Authentic tales of cowboy life on the southwestern frontier
In 1887, Vivian H. Whitlock went with his brother and widowed mother to live with his uncle, George Causey, a buffalo hunter turned rancher, at his ranch on the Llano Estacado (Staked Plains) in New Mexico. Here Whitlock describes—vividly, realistically, and with humor—what life was like on those vast, desolate plains at the turn of the century.
Among the visitors to the Causey ranch were old cowboys who grumbled about the "nesters," young cowboys "on the dodge" from the law, homesteaders in covered wagons, and Texas Rangers with prisoners who used the ranch as a "watering place." At sixteen, Whitlock got a job as a cowpuncher with the Littlefield (LFD) ranch. Riding the open range, he branded calves, braved blizzards, and rode herd on a hot-headed cowboy friend who frequented the gambling dens and brothels of the frontier towns. Whitlock attended some of the first rodeos and went to parties where nesters and cattleman forgot their differences while the barbeque and dancing lasted. At one party the young cowboy met his future wife, whom he stole from her disgruntled rancher father in a daring, and hilarious, elopement.
The stories in
Cowboy Life on the Llano Estacado
are so vivid that readers will feel themselves jar around in the saddle and find themselves picking catclaw thorns from their clothes.