camps. The ranches and the boys themselves banish the two latter;
and the first won't come. Women, cards and whiskey, the three war
causes of the West, are confined to the towns.

Those occasions when cattle are shipped and the beef-herds, per
consequence, driven to the shipping point become the only times when
the cowboy sees the town. In such hours he blooms and lives fully up
to his opportunity. He has travelled perhaps two hundred miles and
has been twenty days on the trail, for cattle may only be driven
about ten miles a day; he has been up day and night and slept half
the time in the saddle; he has made himself hoarse singing "Sam Bass"
and "The Dying Ranger" to keep the cattle quiet and stave off
stampedes; he has ridden ten ponies to shadows in his twenty days of
driving, wherefore, and naturally, your cowboy feels like relaxing.

There would be as many as ten men with each beef-herd; and the herd
would include about five thousand head. There would be six "riders,"
divided into three watches to stand night guard over the herd and
drive it through the day; there would be two "hoss hustlers," to hold
the eighty or ninety ponies, turn and turn about, and carry them
along with the herd; there would be the cook, with four mules and the
chuck wagon; and lastly there would be the herd-boss, a cow expert
he, and at the head of the business.

Once the herd is off his hands and his mind at the end of the drive,
the cowboy unbuckles and reposes himself from his labours. He
becomes deeply and famously drunk. Hungering for the excitement of
play he collides amiably with faro and monte and what other deadfalls
are rife of the place. Never does he win; for the games aren't
arranged that way. But he enjoys himself; and his losses do not prey