Writing of his life on the range, Bruce Kiskaddon always presented himself as a common waddy, a hired man on horseback. But to the readers of his poems and stories in the Western Livestock Journal during the 1930s and ’40s he was a star—“the best cowboy poet that ever wrote a cowboy poem.”¹ On a monthly schedule he cast nuggets of experience into meter and rhyme and spun loosely autobiographical yarns with the dry, understated humor so valued in cowboy culture. His settings were the arid Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona locales he knew and loved. The time was...

My first work with cattle was down in southwest Missouri. I was twelve years old. Four of us, all about the same age, were day herding a bunch of cows on what unfenced country there was around that place. We had quite a lot of room and at night we put them in an eighty acre pasture. We four kids worked at it all summer. We rode little Indian horses and went home at night. Not much cow punching, that’s a fact, but it was big business to us. The talk of opening the Indian territory for settlement had started,³...

A rough hand is a heap of help pervidin he has sence with it. No boss wants a feller that is allus tryin’ to make a good hoss buck and holdin’ up the crowd in the mornin’ to see him put on a wild ridin’ exhibition, and most owners would a heap ruther hear a waddy talk about how to shoe and how to keep a hoss in shape and learn him the work than about how high he can kick him in the shoulder when he’s buckin’.

A real forked hand is wuth plenty all the time but he...

Speakin’ of Bill, the first time I ever see him is at a little mountain town up in Colorado when we was both a heap younger than what we are now.

I was lookin’ into a mirror, which same don’t give no favorable opinion of myself, so I takes to lookin’ at a large pitcher on the wall. It was a large lady in Mae West clothes and she is settin’ by a table and holdin’ up a big glass of beer.

There was the pitcher of a goat mixed up in the affair but things was sorter hazy at...

Sunday mornin’, two weeks after Bill has strung out fer the high country, we was eatin’ breakfast, and the Boss’s wife she speaks up and sez: “I don’t reckon Bill has gone up to the high country. The way him and Rildy Briggs made sheep’s eyes at each other down at the school house dance I bet he bent that old sorrel hoss off the road fur enough to go into Lige Briggs’ place and tell Rildy good bye.”

That there’s a smart idee I sez and old Lige aint losin any chuck rider that will work like Bill, and...

After Bill had been back fer about a month, I and him goes to town. We puts our hosses up at the Star Livery and then goes to the Elite Restaurant to eat. Bill shore gits a spell about one of the gals that is workin’ there, and she tells him that there is goin’ to be a opry at the opry house that night. Her and him make a date, and so I goes over and fixes it up fer me to take the cigar-stand gal.

It turns out to be a purty good show with a chorus and...

Things changes a heap around the old ranch, Bill bein’ gone, and then the boss and his wife gits them a house up in town and Zeb is the foreman down at the farm ranch now. The place seems soter lonesome fer we don’t git to see the boss’s wife only when she comes down fer a visit sometimes. The boss reckons I am to look after the outside work and he is goin’ in fer politics seein’ he got elected to the state senate now.

Then all of a sudden it looks like more trouble. The boss shows me...

Not long after the boss bought the mules, I gets a chance to go up North and I goes. Then along comes that Boer war² and we was all tryin’ to break and sell all the willer tail hosses in the Western states to the British government. After that I got a chance to go to Australia. I didn’t like it so good as the old U. S. A. so I comes back. I drifts into Arizona fer a spell, and then by a fluke I got back East.

By that time the war is on and I lies five...

Jest when the Boer war was on Folks got to shippin’ hosses a plenty. I had left the old man’s place and I went to work fer a feller that had a bunch of broom tails and they was a snaky lot. Some of ‘em was old mares that hadn’t looked through a rope since the day they was branded. Along comes a big old Missourian and we rounds up a bunch fer him to look over. He takes two car loads of raw hosses and mares. The Boss sends me along to help him ship ‘em and git ‘em...

One night the boss calls Ike into the house, and when he comes out he looks like he’s got sumpthin’ heavy on his mind. Next day he tells me what it is. He sez he has been wantin’ the boss to change his brand and ear mark. What fur? I asks.

“Well,” he sez, “this here outfit on the south of us moved in here about a year ago. They bought out the brand the old man Prouty had run ever since he had settled here in the early days. They ain’t a usin’ that brand but by some hook...

One day I rides in to the ranch and I sees a kid’s saddle throwed under the shed cow puncher fashion with blankets over it. I examine it and it is shore the finest kid saddle I have seen. Ike comes out and I ask him about it. “Well,” Ike sez, “that belongs to Ricky. Ricky is Old Cap’s nephew. His Ma bein’ Cap’s sister. He is thirteen and has been fired out of school. His dad is the money man behind Cap. He seems to give the kid more money than he’d ort to but he don’t want to...

Things got to changin’ around the spread and all the old hands was gone. Even Ike went. I got a letter from Ed Gray, a feller that had been with us a couple of years before and he allowed there was a job fer me up where he was at. He asked fer me to let him know right away. One of the other hands wanted my two hosses so the next day I sold ‘em to him and told the Boss that I reckoned I about had it made. He seemed a little surprised but soter pleased fer I...

I am not a cowboy, or even a want-to-be any more—the work is too hard, and the pay is too low. I am well beyond the age for it anyway, which puts me safely in the never-was category. But like many city dwellers who love the West, I admire ranch people as a general rule. Besides feeding us, they are the stewards of our land and keepers of our connection with the natural world. They have come closest, after the Native Americans, to harmony with a landscape that is both beautiful and harsh. This harmony is a significant and...