f
coffee. On the sides of the wagon, outside the wagon box, were
securely lashed the two great water barrels, each supplied with a
spigot, which are indispensable in trail driving. Where, as in this
instance, exceptionally long dry drives were to be made other water
kegs were carried in the wagons.

Such wagons were rude affairs, great prairie schooners, hooded in
canvas to keep out the rain. Some of them were miracles of patchwork,
racked and strained and broken till scarcely a sound bit of iron or
wood remained, but, all splinted and bound with strips of the cowboy's
indispensable rawhide, they wabbled crazily along, with many a shriek
and groan, threatening every moment to collapse, but always holding
together until some extraordinary accident required the application of
new rawhide bandages. I have no doubt there are wagons of this sort in
use in Texas to-day that went over the trail in 1868.

The men need little description, for the cowboy type has been made
familiar by Buffalo Bill's most truthful exhibitions of plains life.
Lean, wiry, bronzed men, their legs cased in leather chaparejos, with
small boots, high heels, and great spurs, they were, despite their
loose, slouchy seat, the best rough-riders in the world.

Cowboy character is not well understood. Its most distinguishing trait
was absolute fidelity. As long as he liked you well enough to take
your pay and eat your grub, you could, except in very rare instances,
rely implicitly upon his faithfulness and honesty. To be sure, if he
got the least idea he was being misused he might begin throwing lead at
you out of the business end of a gun at any time; but so long as he
liked you, he was just as ready with his weapons in your defence, no
matter what the odds or who the enemy. Another characteristic trait
was his profound respect for womanhood. I never heard of a cowboy
insulting a woman, and I don't believe any real cowboy ever did. Men
whose nightly talk around the camp-fire is of home and "mammy" are apt
to be a pretty good sort. And yet another quality for which he was
remarkable was his patient, uncomplaining endurance of a life of
hardship and privation equalled only among seafarers. Drenched by rain
or bitten by snow, scorched by heat or stiffened by cold, he passed it
all off with a jest. Of a bitterly cold night he might casually remark
about the quilts that composed his bed: "These here durned huldys ain't
much thicker 'n hen skin!"