Customer Reviews

The Cowboy at Work: All About His Job and How He Does It

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For those out there who still refuse to put anything nylon on yer hoss - this is the book for you. In an age when "horse whisperers" dominate the public's view on training their mounts, it's good to still pay attention to the wisdom and insight passed on by men who rode for a living, day in and day out, on green mounts in rough country. Also includes sections on handling a herd, packing, campfire cooking, leather work, saddles, tack, early rodeo, and a few long-forgotten loops for those of you who think you know how to throw a rope! True buckaroos as well as greenhorns will love this book.

This book is like a desktop encyclopedia devoted to nearly everything about the modern-day (1950s) working cowboy. As John Erickson, himself a working cowboy and writer, notes in his foreword, Ward has left us a treasure trove of cowboy know-how mostly passed on by word of mouth and that would have been lost without Ward's writing it down and illustrating it with his meticulous drawings.

There's a bit of history everywhere, as Ward traces the evolution of practices that mark the cowboy work of his day, but mostly he sticks with what he knows from what seems to be first-hand experience - how to braid leather, shoe a horse, throw a rope, make a bed roll. Chapters are devoted to varieties of equipment and cowboy gear. The detail is often amazing, for instance eight full pages devoted to descriptions of 134 different earmarks used in the branding of cattle. And for the noncowboys among readers, there are many little-known facts, like when and why to shoe only the back hooves of horses and why chaps are held together in front by a string instead of a belt.

The volume of information in the book is leavened by the author's conversational style and dry humor. There's a barely suppressed grin in his description of how to pull a cow from a bog, and in describing a pair of fancy chaps he remarks, "Chaps like these make a hundred-dollar bill look like thirty cents if you're going to buy 'em." Thanks to the University of Oklahoma Press for keeping this fine book in print.

An excellent reference for all the tools of the trade from an era long past.

TO GOOD TO BE TRUE IF YOU ENJOY COWBOYS THIS IS THE BOOK FOR YO