The Life and Adventures of Nat Love: Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick"Love, Nat
History
The Life and Adventures of Nat Love: Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick"
Love, Nat
African American cowboys -- West (U.S.) -- Biography; Cowboys -- West (U.S.) -- Biography; Love, Nat, 1854-1921; West (U.S.) -- Biography
were killed by the white hunters to furnish meat for the railroad
graders and the troups at the frontier forts.
[Illustration: "Does the Wild Cow Boy Work With You?"]
While the big cattle ranches were always kept well supplied with buffalo
meat, on the stock of my rifle is one hundred and twenty-six notches,
each one representing a fine buffalo that has fallen to my own hand,
while some I have killed with the knife and 45 colts, I forgot to cut a
notch for. Buffalo hunting, a sport for kings, thy time has passed.
Where once they roamed by the thousands now rises the chimney and the
spire, while across their once peaceful path now thunders the iron
horse, awakening the echoes far and near with bell and whistle, where
once could only be heard the sharp crack of the rifle or the long
doleful yelp of the coyote. At the present time the only buffalo to be
found are in the private parks of a few men who are preserving them for
pleasure or profit.
With the march of progress came the railroad and no longer were we
called upon to follow the long horned steers or mustangs on the trail,
while the immense cattle ranges, stretching away in the distance as far
as the eye could see, now began to be dotted with cities and towns and
the cattle industry which once held a monopoly in the west, now had to
give way to the industry of the farm and the mill. To us wild cowboys of
the range, used to the wild and unrestricted life of the boundless
plains, the new order of things did not appeal, and many of us became
disgusted and quit the wild life for the pursuits of our more civilized
brother. I was among that number and in 1890 I bid farewell to the life
which I had followed for over twenty years.
It was with genuine regret that I left the long horn Texas cattle and
the wild mustangs of the range, but the life had in a great measure lost
its attractions and so I decided to quit it and try something else for a
while. During my life so far I had no chance to secure an education,
except the education of the plains and the cattle business. In this I
recognize no superior being. Gifted with a splendid memory and quick
observation I learned and remembered things that others passed by and
forgot, and I have yet to meet the man who can give me instruction in
the phases of a life in which I spent so long. After quitting the cowboy
life I struck out for Denver. Here I met and married the present Mrs.
Love, my second love. We were married August 22, 1889, and she is with
me now a true and faithful partner, and says she is not one bit jealous
of my first love, who lies buried in the city of Old Mexico.
One year later, in 1890, I accepted a position in the Pullman service on
the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, running between Denver and Salida,
Colorado. The Pullman service was then in its infancy, so to speak, as
there was as much difference between the Pullman sleeping cars of those
days and the present as there is between the ox team and the
automobile.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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