We give a picture of a cowboy of to-day, and will endeavor to show in
what important respects he differs from the cowboy of fiction, and even
of history.

Sensational writers have described the cowboy as a thoroughly bad man,
and, moreover, as one who delights in the word "bad," and regards it as
a sort of diploma or qualification. Travelers over the region in which
the cowboy used to be predominant give him a very different character,
and speak of him as a hard-working, honest citizen, generous to a fault,
courteous to women and aged or infirm men, but inclined to be humorous
at the expense of those who are strong and big enough to return a joke,
or resent it, if they so prefer.

We have spoken of the cowboy in two tenses: the present and the past.
Strictly speaking, we should, perhaps, have only used one, for many of
the best judges say that there is no such thing as a cowboy in this day
and generation. He flourished in all his glory in the days of immense
ranges, when there was an abundance of elbow room for both man and
beast, and when such modern interferences with the cattle business as
the barb-wire fence did not exist. The work of cattle herding and
feeding to-day certainly differs in a most remarkable manner from that
of thirty and even twenty years ago, and the man has naturally changed
with his work. Now, the cowboy is, to all intents and purposes, a farm
hand. He feeds the stock, drives it to water when necessary, and goes to
the nearest market town to dispose of surplus products, with all the
system and method of a thoroughly domesticated man. Formerly he had
charge of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of branded cattle, which
ranged at will over boundless prairies, and the day's work was
frequently varied by a set-to with some unfriendly Indians or some
exceptionally daring cattle thieves.