as i grow older there are rather strange thoughts come to my mind about cowboys and cow people. i have mingled with most all classes of the human race and i have some very true and sincere friends among all classes—but i don’t believe there is any other people in the world that was as intimate and friendly on short acquaintance as the old time cowboy and cowman.
they would fight among themselves and some of them would steal from each other but let one of them get in a tough spot and his clan would come to his rescue when everybody else had throwed him down, i was on a roundup on the moccasin range in montana in the year 1888 and a small rancher lost a milk cow. he had come to the round up to ride with us for a few days to try to find his cow. the next morning we left camp about daylight and hadn’t went a mile from camp when his horse fell and broke the man’s leg above the knee. we got the bedwagon and fixed some blankets in it the best we could and drove him 20 miles to a doctor. the boys raised three hundred dollars for that fellow ... and none of them had ever seen him before that day he came to camp.
there was an old-time cowboy and cowman—lived at gilroy, california, that i knew for twenty years. his name was ed willson. he is dead now—but when i recall the many kindnesses he extended to me in those years i knew him, it has burned a brand on my memory that time cannot blot out. he was as rough and tough as a grizzly bear, and to know him on the surface meant you didn’t know him at all. my wife and i had eaten christmas dinner with him and his family for several years and he had planned for it again the year he died. he had been quite sick for a long time but came to see me on the sand of december with an invitation to come again to the christmas dinner. i was sick in bed and told him we would come if i was able, but i got worse and on christmas day could not get up. he was also in bed on that day—but when noontime came and we didn’t show up he had his wife, pal, fix up a tray of turkey dinner and bring it in and show it to him. he smiled and said, “that ought to cure the old son-of-a-gun.” he had it sent three miles to my home. he died a few days after. i never saw him after he came to give me the invitation. that is just one of the many kind considerations that the old-time cowboy had for the other fellow—and i believe if they were organized they would be the greatest fraternity on earth.
