Cowboy Wisdom

by Denis Boyles

Amen.

  That’s the bread, that’s the meat.

  Now, by Joe, let’s eat.

  Amen.

  COWBOY COFFEE

  Take one pound of jamoka coffee and wet it good with water. Boil it over a hot fire for thirty minutes, then pitch a horse-shoe in. If the shoe sinks, put in more coffee.

  —ANONYMOUS

  A cowboy gets hungry enough, he’ll go for his gun—and shoot fish.

  —LAWRENCE CUBBIT Laramie, Wyoming 1938

  WHAT TO DO WITH A CATFISH AFTER YOU SHOOT IT

  This is the kind of thing you learn in the music business that can come in handy in lots of different situations.

  Cats are kind of slick when you get them out of the water and they have skin instead of scales like most fish, and you can work yourself to death on a five-pound catfish just trying to hold on to him and skin him at the same time. They also have sharp little barbs beneath their gills. So you want to get the cat under control so you can work with it.

  1. Find a stump. The best way to skin a catfish is to find a stump and drive a nail through his head and into the stump. That’ll stop the wiggling. Once you put the nail in his head, you pretty much took care of the old boy.

  2. Use your knife to cut around his neck. You really want a good, sharp cut, so the skin comes off easy. But don’t cut his head clear off, because if you cut his head off now, you’ve lost the use of your nail.

  3. Take your pliers and start skinning. Now you see why you have to nail him to a stump. Otherwise, you can’t hardly hold him. Trying to keep hold of a catfish while you work is a miserable way to try to skin one. You’re trying to pull his skin off and he’s falling on the ground all the time. You really need a stump and a nail.

  4. Gut him. Turn him over onto his belly. I usually start cutting him from the bottom and work my way toward his head, but you can do it either way. You just put your knife in there and rip the belly up as you go along. It’s kind of like cutting a piece of cloth—once you get started, it just goes on up. Then reach your fingers in there and gut him—everything comes out. It’s almost like it was meant to be that way; there’s very little attachment there. My gutting rule of thumb is, if it looks like something you don’t want to cat, take it out.

  Once you do that, then you cut the head off. Now, you’ve got a good, clean catfish.

  —CHARLES DANIELS Lebanon, Tennessee 1993

  FAMOUS COWBOY FOOD

  Product Endorsed by

  • Quaker Oats Roy Rogers

  • Peter Pan Peanut Butter Sky King

  • Langendorf Bread Red Ryder

  • General Mills Cereals Hopalong Cassidy

  • Grape Nuts Buck Jones

  • Wrigley chewing gum Wild Bill Hickok

  • Ralston Wheat Cereal Tom Mix

  —WILLIAM SAVAGE in The Cowboy Hero 1979

  THE COMPLETE TRAIL KIT

  I’ve got a good saddle blanket an’ I used it fo’ a bed all the way up heah, an’ besides, if the weather’s nice, that’s bed enough, an’ if it’s stormin’, any damn’ fool knows he ought to be out with the cattle, an’ cou’se he wants his slicker.

  —JOHNNIE RIX near Big Creek, Wyoming c. 1887

  For your horse, you need:

  A saddle

  A blanket

  A bridle

  A rope

  A bit

  A hackamore, and

  A smaller bosal.

  For you, you’ll need:

  • A set of ropes for different purposes—for catching and branding calves, for roping bigger stock, all that kind of stuff.

  • A good bed roll. Now, a bed roll serves two functions. First, it’s where you do your sleeping. Second, it also acts as your suitcase. See, you just roll up your clothes inside of it, and tie it all up with a couple of straps or pieces of rope. Now, the bedroll itself is made out of a big piece of canvas. It’s longer than it is wide. Find yourself a little mattress, like one of those army-type mattresses, and you wrap the mattress up in the canvas.

  • Blankets and some old flannel sheets.

  They did it the same way a hundred years ago—only the mattress was an old bag stuffed with straw that they had to change from time to time.

  When you roll up your bedroll in the morning, it may be a good two feet around in diameter with all your clothes and everything in there—well, you can’t take this big bedroll with you on your horse, so you put it on the chuck wagon until you need it again at the end of the day.

