Cowboy Life on the Sidetrack: Being an Extremely Humorous & Sarcastic Story of the Trials & Tribulations Endured by a Party of Stockmen Making a Shipment from the West to the East.Benton, Frank
General
Cowboy Life on the Sidetrack: Being an Extremely Humorous & Sarcastic Story of the Trials & Tribulations Endured by a Party of Stockmen Making a Shipment from the West to the East.
Benton, Frank
Benton, Frank, 1853-1921 -- Anecdotes; Cattle trade -- West (U.S.) -- Anecdotes; Cowboys -- West (U.S.) -- Anecdotes; Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.) -- Anecdotes; West (U.S.) -- Social life and customs -- Anecdotes
We arrived in Cheyenne, and after reporting to the dispatcher what time
our special stock train would arrive, we exposed Jackdo to the gentle
breeze, which is always on tap in Cheyenne, and it blew all the cactus
slivers out of his anatomy that he had accumulated in his nine miles
slide in just thirteen seconds. We then started out to see the town. We
asked an expressman on the corner of Main Street--he was the only live
human being in sight--what was the main features of Cheyenne. He said
Tom Horn and Senator Warren. We asked him what they was noted for, and
he said that Tom Horn was noted for killing people that took things that
didn't belong to them and then blowing his horn about it afterwards, and
Senator Warren was noted for building wire fences on government Land and
taking everything in sight.
Not seeing anyone on the streets, we asked him if it was Sunday, and he
said every day was Sunday in Cheyenne except when they had a political
rally, and then it was a durn Democratic funeral from sun to sun,
burying the Democratic party over and over again, they rehearsed them
same old services. Whenever people saw the politicians on the streets
with clean shirts on they knew the Democratic party was going to have
another funeral. The folks in Cheyenne was always going to church, or
else burying the Democratic party. We asked him what the prevailing
religion of the town was, and he said, "High-priced wool."
Just then Senator W---- came along, and hearing of the disappearance of
two sheepmen, and it being near election time, he immediately had all
the troops called out, got together a vast army of United States deputy
marshals and wired the president of the Overland, who immediately
chartered a special train loaded with detectives, and two cars loaded
with blood-hounds in charge of a lawyer by the name of Ashby from
Lincoln; one car loaded with automobiles, two cars loaded with bottled
goods and other useful supplies and two pianos with pianola attachments,
seven trunks full of mechanical music in air-tight bottles, and one
steam calliope near the engine on a flat car. The Governor of Wyoming
met the special train at Cheyenne, and after issuing a proclamation
offering a large reward for the sheepmen dead or alive, joined the U. P.
president in his car. They now started the steam calliope, and the
Governor playing one of the pianola-attachment pianos, the U. P.
president playing the other. The state chairman of the Republican party
sang the old familiar hymn, "Ninety and Nine Were Safely Laid in the
Shelter of the Fold," and Senator W---- made a speech something like
this:
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