The American cowboy; Ranch and range

With the lonely skies shoving down on his shoulders and the dust of a continent taking his throat he left his brand on the front tier of our history. I squinted ahead into savagery. Civilization dogging his heels and we give him to you who can take him straight. The American cowboy. Just one more time and I do you know take down the cane. Don't talk to me about a lot at carry a feast scene. Radio television the University of Texas presents the American cowboy. A series of programs reflecting the true place and picture of the significant historical figure. This unique folk hero. The American cowboy has

produced and recorded by radio television the University of Texas under a grant from the National Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcasting. Today programme for ranch and range. You mean the planes were there I would be. There's never a tree or there's where the there's where there's where the beefsteak grows. The Great Plains the cow country the cattle. One hundred and thirty million acres of vastness and harshness and opportunity of riches realized in ruination rampant a tempting spread of grass growing distance floating its way as for the trail gaunt cows where the buffalo would not come

again. There's never a tree that was enough to keep the land grabber backed up against the 98 Meridian nervously thing green is X. What are you going to do for house timbers fence posts and I like. But it didn't hobble the cowboy who had about as much use for an ax is an Indian bit. He could look from Texas to the Canadian border from the Mississippi sideboards on out to the Rocky Mountains without seeing things scarify in about all that good graze so he just drew his leathers leaned forward a mite to ease the strain on his mouth and hit that mammoth Flap like a bat gone into glory shouting for the world and all history to hear. That was his boast this lean hard haul strident Callahan. It was no idle boast and he was no idle man. Work was what he went in for

and work was what he was good at. Not just the foreman here. That's right. My name's pinko. What do you want. Work. What can you do. I reckon there's nothing you could give me I don't at least want a liable to do a good deal more than once if you stay with us often. Yeah a lot of shock gone down when the boys are tell them I say. You dusted the hired man on horseback approaches higher in the years between 1867 and 1885. When the range cattle industry was growing tough tenacious and inevitable in the rich rightness of playing in prairie with the buffalo white from the sea and the underfed in the weaker and weaker at his reservation limitless grass lands like drying Rawhi and a cowboy Archie get homesick without him.

That's right partner would for a fact raised that way. Lots of us were our own bread and bacon for a dirt floor in the house. Just take. Take and how she came depended on what you were doing and when that was and where you were at the time you have a been up now. Look Texas just one place I'll meet up north of San Anton. Yeah I've been all over that ever place where there's a range and going on I reckon. Brask the Dakotas Wyoming Montana Montana now what kind of climate is it in Montana. I'll tell you what you want a buffalo overcoat a linen duster and a slicker with you all the time. She cried and she came in all shapes and sizes and all kinds and conditions and degrees by the cows and you took what the land gave

for better or for worse in sickness and in health. Death did you part. Looks like we're going to have to shoot the poor fellow to bring relief. Boy Where's pig here. He's rolling with the misery claim somebody run a hot iron on him from the inside and a nobody doctor claims it can spare flour and salt. There's nary a smallest good a bachelor button for a hundred miles. There's a fine stand of cottonwoods down by the draw though. What say we get some of the Bok cottonwood bro you ever took it. Yeah not to get bit is losing your best gal to a sheep man. But there is this to say Ford bitter not bitter you know get the job done. That's what he was looking for this cowboy of ranch and range something to get the

job done because in bucking the great American wilderness he was faced up to a job that was new to him. To those who begat him and to those backed up behind him around in the settlements waiting to see what he was going to do that wasn't much doubt according to Westermeyer in trading the cowboy what. That had better be the work of the cowboy It was his very life. The Great Plains as a cradle of vastness are rocked by storm and strife nurtured only the strong survival meant to work to live the elemental law of nature. So it was a plain case of die dog or eat the hatchet get the job done or good riddance to bad rubbish. The only question was how. That was quite a problem. And the final answer was to be a hard hazardous quarter of a century in the coming but the American cowboy didn't rattle is that about final answers.

And skin out. That's the way he tackled the job of saddle breaking in this country on the ready. Not 20 and around was the winter dark closing in on the sod headquarters of a lion camp you poor in bacon grease. Tim Cook you know what fur stick in a twisted rag letter hard now I got me. Be sure do and that I you know come spring this whole kit and caboodle is going to smell like a bunch of New England boiled dinners. Lost on a faceless range innocent of landmarks with the location of his ranch outfit a shrouded mystery. We got about as much chance of finding can be find and couse even heaven right now just water and it's not quite such a poser all we gotta do is look at Bush. No water how much Skeet Bush

skeet seed sprout Mustang grap and most days don't wait for water when you Miss Skeat and you can bet your bottom dollar you're within three miles of a drink one direction or another. The cowboy I like is modern counterpart was first of all a worker with cows. He was a man plying his trade. Whether that happened to be trail driving or range writing. Thus wrote friends and showed in their book The American cowboy and Walter Prescott Webb as pointed out in the Great Plains. The planes worked their will and man conformed the planes put men on horseback and taught them to work in that way to work in that way for any considerable length of time to stay on horseback and keep plying his trade. The cowboy had to master its tricks and it was to learn what could be done as a matter of hurry up on the spot.

I don't know what you're going to beat. All right here goes right back to why I'm good. Ownership posed its riddles and he solved them with prayer and he had a wild opens up to the sky. The adults in the great round of beef is now a walking Chinese wash. A Hindu poet and a four legged Greek inscription punctuated

with jim jams a stenographer his notes of a riot a bird's eye view of the explosion. You know the cowboys answers to the questions posed by the Pioneer wilderness were crude practical and specific spelled out in the ordeal of his daily work. Before his eyes where the Mavericks to be branded the Drifters to be turned back to rain. The beef herds to be shaped. The calves to be the screw arms so as to be doctored. Heel flies to be coped with in his nostrils the stench of burned flesh scorched hair dried blood in his ears the loud and rowdy sounds of the get together wait before general round up. Right. TIME If you don't keep moving him back everything had one stacked in the bottom corner of Texas you know. Don't nobody know why that is Norton

and there are a lot of them going over the cliff so I brought my all you up like you never saw riding so high and scary and he's over and over the saddle splayed. Small wonder that all around him and out across the virgin country the Cowboys failed to notice the bigger rancher shaping up the bigger pattern hauling in the plates. There was ranching and the ranch cattle industry but it has taken the historian with hindsight and book learning to spell it out. Up from the South came the natural institution something new something without antecedents something willing to conform to all the laws of necessity. And industry remarkably adapted to the country that it appropriated. The

spread of the Ranger ranch cattle industry over the Great Plains in the breathtaking span of 15 years is perhaps one of the outstanding phenomena in American history. Yeah. Ranch and rain radio television the University of Texas has brought you program number four of the American cowboy. Today's broadcast is based on source materials from the Texas History Library of the barker History Center and the western publications True West and frontier times edited by Joe small. A bibliography is available on request. The American cowboy as directed by Bill Burke from scripts by Mary D Benjamin under the supervision of Robert F. shank douceur Arsinoe original music by Eleanor page. Now writer is Horton Wayne Smith.

Student production assistant Alan Tate. Dan Langfield speaking. Ranch and range was produced and recorded by radio television at the University of Texas under a grant from the National Educational Television and Radio Center and is being distributed by the National Association of educational broadcasts. This is the N A B Radio Network.