The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 31, July 1927 - April, 1928 Page: 364
390 p. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
grease with a rag wick. At these winter camps there was very
little work to do except ride the line (and later to ride the fences
after they had been built) in bad weather and keep the cattle from
drifting south and stacking up against the fences. In the early
spring when the "heel flies" came, the work became heavier. They
had to ride the "bogs" every day and pull out poor cattle that
had got stuck in the mud. "This was real work," says Mr. Martin,
"and rhany days of hard work were put in this way." About the
only amusement the cowboys had was hunting. There was plenty
of wild game such as quail, wild turkeys, deer, bear, loboes, coyotes,
and fox. Mr. Martin says that in one of the camps where he
stayed three months, the wild turkeys got so tame that they would
come in large droves and pick up, grain around the cabin where
horses were fed. He was so lonesome that even these wild turkeys
were company and he would not shoot them.
Ranch life has been a popular theme for writers for generations,
and in almost every instance ranch life has been depicted as an
easy, carefree life. The account given of a year's work on the
J A Ranch is (the writer believes) typical of almost any large
ranch in the early days. The reader will, no doubt, be impressed
with the fact that instead of ranch life in the early days being an
easy carefree life, it was, in fact, a very strenuous life. However,
there seems to have been a fascination attached to it, and anyone
who worked on a ranch for any length of time enjoyed it. Quot-
ing Hon. James Wadsworth, Jr., "No man who has ever worked
on the [J A] Ranch will overcome the longing to return there."
(Continued)364
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 31, July 1927 - April, 1928, periodical, 1928; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101088/m1/388/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.