Jack the Young Cowboy

Excerpt from Jack the Young Cowboy: An Eastern Boy's Experience on a Western Round-Up

Jack's cowboy life began just as a great change was sweeping over the cattle range. Cattle had first been brought into the country only a few years before - old-fashioned long-horns driven up over the trail from Texas.

In those days the people in the West were not many. Towns were small, farms almost unknown, wagon roads few. Except about the pastures of the larger ranches, there were no fences. Over most of the land the cowboy roamed alone.

His seemed a life of romance. Free as the birds, he wandered over the wide range, going when and where he pleased. But this romance was only apparent. No man worked harder than he, or for less reward. His toilful days and short broken nights; his small pay and his poor food were recorded in the songs that he sang as he rode about the cattle. This was in the early days of the cattle industry.

A little later, on the plains came a change from pioneer conditions to those approaching luxury.

The earlier cattlemen in the North - those who ranged their stock on the Platte and the various forks of the Loup River - made great profits. Yet as time went on they saw competition constantly growing sharper and ranges being overstocked.

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