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First published in 1953, this photographic record of the real life and work of cowboys remains a perennial favorite. Erwin E. Smith was the outstanding cowboy photographer of the West, and these eighty photographs were among those he chose for an exhibit of his best work at the 1936 Texas Centennial. The text by J. Evetts Haley, a noted historian of the range, skillfully complements Smith's visual record of a vanishing way of life.

Hard copy copyright held by The Texas Folklore Society.

'No. 7'—as Carpenter, the youngest of seven children, called himself—was born in Missouri in 1854 and moved west with his family, first to Kansas, then to the settlements near Pikes Peak, and finally, in 1872, to Texas with his elder brother. From the time he made his first cattle drive, he wanted no other life but that of herding longhorns across the free and flat grasslands of the West. His schooling was the trail, the campfire, the saddle. In 1900, after a full and active life, he retired to his own ranch west of the Pecos. As the years passed, he sadly watched the fences go up and the free range disappear. Thus this book came to be written from the longing memory of a time-stranded cowman. He tells his story in the hard-punching, gritty language, direct humor, and attachment to bald fact and frank opinion that characterize the true Westerner. Elton Miles has provided an introduction that fills in the details of Carpenter's life and completes a'vivid picture of the genuine old-time cowman,'as Southwest Review observed.

E. C. Abbott was a cowboy in the great days of the 1870's and 1880's. He came up the trail to Montana from Texas with the long-horned herds which were to stock the northern ranges; he punched cows in Montana when there wasn't a fence in the territory; and he married a daughter of Granville Stuart, the famous early-day stockman and Montana pioneer. For more than fifty years he was known to cowmen from Texas to Alberta as'Teddy Blue.'This is his story, as told to Helena Huntington Smith, who says that the book is'all Teddy Blue. My part was to keep out of the way and not mess it up by being literary.... Because the cowboy flourished in the middle of the Victorian age, which is certainly a funny paradox, no realistic picture of him was ever drawn in his own day. Here is a self-portrait by a cowboy which is full and honest.'And Teddy Blue himself says,'Other old-timers have told all about stampedes and swimming rivers and what a terrible time we had, but they never put in any of the fun, and fun was at least half of it.'So here it is—the cowboy classic, with the'terrible'times and the'fun'which have entertained readers everywhere. First published in 1939, We Pointed Them North has been brought back into print by the University of Oklahoma Press in completely new format, with drawings by Nick Eggenhofer, and with the full, original text.

Billie Timmons was fourteen when he met Charles Goodnight—over a wagonload of manure that had been jammed on a gatepost—and he went to work on the Goodnight Cross J Ranch shortly thereafter. The spirit of helpfulness that led Mr. Goodnight to strip off his coat and lift the wagon free for a lad in need sets the tone of this book, in which the author unwinds a spool of recollections of range-riding in Texas and North Dakota over an eighteen-year period. When Billie Timmons went to work for Mr. Goodnight in 1892, Texas was undergoing a rapid transition from open range to fences. But around Texas campfires he heard tales about the northern range, told by cowboys who had ridden there and who had seen the northern lights, the tall free grass, swollen streams, and stampeding cattle. A longing to see that exciting country took hold of young Timmons. His chance came when four buffaloes from the Goodnight ranch needed a nursemaid for their freight car trip to Yellowstone Park. Once in the northern country, Timmons stayed, casting his lot with the cowmen of North Dakota. He became the protégé of an extraordinary man, William Ray; he was foreman, friend, and confidant of banker-rancher Wilse Richards, a member of the Cowboy Hall of Fame. But even during his days in North Dakota he never lost touch with Charles Goodnight, a lifelong friend, and his portrayal of Goodnight provides much insight into the character of the man whose name belongs to the West. In this book you experience the terror of being lost in the dead-white expanse of a North Dakota snowstorm; the gaiety of cowboy dances, for which there were never enough women available; the excitement of a near-riot in a Hebron, North Dakota, saloon, where cowboys from the 75 Ranch drank up or poured out all the liquor, then smashed all the glasses and bottles—one day before the state became bone-dry; and the loneliness of work on the range, where a flickering lantern on the side of a chuck wagon on a stormy night meant home for many a cowboy. Running like a bright thread through the narrative is Billie Timmons's love of horses, from whom he learned the wisdom that some horses and some men are to be handled with great care and others are not to be handled at all. His chapter on Buck, his best-loved horse, is memorable. In North Dakota, as in Texas, fences brought the end of the big herds and the end of cowboying for a man who enjoyed it to the hilt.

Once again, through a boy's eyes, Ralph Jackson sees a winter sky darkened with geese and ducks, a kitchen stove glowing with cheerful warmth, Aunt May strolling in her flower garden, moonlight filtering through treetops to cast patches of white light on a sandy woodland road. Again he catches odors once so familiar: of a mysterious attic, of burning salt grass in late summer, of mountain streams with their fresh green smell, of dark-roast coffee and of slab bacon sizzling in the pan. He hears again a panther's scream from the darkness surrounding a campfire, the scampering of mice across the barnloft floor, the sigh of a felled pine tree changing to a crashing roar as it meets the ground, the sounds of a meal in preparation, the hum of a mosquito swarm rising from the marshes. He remembers the taste of barbecued goat, the sweet sharpness of peppermint candy, the flavor of gumdrops from the country store—where, as showcase neighbors of cigars and chewing tobacco, they acquired a faint tobacco taste. And he feels again the welcome shock of frigid spring water on a hot perspiring body, the pleasant sensation of sand between his toes, the breathtaking exhilaration of swinging on a sapling top. The joy of childhood on an East Texas ranch is the subject of this book: exciting events like the arrival of the first norther of the season, swimming with alligators, hogkilling, building tree houses, roundup, hunting and fishing, calf-riding, fording strange streams. Interspersed among these episodes are others of darker mood: a smallpox epidemic, the burning of the ranch house, wolves attacking the cattle. Jackson's characters come alive. Scenes are vivid; moods are various and enveloping. The author has told the delightful story of his boyhood from a highly personal yet universal perspective, and in doing so he has presented a picture of a region of the state previously largely neglected in Texas literature.