that the wages paid to cowboys are, and always have been, very small.
The hours that have to be worked, and the hardships that have to be
encountered, seem to combine together to deter men from leading the life
at all. We know that it does neither, and that it is seldom there is
really any dearth of help on the prairie or among the cattle herds. The
greatest delight is derived from jokes played at the expense of smart
tenderfeet, who approach the camp with too much confidence in
themselves. The commonest way of convincing the newcomer that he has
made a mistake is to persuade him to ride an exceptionally fractious
pony. The task is generally approached with much confidence, and almost
invariably ends in grief. If the stranger can retain his seat and thus
upset the rehearsed programme, the delight of the onlookers is even
greater than their disappointment, and the newcomer is admitted at once
into the good fellowship of the crowd.

Nothing aggravates a cowboy so much, or makes him more desperate in his
selection of tricks, as the affectation of badness on the part of a
newcomer. A year or two ago a young man, who had been saving up his
money for years in order to emulate the deeds of some of the heroes
described in the cheap books he had been reading, arrived in the
Southwest, and proceeded to introduce himself to a number of employes of
a cattle ranch who, a few years ago, would have been known as regulation
cowboys. The unlimited impudence and the astounding mendacity of the
youth amused the cowboys very much, and they allowed him to narrate a
whole list of terrible acts he had committed in the East. Before he had
been in his new company an hour, he had talked of thefts and even
killings with the nonchalance of a man who had served a dozen years in
jail. His listeners enjoyed the absurdity of the situation, and allowed
him to talk at random without interruption.