Today many men think of
that industry as belonging only to the Southwest, and many would
consider that it was transferred to the North. Really it was not
transferred but extended, and the trail of the old drive marks
the line of that extension.
Today the Long Trail is replaced by other trails, product of the
swift development of the West, and it remains as the connection,
now for the most part historical only, between two phases of an
industry which, in spite of differences of climate and condition,
retain a similarity in all essential features. When the last
steer of the first herd was driven into the corral at the Ultima
Thule of the range, it was the pony of the American cowboy which
squatted and wheeled under the spur and burst down the straggling
street of the little frontier town. Before that time, and since
that time, it was and has been the same pony and the same man who
have traveled the range, guarding and guiding the wild herds,
from the romantic to the commonplace days of the West.
Chapter IV. The Cowboy
The Great West, vast and rude, brought forth men also vast and
rude.
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