The literary use of the tall tale in the South seems to have been checked by the Civil War, but after that struggle it found a congenial home and flourished orally in the cow-camps of the new Southwest. While it is true that the cowboy deserves his reputation for reticence and reserve, it is also true that when conditions were favorable to the exercise of the art of story telling, he often proved an inveterate liar. Among the cattlemen of a generation ago books and periodicals were scarce, and all sorts of shifts were resorted to for amusement. It is a tribute to the cowboy’s adaptability that he was able to utilize as well as he did the resources at his command. So, while the gifted story-teller was often referred to disparagingly as a “windy,” he was welcome around the camp-fires, and any large outfit was likely to have one or more among its numbers. Old tales that were applicable to the new conditions survived; others were adapted to the new environment; Crèvecoeur and Münchausen seem to have supplied others, though of course there is no proof that the Southwestern analogues were not of independent origin. The adaptations, if they were such, often exhibit admirable ingenuity. Still other tales grew directly out of the soil. The cowboy liked horseplay, and took keen delight in “loading” the greenhorn. This pastime, which usually occupied the hours after supper in the evening, consisted in telling for the benefit of the uninitiated a species of yarn locally known as the “windy.” If the auditor appeared credulous, the narrators went on vying with each other, heaping exaggeration upon exaggeration, consciously burlesquing the misconceptions which the newcomer had brought with him from the East. Sometimes the listener was informed by a sell at the end of the story that he had been taken in; more often he was made aware of the fact by the sheer heights of exaggeration to which the narrative ascended; occasionally he accepted the story in good faith and went away neither sadder nor wiser. The good story-teller, then, did not demand credence. All he wanted was a sympathetic listener. His reward was the joy of mere narrative. The result was a literature at once imaginative, robust, and humorous: one in striking contrast to the better known pensive and melancholy ballads, which, taken in themselves, present a one-sided picture of the cowboy’s character.