a pejorative, hijacked by pundits and politicians to refer to arrogant, reckless types who go it alone and break all the rules. If any of these folks had ever spent a day with my father on the McElroy Ranch—or with the thousands of working cowboys in Texas—they might have a different idea.

by Elmer Kelton

July 2008

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Theodore Roosevelt once wrote, “No man traveling through or living in the country need fear molestation from the cowboys.” He said they “treat a stranger with the most whole-souled hospitality” and “what can almost be called a grave courtesy.” This is not to say they could not be rough in playing practical jokes on tenderfeet, as well as on one another. Shooting at a stranger’s feet to make him dance was not unknown. Embarrassing but less dangerous were snipe hunts and “badger under the barrel” stunts. Some of the early first-person accounts of wild and reckless cowboys came from townsfolk who saw them only when they visited the bright lights after payday or at the end of a long trail drive, when it was natural that they would let off steam. The celebration over, they would go back to the everyday routine of hard work in heat, cold, dust, or rain.

My brothers and I were witnesses to what some have called the last generation of full-time horseback cowboys, still working cattle in ways much like those of their grandfathers. The McElroy Ranch had a couple of very large pastures that at roundup time had to be worked in segments, much as in the days of the open range. We often rode out long before daylight and traveled for miles before we reached the pasture where we were to work. Later on, Dad streamlined this operation by building crude but efficient trailers so we could haul the horses. Often this enabled us to work one pasture in the morning and another in the afternoon, doubling our productivity. With Dad, efficiency always trumped tradition.

When I was a boy, the chuck wagon went out twice a year—a week or ten days near the end of summer to brand calves and three to four weeks in late fall or early winter to gather cattle for shipment by rail to the Fort Worth Stockyards. Dad modernized the operation by retiring the traditional mule-drawn wagon and mounting the chuck box on a more mobile flatbed truck. Otherwise, the wagon camp remained much the same as my grandfather had known in his youth.

There were men who made a living as wagon cooks, hiring out by the day to ranches during roundup. Cooks drew slightly higher wages than day-working cowboys. Many had been cowboys themselves, perhaps forced to less strenuous lives by age or injury. The wagon was the outfit’s movable headquarters and the cowboys’ home during roundup. On larger ranches this might stretch into months, even a major part of the year.

Though most cowboys preferred a steady job, some chose day work, dragging their saddles and bedrolls from one roundup to another. This paid more as long as they worked, but often they faced idle periods between jobs.

When Dad was ready to start a roundup, he would drive fifty miles to Midland, his original stomping grounds, and pick up enough day hands to augment the ranch’s full-time cowboys. He was acquainted with most of them, so he knew whom to hire. Our neighbors also pitched in, knowing that when they needed help, the McElroy hands would be there for them. A typical McElroy roundup crew would be about a dozen men, give or take a few.

The cook would arise long before daylight, stir up the coals that remained from the night before, and start preparing breakfast. He would call out when the food was ready. While the cowboys ate, the “jingler” would bring up the horses. One man—most often Dad—would rope them one by one and lead them out for the hands. Every cowboy had a mount of horses designated for him, though usually they belonged to the company. By daylight the men would be in the saddle, sometimes enjoying a brief rodeo, as fresh morning air encouraged frisky horses to pitch.

Dad had rules, never written down but well understood. At the wagon, the working cowboys were the first to eat. Visitors waited until last. You could get a cup of coffee at any time, but you never picked up a plate until the cook hollered, “Chuck!” You never rode another man’s assigned horse without asking his permission.

A cowboy who broke any of these rules was subject to good-natured punishment, as was one who bragged too much or told an outrageous “windy.” For committing a “chaps offense,” he was obliged to lie belly-down across a bedroll and take a few whacks across his back pockets with a pair of leather chaps.

A drive would usually start at one end of a pasture. Dad would string out the riders in a more or less straight line. The distance between them varied according to the size and brushiness of the pasture, but each man was able to see the rider on either side of him. They moved across the pasture, maintaining the line and pushing the cattle ahead of them until they reached the working pens on the opposite side.

Here the jingler brought up the horses, and the cowboys saddled fresh mounts before working the herd. Dad usually preferred to hold the herd in the open, sorting off the bulls and dry cows before penning the cow-calf pairs. Here was where a good cutting horse earned its keep.