  One other thing:

  • A “possible” bag, in which you’ve got everything for whatever might possibly happen: reloading equipment for your gun, a knife, and a bit of grub that’ll keep you a few days if you ever need it.

  —MIKE GERBER Elko, Nevada 1994

  Every cowboy carries a rope [and] when he is not using it, he keeps it tied to the right-hand side of the pommel of his saddle. In some places this rope is called a lasso. The spaniards called it la reata, which the cowboys shortened to “lariat.” [It] may be made of hemp or maguey, or of four strands of rawhide would together; it is often sixty feet long. The rawhide lariat must be handled with care; for, if a horse steps on it and breaks one of the strands, the lariat is weakened.

  To lasso an animal the cowboy holds most of the rope in his left hand while he whirls the looped end at the animal. Then he takes a “dally,” or twist around his saddlehorn, to hold the roped animal. With a short rope he does not take dallies, but keeps one end tied to the saddlehorn.

  —SANFORD TOUSEY New York City 1937

  The ordinary length of a lasso is forty feet, though I frequently use one seventy-two feet in length. It is also fine exercise, the spinning of the rope bringing almost every muscle of the body into play. That it is light and can easily be carried, and the many things you can do with it make it an ideal article for all kinds of sports.

  —CAPTAIN GEORGE ASH London, England 1923

  Every male person should have at least one rifle gun.

  —ANONYMOUS Advice from an emigrant guidebook c. 1870

  One good, sharp knife is worth two of almost anything else, except women and horses, of course.

  —CHARLES JIMBY XIT Ranch, Texas c. 1885

  HOW A COWPOKE KEEPS HIS EDGE

  I can’t remember ever learning how to sharpen a knife, myself—people were just always around filing or grinding their butcher knives all the time because they needed them sharp to slaughter the hogs and stuff. So learning how to sharpen a knife for me was sort of like learning to walk—everybody did it so I did it too, but I certainly don’t remember taking my first step.

  1. Take an Arkansas hard-stone—I guess they come from Arkansas—and put a spot of oil on it to keep the temper in the knife, to keep the friction from damaging the blade. Some guys use spit, but I use oil. The oil I use is called honing oil and it’s made for that purpose. I’ve got a set of three stones, each mounted in wood. One is a hard Arkansas, then there’s a soft Arkansas, and then there’s what they call a Washita, and it’s just an extra little stone that you use. They’re each about 4″ × 16″.

  2. Take the stone and lay it down flat. Turn the blade of the knife toward you and bring the knife across the stone in a kind of circular motion, about a half moon. Then reverse it to sharpen the other side. You can tell whether you’re getting an edge or not.

  3. The angle is the most important part of the sharpening, and that’s the thing that you just have to feel and learn. If you over-do it and hold the blade at too sharp an angle, you’ll make the blade flat and you won’t be sharpening anything—you’ll just be wearing the blade out. If you don’t have enough of an angle, you’ll just make the knife duller. Get the angle right.

  —CHARLIE DANIELS Lebanon, Tennessee 1993

  HOW TO EXTINGUISH A RANGE FIRE

  One afternoon a puncher at Charles Goodnight’s ranch in the Texas panhandle saw smoke boiling up to the south and raced toward it. When he arrived at the scene he found a gang of men beating at flames with wet gunny sacks, sl
ickers, and brooms. When the fire refused to go out he and the other men attacked the blaze by a grisly but effective method: they shot a big steer, skinned him on one side and tied ropes to two legs. Then a pair of riders on either side of the fire line dragged the bloody carcass over it to quench the flames, like moving an eraser across a blackboard. The horses had to change sides frequently, or the one trotting on the burned patch might have been crippled by the charring of his hoofs.

  —WILLIAM H. FORBIS Bozeman, Montana 1973

  COYOTE CAUTION

  Indians say that coyote, unlike man, never kills wantonly, but only for food. As a matter of fact, given a chance, he may in an hour kill more kids out of a flock of goats than he can eat in a week. His business in life is not essentially different from that of man; namely, to find and get his daily meat.

