The trail drivers of open range days,
nearly all dead now, felt the urge to record experiences more
strongly than their successors. They realized that they had
been a part of an epic life.
The fact that the hired man on horseback has been as good a
man as the owner and, on the average, has been a more spirited
and eager man than the hand on foot may afford some
explanation of the validity and vitality of his chroniclings,
no matter how crude they be. On the other hand, the fact that
the rich owner and the college-educated aspirant to be a
cowboy soon learned, if they stayed on the range, that _a
man's a man for a' that_ may to some extent account for a
certain generous amplitude of character inherent in their most
representative reminiscences. Sympathy for the life biases my
judgment; that judgment, nevertheless, is that some of the
strongest and raciest autobiographic writing produced by
America has been by range men.
This is not to say that these chronicles are of a high
literary order. Their writers have generally lacked the
maturity
{illust. caption =
Tom Lea, in _The Longhorns_ by J. Frank Dobie (1941)}
of mind, the reflective wisdom, and the power of observation
found in personal narratives of the highest order.
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