No one can go through the wide territory of Montana to-day without being
strongly impressed with the wonderful growth of the great cattle growing
and grazing industry of that territory. And yet Montana is but the
northern extremity of the great grazing belt which lies at the foot of
the Rocky Mountains, extending from the British possessions on the north
to the Mexican border on the south, extending eastward, too, as far as
the arable lands of Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas.
Montana, at this season of the year, is the paradise of the sleek,
high-headed, 2-year-old Texan steer, with his tail over the dashboard,
as well as the stock yearling, born on the range, beneath the glorious
mountain sky and under the auspices of roundup No. 21.
I do not say this to advertise the stock growing business, because it is
already advertised too much, anyway. So many millionaires have been
made with "free grass" and the early-rising, automatic branding iron
that every man in the United States who has a cow that can stand the
journey seems to be about to take her west and embark in business as a
cattle king.
But let me warn the amateur cow man that in the great grazing regions it
takes a good many acres of thin grass to maintain the adult steer in
affluence for twelve months, and the great pastures at the base of the
mountains are being pretty well tested. Moreover, I believe that these
great conventions of cattlemen, where free grass and easily acquired
fortunes are naturally advertised, will tend to overstock the ranges at
last and founder the goose that now lays the golden egg. This, of
course, is really none of my business, but if I didn't now and then
refer to matters that do not concern me I would be regarded as reticent.
My intention, however, in approaching the great cow industry, which, by
the way, is anything but an industry, being in fact more like the
seductive manner whereby a promissory note acquires 2 per cent. per
month without even stopping to spit on its hands, was to refer
incidentally to the proposition of an English friend of mine. This
friend, seeing at once the great magnitude of the cow industry and the
necessity for more and more cowboys, has suggested the idea of
establishing a cowboys' college, or training school, for self-made young
men who desire to become accomplished. The average Englishman will most
always think of something that nobody else would naturally think of.
Now, our cattleman would have gone on for years with his great steer
emporium without thinking of establishing an institution where a poor
boy might go and learn to rope a 4-year-old in such a way as to throw
him on his stomach with a sickening thud.
The young Maverick savant could take a kindergarten course in the study
of cow brands. Here a wide field opens up to the scholar. The adult
steer in the great realm of beef is now a walking Chinese wash bill, a
Hindoo poem in the original junk shop alphabet, a four-legged Greek
inscription, punctuated with jim-jams, a stenographer's notes of a riot,
a bird's-eye view of a premature explosion in a hardware store.
The cowboy who can at once grapple with the great problem of where to
put the steer with "B bar B" on left shoulder, "Key circle G" on left
side, "Heart D Heart" on right hip, left ear crop, wattle te wattle, and
seven hands round with "Dash B Dash" on right shoulder "vented," wattle
on dew lap vented, and "P. D. Q.," "C. O. D.," and "N. G." vented on
right side, keeping track of transfers, range and post-office of last
owner, has certainly got a future, which lies mostly ahead of him.
But now that the idea has been turned loose, I shall look forward to the
time when wealthy men who have been in the habit of dying and leaving
their money to other institutions, will meet with a change of heart, and
begin to endow the cowboys' college, and the Maverick hotbed of broncho
sciences.
We live in an age of rapid advancement in all branches of learning, and
people who do not rise early in the morning will not retain their
position in the procession. I look forward with confidence to the day
when no cowboy will undertake to ride the range without a diploma.
Educated labor is what we need. Cowboys who can tell you in scientific
terms why it is always the biggest steer that eats "pigeon weed" in the
spring and why he should swell up and bust on a rising Chicago market.
I hope that the day is not far distant when in the holster of the cowboy
we will find the Iliad instead of the killiad, the unabridged dictionary
instead of Mr. Remington's great work on homicide. As it is now on the
ranges you might ride till your Mexican saddle ached before you would
find a cowboy who carries a dictionary with him. For that reason the
language used on the general roundup is at times grammatically
incorrect, and many of our leading cowboys spell "cavvy-yard" with a
"k."
A college for riding, roping, branding, cutting out, corralling, loading
and unloading, and handling cattle generally, would be a great boon to
our young men, who are at present groping in dark and pitiable ignorance
of the habits of the untutored cow. Let the young man first learn how to
sit up three nights in succession, through a bad March snow storm and
"hold" a herd of restless cattle. Let him then ride through the hot sun
and alkali dust a week or two, subsisting on a chunk of disagreeable
side pork just large enough to bait a trap. Then let his horse fall on
him and injure his constitution and preamble. All these things would
give the cow student an idea of how to ride the range. The amateur who
has never tried to ride a skittish and sulky range has still a great
deal to learn.
Perhaps I have said too much on this subject, but when I get thoroughly
awakened on this great porterhouse steak problem I am apt to carry the
matter too far.