Many ranches branded in the open. On the McElroy we branded in a pen so the cattle could not stray off until we were done with them. One or two good ropers would bring the calves up close to the branding iron fire, where a two-man (or two-boy) flanking team would throw them down and hold them for branding, earmarking, castration, or whatever else was needed. Because of screwworms, fresh cuts had to be treated with a foul-smelling fly repellent. Until I became big enough to flank calves, it was my thankless job to carry the “dope” can. Work in the branding pen was hot, dusty, and sweaty, hardly the stuff of a rousing cowboy movie.

Between roundups, ranch people settled down to a routine with seasonal variations. There were always fences to check and mend, windmills to service so the cattle were never without water. There were horses to break. In winter cattle had to be fed. And always in the warmer seasons there were daily searches for animals infested with screwworms, a deadly pest long a scourge of the cattle industry. Movie cowboys are never seen doctoring screwworm cases or helping ungrateful heifers deliver calves they cannot birth on their own. They seem free to take off to town at any time to court the schoolmarm or to save the rancher’s daughter. On those rare occasions when they work cattle, they sometimes break the unwritten rules—such as riding a horse right up to the chuck wagon and stirring dust into the cook’s pots or cutting through the middle of a moving herd. A real cowboy riding drag, bringing up the rear of a drive, would never let cattle drop out around him and remain behind. In movies, they do it all the time, especially when they sing.

It has been said that ranch life changed more within a few years after World War II than it had changed in all the time before. The old-time cowboy spent most of his working days in the saddle. Today’s may spend far more time in a pickup than on a horse. Indeed, some even work cattle with a four-wheeler. Many larger ranches today round up cattle with a helicopter.

Eradication of the screwworm has drastically curtailed the Southwestern cowboy’s everyday workload, thanks to a patient pair of government scientists who spent years studying the mating habits of the screwworm fly. Doctors Raymond C. Bushland and Edward F. Knipling endured the taunts of fellow researchers, but they earned the everlasting gratitude of ranchers and cowboys.

The modern cowboy has to know about animal nutrition, genetics, range management, and other subjects his forebears never considered. I doubt my grandfather ever heard of artificial insemination or pregnancy testing. Those are everyday concerns on ranches today. The old-time cowboy mainly had to understand cattle and horses. His present-day counterpart is likely to have at least some skill as a carpenter, mechanic, and electrician.

Only a few Texas ranches still have superlarge pastures, though in the public-lands states of the West the open range remains more the norm than the exception. By reducing pasture sizes, ranches can control grazing more efficiently, and they can get by with far fewer cowboys. The cowboy workforce is much smaller than it used to be. Ranchers learned how to cope with acute labor shortages during World War II. After the war, thousands of former cowboys did not return to ranch work. They found easier and higher-paying jobs elsewhere.

Fewer children are growing up on ranches today. Often the family lives in town, near school and other facilities. The rancher drives out to the place each day. His children see the ranch only on weekends and vacation. They are not growing up on horseback as their forebears did.

The drifting bachelor cowboys I saw so often as a boy are rare now. Most ranch work is done by mature family men. To have stability in the workforce, ranches after World War II had to provide better wages and improved living conditions to attract and hold families. These cowboys, like their employers, often lived in town and commuted to work. More likely than not, their children went into urban occupations and never drew a dollar of cowboy wages.

Call me prejudiced, but I cannot reconcile today’s political use of the word with the real cowboy as I have known him. Pundits and politicians who recklessly malign him show their ignorance of the reality. Cowboy capitalism? The average cowboy won’t save up a fraction as much money in his lifetime as the average Washington lawmaker wastes on self-serving earmarks.

Granted, not all use of the word “cowboy” is negative. One positive use comes from the rodeo world: “cowboy up.” It means to take courage, to go ahead and tackle the job despite the risk, despite the pain. It is an integral part of the cowboy code.

The cowboy has not been without honor despite those today who would use his name in derogatory ways. He has been celebrated with a heritage museum, in Oklahoma City, and with a wealth of prose, poetry, and art. He has been honored with outdoor sculptures at various sites across the West. Texas’s best known may be a life-size Pompeo Coppini statue on the courthouse square in Ballinger. It is a grieving tribute commissioned by Augustus Noyes to honor his 21-year-old son, Charles, killed in a horse fall in 1917.

The night my father died, I felt compelled to park awhile and stare at that figure under the soft glow of the courthouse lights. It looked like Dad would have looked at about that time and that age. To me it epitomized, as he did, what the real cowboy is and has always been—a common man in an uncommon profession, giving more than he receives, living by a code of conduct his detractors will never understand.

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