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    The Little Red Book of Cowboy Wisdom
    The Little Red Book of Cowboy Wisdom
    The Little Red Book of Cowboy Wisdom
    Ebook163 pages1 hour

    The Little Red Book of Cowboy Wisdom

    By Stephen Brennan and Johnny D. Boggs

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    About this ebook

    From real, larger-than-life showmen like Buffalo Bill to silver-screen gunslingers like John Wayne, the cowboy has become an international symbol of honor, adventure, valor, daring, and courage. The era of the cowboy lasted from roughly just before the Civil War to the turn of the century, but it created some of the most enduring and popular names of all time: Jesse James, Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok, and Pat Garrett, just to name a few. And although the days of duels and showdowns are over, the wisdom and values of those times live on.

    The Little Red Book of Cowboy Wisdom offers the lessons learned and taught by the men of an earlier, simpler era. Chapters include:
    • Tenderfeet
    • Six-Gun or High Noon
    • Around the Campfire
    • Cowboy Love
    • One-Liners
    • And more!

    The cowboy is without a doubt one of the greatest characters in American history—the soul and backbone of a country. This book is filled with some of the greatest and most lively quotations, sayings, and anecdotes ever to come out of the American West.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSkyhorse
    Release dateOct 1, 2013
    ISBN9781628735000
    The Little Red Book of Cowboy Wisdom
    Author

    Johnny D. Boggs

    Johnny D. Boggs has worked cattle, been bucked off horses, shot rapids in a canoe, hiked across mountains and deserts, traipsed around ghost towns, and spent hours poring over microfilm in library archives—all in the name of finding a good story. He has won nine Spur Awards, making him the all-time leader in Western Writers of America’s history.

    Read more from Stephen Brennan

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      Book preview

      The Little Red Book of Cowboy Wisdom - Stephen Brennan

      INTRODUCTION

      By Johnny D. Boggs

      In May of 1999, I worked on a cattle drive, moving about a hundred head of Herefords and a few longhorns to their summer pasture in Arizona’s White Mountains. That’s not something I do every day, but I had a magazine assignment, and, as a Western novelist, I wasn’t about to pass up on that experience.

      About halfway through the drive, as I mounted my giant horse, Jack, my camera slid over my shoulder and slammed into Jack’s neck. The rodeo began. No time for that, cowboy. I went sailing, but—not wanting to be left afoot—I snagged the reins, holding on as I slammed into the ground.

      It wasn’t my first horse wreck. Nor would it be my last.

      Quickly, I got up, calmed down Jack, and checked my camera, which was fine. The only thing injured was my pride, plus that leather burn across my palm since I hadn’t put on my gloves. Looking around, I realized I had been blessed. Nobody had noticed, too busy looking after the herd or their own horses. I climbed back in the saddle and resumed my position.

      The following evening, as we gathered around a campfire, honesty got the better of me. Some of the cowboys were joking about another rider who had been spilled. That’s the only rodeo we’ve had on this drive, a grizzled cowhand said while drinking coffee.

      No, I admitted sheepishly. Jack bucked me off the other day.

      Everyone stared at me. Then, the veteran asked, Did anyone see it?

      No, sir, I replied.

      Well. He sipped his coffee. If nobody saw it, it didn’t happen.

      Such logic appealed to me. That’s the kind of wisdom only a veteran cowboy could acquire.

      Over the years, I’ve interviewed, befriended, studied, written about, and ridden with many cowboys and ranchers. One pulled his partial from his mouth to show me his latest badge of honor. Another, recovering from a bad wreck, waxed philosophical: Never been hurt, never been horseback. Which was the first thing that came to my mind in the Ruidoso, New Mexico, emergency room when the doctor told me after my latest up-close-and-personal look at cowboying, Two fractured ribs. You’re in for a fun six months. Stay off horses for a while.

      In this Little Red Book, Stephen Brennan has captured the cowboy’s wisdom, and you don’t have to be a cowboy to relate to many of these pearls.

      Brennan draws from movies like Will Penny, one of Hollywood’s most accurate depictions of the cowboy and perhaps Charlton Heston’s best performance. Kirk Douglas has said that his favorite role was as Jack Burns in Lonely Are the Brave, based on Edward Abbey’s novel The Brave Cowboy. Joel McCrea often considered his occupation to be rancher, not actor.

      Brennan relies on cowboys who earned their fame in other fields. Eugene Manlove Rhodes cowboyed for twenty-five years in southern New Mexico and drew on that experience when he turned to writing. Copper Streak Trail and Pasó por Aquí—the latter turned into one of my favorite Western movies, Four Faces West—helped Rhodes become known as The Bard of the Tularosa. Charlie Russell left his Missouri home when he was sixteen, bound for Montana to become a cowboy. And he did, working in the Judith Basin while painting and sculpting on the side before turning to art full time. Today, Russell’s paintings and bronzes continue to inspire artists, art lovers, and Western aficionados.

      Some of the quotes are humorous. Never follow good whiskey with water, lessen you’re out of good whiskey, an unknown cowhand once observed.

      Others are deadly serious. Most men are more afraid of being thought cowards than of anything else, and a lot more afraid of being thought physical cowards than moral ones. That’s from The Ox-Bow Incident, Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s first novel, which put two drifting cowboys, Art Croft and Gil Carter, in the middle of a lynching. A classic indictment of mob law—I first read it in my junior year English class in high school—it was turned into a powerful Western film in 1943 starring Henry Fonda.

      Yet funny or serious, anonymous or known, these sayings all show just how wise cowboys (real, wannabe, or pretend) could be. And still are.

      I grew up in South Carolina during the tail end of the Western TV boom. Gunsmoke was a Monday evening routine. On our elementary school playground, we reenacted The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, despising Martha Knight, who had traveled to Tombstone on summer vacation and had the audacity to inform us: It didn’t happen that way at all! I played hooky my senior year in high school to watch Fort Apache. My bookcases and DVD cases overflow with Westerns. Log of a Cowboy. These Thousand Hills. The Time It Never Rained. The Rounders. Hell’s Hinges. Red River. My Darling Clementine. Jubal.

      Children today may not have that connection I had growing up, but whenever I walk into a grammar school or library in boots and cowboy hat, those boys and girls—and often the adults, too— get excited. The cowboy remains an iconic American figure.

      Perhaps my biggest pet peeve is when I read or watch something about The End of the West or The Last Cowboy.

      The West isn’t over, and cowboys are still working on ranches, herding cattle. When I walk into the local grocery, I’ll often see

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