habits, but the would-be brave young man, who a few moments before had
been a candidate for a life of danger and hardship, was so horrified at
the bare idea, that he decided in a moment to emulate the Irishman who
said he had left his future behind him, and jumped from the moving
train, preferring a succession of knocks and bruises to actual contact
with a man of the character he had schooled himself into admiring.

Every man who creates a disturbance, defies the law, and discharges
fire-arms at random is spoken of as a cowboy, although in a majority of
instances he has never done a day's work to justify the name. The tough
man from the East who goes West to play the bad cowboy, is liable to
find that he has been borrowing trouble. He finds out that an
altercation is likely to bring him up facing the muzzle of a pistol in
the hands of a man much more ready to pull the trigger off-hand than to
waste time in preliminary talk. He soon learns the lesson of
circumspection and, if he survives the process, his behavior is usually
modified to fit his new surroundings. A tragic illustration of the
results that may come from a tenderfoot's attempt to masquerade as a bad
man west of the Mississippi River, took place in the winter of 1881-82
in New Mexico, on a southward-bound Atchison train. One of the strangers
was terrorizing the others. He was a tough-looking fellow from some
Eastern city; he had been drinking, and he paraded the cars talking
loudly and profanely, trying to pick quarrels with passengers and
frequently flourishing a revolver. The train hands did not seem inclined
to interfere with him, and among the people aboard whom he directly
insulted, he did not happen to hit upon any one who had the sand or the
disposition to call him down.

Toward the members of a theatrical company, traveling in one of the
coaches, he particularly directed his violence and insults. His conduct