Ki-Yi-Yippee-Yippee-Yay

"In person the cowboys were mostly medium-sized men... quick and wiry, and as a rule very good-natured; in fact, it did not pay to be anything else. In character, their like never was or will be again." Teddy Blue Abbott



The Cowboy Way
Being a Cowboy is doing the right thing;
common wisdom born of simple virtues and strong ideals.
Above all, it is a strict adherence to honesty even when it is not in our best interests.
It is having an inherent sense of justice in a world where the cards are often stacked against us.
We try to hold enough common sense to recognize the value of a lost cause and the cost of lost values.
Generally speaking, we are quietly reserved in all things except freedom, fresh air and Saturday night.
We have an eye for a good horse, a good gun, and a good Cowgirl.
(Cowgirls may insert the word Cowboy here.)

Constant to friends, we are more so when friends need us, less so when they don't.
Familiar with hard work we also know hard knocks and hard roads.
Often given to tears when lesser individuals would display indifference; we are as well given to joy in a few places others would only find disdain.

We enjoy plain living, not because we relish doing without,
but because we have discovered the treasures within.
And, finally, we have that elusive emotion called
courage which is, at worst, a badly directed sense of
conceit and, at best, it is the stuff of
which dreams are made. . . .
Judge Charly Gullett--1995





Edward C. Abbott was born in Cranwich, England, and brought to the West in the 1860's by his parents as a boy. Hoping the open air would improve his frail health, his father let him help drive a herd of cattle from Texas to Nebraska when he was just 10 years old.
The experience, Abbott said later, "made a cowboy out of me. Nothing could have changed me after that."


The cowboys' average age was 24. They were paid so badly, and worked so hard, that two-thirds of them made only one trail drive before finding something better to do. They owned their saddle, but not the horse they rode -- and they rode it day and night.

After up to four straight months in the saddle, often in the same clothes every day, eating every meal at the chuck wagon, drinking nothing but coffee and water, the cowboy's job was finally done -- he was paid for his work, and turned loose in town.


"I bought some new clothes and got my picture taken... I had a new white Stetson hat that I paid ten dollars for, and new pants that cost twelve dollars, and a good shirt and fancy boots. Lord, I was proud of those clothes! When my sister saw me, she said: "Take your pants out of your boots and put your coat on. You look like an outlaw." I told her to go to hell. And I never did like her after that. "
Teddy Blue Abbott


For a man to be stove up at thirty may sound strange to some people, but many a cowboy has been so bunged up that he has to quit riding that early in life.

And so it was with Teddy.


"Then I went home. After I got home my father said to me one night: 'You can take old Morgan (a plow mule)... and plow the west ridge tomorrow."

Like hell I'd plow the west ridge.

And when he woke up next morning, Teddy was gone."
Teddy Blue Abbott