A Texas Cowboy: or, Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony

by Charles A. Siringo

Other authorsRichard Etulain (Contributor)

Paperback, 2000

Status

Available

Call number

976.406092

Genres

Biography & Memoir

Biography

Nonfiction

Collection

Your library

Publication

Penguin Classics (2000), Paperback, 224 pages

Description

After a nomadic childhood, Charles Siringo signed on as a teenage cowboy for the noted Texas cattle king Shanghai Pierce and began a life that embraced all the hard work, excitement, and adventure readers today associate with the cowboy era. He "rid the Chisholm Trail," driving 2,500 head of cattle from Austin to Kansas; knew Tascosa - now a historic monument - when it was home to raucous saloons, red-light districts, and a fair share of violence; and joined a posse of cowboys in pursuit of Billy the Kid and his gang. First published in 1885, Siringo's chronicle of his life as an itchy-footed boy, cowhand, range detective, and adventurer was one of the first classics about the Old West and helped to romanticize the West and its myth of the American cowboy. Will Rogers declared, "That was the Cowboy's Bible when I was growing up."… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Stbalbach

It has been said that A Texas Cowboy was the original western. Will Rogers said it was "the Cowboy's Bible" when he was growing up. An historian said it was the first authentic memoir by a real cowboy. It contains a gold mine of names, cowboy lingo, places and events such as "Whiskey Pete", Billy

the Kid's secret hideout, and "grub". I felt a constant déjà vu since so many later books and movies drew from things described here (though not only here). It's not a romanticized account, it reads like non-fiction and is unflinching - children beat up and generally very harsh times in particular during the 1860s when Siringo left home a young teenager. It seemed Siringo initially became a cowboy because he could at least obtain meat on the prairie since there were so many cattle around for the taking, he was otherwise a starving homeless kid. The story of Billy the Kid is the most famous and attracted much attention, then and now, but there is a lot of incident of the regular cowboy life that I found interesting. (Via the excellent David Wales narration at LibriVox).

Show Less

1 more

LibraryThing member DinadansFriend

Charlie Siringo was real, a genuine lawman who was a friend of Charlie Bowdrie, who was a friend and often companion of William Bonney, "Billy the Kid". Siringo drifted uphill from his birth on the Texas Gulf coast, and was a spectator (...just a spectator, honest! ) of many colourful parts of the

Old West. He eventually became a technical adviser to the William S. Hart Movies. This is his version of his salad days, and it's a good read. His later book on the use of private security forces to carry out class warfare "Two Evil Isms: Anarchism and Pinkertonism" is always hard to find, though it's more valuable to the historian. Check out the final episodes of HBO's "deadwood" for the results of that book.

Show Less

Fewer