…and on the eighth day God created the horse in perfect image, to romp, graze, gallop, play, and make manure wherever it darn well pleases, in divine grace.
Continuing with life on The Best Great Western Trail, cowboy life was lonely, dusty, and difficult. Many of the riders were drifters, ex-Civil War soldiers, or criminals. Flooded rivers, thunderstorms, and lonely days and nights were the normal routine on cattle drives. Cowboys might become homesick for homes they didn’t even have.
Usually the cook would be awake before the sunrise, stoking up the fire and preparing to make the breakfast. Pulling supplies from the “chuck box,” or the cupboard-style unit attached to the back of the “chuck wagon,” which held all the food, pans, and utensils, he would begin to boil the coffee and set up the fare for the cowboys, who would awake at first light. (1)
Sometimes the coffee beans would be soaked overnight, and a hand-turned crank would grind them up for the rich brew that was consumed a lot by the trail riders.
Preserved food was the norm, like salted bacon, beans, or hard-tack biscuits.
Cowboys would fight over who got to grind the coffee.
The Arbuckle Coffee Company sold coffee out west, and they would hide a stick of peppermint candy in each bag of coffee. It was a nice surprise to take out a scoop of coffee beans and come up with a peppermint stick. (2)
If there was no coffee pot in the chuck wagon, the grinds would just be thrown into any old pot, ala “Cowboy Coffee,” and then sifted out with a slotted spoon and removed, to serve. Or someone’s sock would be used to hold the coffee grounds, acting as a sort of tea bag, and this was immersed into the boiling water as the coffee was brewed.
If there was wild game present, like deer or birds, these would be shot and eaten. Sometimes there were injured cattle that couldn’t go on any further, and these were shot and eaten, also.
If there was farmland, corn was picked and used in biscuits, cakes, and corn-based food. (3)
When canned goods became available in tin, fruits such as peaches were consumed, and canned tomatoes were especially prized, due to the acidic nature of the vegetables. A lot of the water the cowboys drank was alkaline-based, and the tomato acid helped to balance out the diet. (4)
There were approximately ten to fifteen riders on any given cattle run.
After breakfast, the cowboys would pick out fresh horses for the day’s work.
Usually the Trail Boss was out ahead of the herd, and down along the sides and through the herd of cattle, situated on each side, were the points, flanks, and lastly, the drag riders, bringing up the rear. (5)
On a good day, with clear weather, the drive could cover about 15 miles. Short drives might only make 8 miles per day.
Bad trails days included nasty weather, flooded rivers, hostile Indians, or stampeding herds.
Sometimes cowboys and cattle would die or drown.
Journals from cowboys indicate that at Doan’s River Crossing, a large herd of cattle stampeded and some 30,000 cattle were running around, crazed, due to a night time storm. It took six days to get them all rounded up again. (6)
The Trail Boss would decide on where to stop for the day.
More coffee would be brewed and dinner was cooked. Sometimes there would be beef soup.
After dinner, the “cookie” would clean up the dishes and the cowpokes would make up their beds, usually a blanket on the ground and possibly a blanket to cover with. They might relax around a fire, or sing cattle songs to the herd.
The cook would clean the supper dishes and pots, and then point the tongue of the chuck wagon at the North Star, so come morning, everyone would know where they were headed.
After the open range began to disappear because of land purchases, barbed wire, and rail roads, some of the cowboys bought land along the trails they once travelled, using the money they made to set up a small spread of their own. Today, many of their family descendants still live on those ranches. (7)
Here are a couple of cowboy recipes, ala the American West:
Cowboy Beans
2 lbs pinto beans
2 lbs ham hocks or salt pork
2 onions, chopped
4 tablespoons sugar
1 can tomato paste
Optional: 2 green chili peppers to taste
Wash and soak the beans overnight in a pot of water. Drain beans, and then add fresh water to cover the beans in the pot. Add all other ingredients, simmer on, until tender. Salt to taste and add water to suit. (8)
Son-of-a-B*tch-Stew
2 pounds lean beef
½ calf heart
1 ½ lbs calf liver
1 set sweetbreads
1 set calf brains
1 set marrow gut
Salt & pepper
Optional: Hot Sauce
Kill off a young steer. Cut up beef, heart, and liver into 1-inch cubes. Slice marrow gut into small rings. Place all into a Dutch oven or a deep casserole dish. Cover the meat with water and simmer for 2 to 3 hours. Add the salt, pepper, and (optional Hot Sauce.) Cut up the sweetbreads and calf brains into small pieces, and add them to the stew. Simmer for another hour, do not let stew boil. (9)
Sound like manly meals to me, complete with cowboy coffee in a sock, and it was the wise cook who pointed the way for everyone, come morning.
That is all for now.
So you won’t get lost, I am leaving you with the quotable words of Captain James T. Kirk, who blazed new trails much later in history, “Take the second star to the right, and straight on till morning.”
But I will close out with my usual, the immortal words of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, “Happy Trails to You.”
1-7: The Rotarian Magazine, December 2017, Vol. 196, No. 6/Frank Bures
8,9: “The Cowboys,” by William Forbis