  —LILLIAN ELIZABETH BARCLAY Waco, Texas c. 1938

  One man in a million can become a ventriloquist; every coyote is one at birth. He can so “place” his voice that you shall not know if it came from north, east, south, or west. As a multiplier—well, hearing one coyote, no newcomer but will swear it is a dozen. The wail is the strangest, weirdest, most baffling sound known to any wilderness—a wild medley of bark, howl, shrick, and whine utterly confounding; and as to its articulation, glib as nothing else I know.

  —CHARLES F. LUMMIS southern Texas c. 1898

  SIDEWAYS TRUTHS

  I was born in Rhode Island, you know, and it got too little for me. When I lay down, my head would like as not be in the lap of somebody in Massachusetts and my feet bothering somebody else in Connecticut. I just got too big for the state, so I thought Texas would be big enough for me.

  —SHANGHAI PIERCE Texas panhandle 1900

  I was raised in a canebrake by an old mama lion.

  I got a head like a bombshell and teeth made of iron.

  I got nine rows of jaw teeth, and holes punched for more.

  I come from ourang-a-tang, where the bullfrogs taught me to snore.

  —ANONYMOUS

  I’m a wild wolf, and I’m gonna eat meat alive. I’m a wild wolf, and my tail never touched the ground.

  —ANONYMOUS

  Last summer I wauz ridin’ along thinkin’ as how the weather must be hotter’n Satan in long handles, when i hears a low moanin’ behind me and turns ‘round to see a blizzard whizzin’ in. Right away I knows I got no time for admirin’ the scenery, so I jabs steel an’ heads for home. That ol’ hoss musta known about blizzards, too, ‘cause ‘fore I had time t’ chaw my terbaccer twice, we wuz there. But when I went to unsaddle the animal, danged if I didn’t find its frequarters plum’ foamy with sweat and its hindquarters frozen solid with ice where th’ teeth of the blizzard had caught it.

  —J. FRANK DOBIE Dallas, Texas 1936

  It got so derned cold at our ranch one winter that the thermometer dropped to ninety-five degrees below zero. Our foreman came out to give us orders fer the day, but the words froze as they came out of his mouth. We had to break ‘em off one by one so’s we could tell what he was sayin’.

  —ANONYMOUS COWBOY quoted in Life magazine 1942

  First cowboy: I did own an ol’ hoss one time that was about the dumbest critter I ever did see. I’ll tell yuh what that fool horse did one night when I drunk too much likker and passed out in town. He picked me up and slung me on his back and carred me twenty miles to the ranch. When he got me there, he pulled off my boots with his teeth and nosed me into my bunk. Then he went to the kitchen, fixed up a pot of coffee, and brung me a cup all fixed up with cream and sugar. Then the next day I had a hangover, and he went by hisself and dug post holes all day so’s the boss would let me sleep. When I woke up and found out what that fool hoss had done, I cussed him for two days without stoppin’ and wished him off on a greener which was passin’ by. It wuz good riddance, too.

  Second cowboy: I’d say that wuz a pretty smart horse. What in the world did you get rid of him for?

  First cowboy: Smart, heck! Who ever heard of a real cowboy usin’ cream and sugar in his coffee?

  —Arizona Nights by STEWART EDWARD WHITE 1907

  TRAIL’S END

  I drove over every trail from the Gulf of Mexico to the Dakotas and Montana, but the Chisholm Trail was the one I traveled most. Now, after thirty years of settled life, the call of the trail is with me still, and there is not a day that I do not long to mount my horse and be out among the cattle.

  —L. B. ANDERSON Seguin, Texas c. 1920

  I put in eighteen or twenty years on the trail, and all I had in the final outcome was the high-heeled boots, the striped pants, and about $4.80 worth of other clothes, so there you are.

  —G. O. BURROWS Del Rio, Texas c. 1920

  TOM MIX’S TRAIL FAREWELL

  May you brand your largest calf crop,

  May your range grass never fail,

  May your water holes stay open,

  May you ride an easy trail;

  May you never reach for leather

  Nor your saddle horse go lame;

  May you drop your loop on critters

  With your old unerring aim.

