Pamphlets are an important source of knowledge in all fields. No
first-class library is without them. Most of them become difficult
to obtain, and some bring higher prices than whole sets of books. Of
numerous pamphlets pertaining to the range, only a few are listed here.
_History of the Chisum War, or Life of Ike Fridge_, by Ike Fridge,
Electra, Texas (undated), is as compact as jerked beef and as laconic
as conversation in alkali dust. James F. Hinkle, in his _Early Days of
a Cowboy on the Pecos_, Roswell, New Mexico, 1937, says: "One noticeable
characteristic of the cowpunchers was that they did not talk much." Some
people don't have to talk to say plenty. Hinkle was one of them. At
a reunion of trail drivers in San Antonio in October, 1928, Fred S.
Millard showed me his laboriously written reminiscences. He wanted
them printed. I introduced him to J. Marvin Hunter of Bandera, Texas,
publisher of _Frontier Times_. I told Hunter not to ruin the English
by trying to correct it, as he had processed many of the earth-born
reminiscences in _The Trail Drivers of Texas_. He printed Millard's _A
Cowpuncher of the Pecos_ in pamphlet form shortly thereafter. It begins:
"This is a piece I wrote for the Trail Drivers." They would understand
some things on which he was not explicit.
About 1940, as he told me, Bob Beverly of Lovington, New Mexico, made a
contract with the proprietor of the town's weekly newspaper to print his
reminiscences. By the time the contractor had set eighty-seven pages
of type he saw that he would lose money if he set any more. He gave Bob
Beverly back more manuscript than he had used and stapled a pamphlet
entitled _Hobo of the Rangeland_. The philosophy in it is more
interesting to me than the incidents. "The cowboy of the old West worked
in a land that seemed to be grieving over something--a kind of sadness,
loneliness in a deathly quiet. One not acquainted with the plains could
not understand what effect it had on the mind. It produced a heartache
and a sense of exile."
Crudely printed, but printed as the author talked, is _The End of the
Long Horn Trail_, by A. P. (Ott) Black, Selfridge, North Dakota (August,
1939). As I know from a letter from his _compadre_, Black was blind and
sixty-nine years old when he dictated his memoirs to a college graduate
who had sense enough to retain the flavor. Black's history is badly
botched, but reading him is like listening. "It took two coons and an
alligator to spend the summer on that cotton plantation.... Cowpunchers
were superstitious about owls. One who rode into my camp one night had
killed a man somewhere and was on the dodge. He was lying down by the
side of the campfire when an owl flew over into some hackberry trees
close by and started hooting. He got up from there right now, got his
horse in, saddled up and rode off into the night."
John Alley is--or was--a teacher. His _Memories of Roundup Days_,
University of Oklahoma Press, 1934 (just twenty small pages), is an
appraisal of range men, a criticism of life seldom found in old-timers
who look back. On the other hand, some pamphlets prized by collectors
had as well not have been written. Here is the full title of an example:
_An Aged Wanderer, A Life Sketch of J. M. Parker, A Cowboy of the
Western Plains in the Early Days_. "Price 40 cents. Headquarters,
Elkhorn Wagon Yard, San Angelo, Texas." It was printed about 1923. When
Parker wrote it he was senile, and there is no evidence that he was
ever possessed of intelligence. The itching to get into print does not
guarantee that the itcher has anything worth printing.
Some of the best reminiscences have been pried out of range men. In 1914
the Wyoming Stock Growers Association resolved a Historical Commission
into existence. A committee was appointed and, naturally, one man did
the work. In 1923 a fifty-five-page pamphlet entitled _Letters from
Old Friends and Members of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association_ was
printed at Cheyenne. It is made up of unusually informing and pungent
recollections by intelligent cowmen.