  May your stack of chips grow taller,

  May your shootin’ e’er stay true,

  May good luck plumb snow you under—

  Is always my wish for you.

  —TOM MIX

  3

  LOVE & HORSES

  I’ve often said there’s nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse.

  —RONALD REAGAN

  Not a day’s gone by that I wouldn’t rather have been with my horse than with people.

  —Luke Perry Hollywood, California star of 8 Seconds 1994

  No Creature on Earth is more noble, more patient, more obedient, and more, plain old helpful than a good Horse, well broke by a man who loves her dear. On a hot day in the middle of no-place, she’s also the best-looking gal anywhere, and if they made bride’s gowns to fit a Paint horse, I’d soon marry the horse as a woman but I don’t know a horse who would have me.

  —OLIVER CURTIS El Paso, Texas 1912

  Let me dispose right now of a malicious rumor that has haunted me all my life: I did not kiss my horse! We may have nuzzled a little, but we never kissed. Never.

  I can take a joke, but it bothered ol’ Champ.

  —GENE AUTRY

  Cowboys hate walking: They really know how to use their horses. They conserve the energy of the horse, treating it like a valuable piece of farm equipment. They seldom ride all out, contrary to many dudes’ visions of what riding the range is all about. Cowboying requires real knowledge of a horse and his capabilities. A horse can sense when a real horseman is in the saddle. He knows when the rider is going to tough it out.

  —ROBERT REDFORD Hole-in-the-Wall, Wyoming 1975

  I keep a secret as well as the next man, but I tell my horse everything. I mean everything. Even secrets I would never tell my wife. Even secrets I’d never tell another man’s wife, for that matter.

  —STEW STEWART Truro, Alberta, Canada 1956

  “Horse talk” is a low grunt which seems to charm a horse and make him stand perfectly still for a moment or so at a time. It sounds like “hoh-hoh,” uttered deep down in one’s chest. The horse will stop his rough antics and strain motionless on the rope for a few seconds; while he is doing this and looking straight at the approaching figure, the man will wave a blanket at him and hiss at him— “Shuh! Shuh!” It takes about fifteen minutes of this to make the horse realize that the man is harmless; that no motion which he makes, no sound that he utters, will harm him in any way.

  —CHIEF BUFFALO CHILD LONG LANCE Cardston, Alberta, Canada 1928

  A man on foot is no man at all.

  —ANONYMOUS

  HORSE SWAPPING

  Cattlemen were constantly selling horses to each other, and when a horse changed hands it was likely to take the name of its former owner. I have heard cowpunchers make remarks as these: “Catch John Blocker for Juan,” “Dillard Fant is lame,�
�� “Clabe Merchant has a sore back,” “Bill Reed broke his rope last night,” “Mark Withers kicked the cook,” “The dadblamed Indians stole Shanghai Pierce and George West last night.”

  —GEORGE SAUNDERS founder, Texas Trail Drivers Association San Antonio, Texas c. 1925

  If you want to find horses, go to the prettiest place in reach, and there you’ll almost always find them. Horses love beauty as much as humans do.

  —EUGENE MANLOVE RHODES Bar Cross Ranch, New Mexico 1930

  If you have a have a horse with four white legs,

  Keep him not a day; if you have a horse with three white legs,

  Send him far away; if you have a horse with two white legs,

  Sell him to a friend; if you have a horse with one white leg,

  Keep him to the end.

  —CAPTAIN JOHN G. BOURKE

  5th Cavalry, U.S.A. 1876

  A good horse is never a bad color.

  —ANONYMOUS

  The quarterhorse tends to be the favorite of cowboys and ranchers now. I don’t think that was always true—my father loved Morgans and some people like Appaloosas, which are really workmanlike, and they tend to be calm horses. Quarterhorses are good at working with cattle because they’re quick; they make good cutting horses. They’re bred for that. We had some Arabians when I was younger, but they were too hot—they had lots of energy and endurance, so even after you rode one all day, he would still have enough energy to buck you off.