Other editions of book A Texas Cowboy: Or, Fifteen Years on The Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Boy

A Texas Cowboy; Or Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony CHAPTER I. MY BOYHOOD DAYS. It was a bright morning, on the 7th day of February 1856, as near as I can remember, that your humble Servant came prancing into this wide and wicked world. By glancing over the map you will find his birthplace, at the extreme southern part of the Lone Star State, on the Peninsula of Matagorda, a narrow strip of land bordered by the Gulf of Mexico on the south and Matagorda Bay on the north. This Peninsula is from one to two miles wide and seventy five miles long. It connects the mainland at Caney and comes to a focus at Deskrows Point or "Salura Pass." About midway between the two was situated the "Dutch Settlement," and in the centre of that Settlement, which contained only a dozen houses, stood the little frame cottage that first gave me shelter. My father who died when I was only a year old, came from the sunny clime of Italy, while my dear old mother drifted from the Boggs of good "ould" Ireland. Am I not a queer conglomerate--a sweet-scented mixture indeed! Our nearest neighbor was a kind old soul by the name of John Williams, whose family consisted of his wife and eleven children. In the fall of 1859 I took my first lessons in school, my teacher being a Mr. Hale from Illinois. The school house, a little old frame building, stood off by itself, about a mile from the Settlement, and we little tow-heads, sister and I, had to hoof it up there every morning, through the grassburrs, barefooted; our little sunbrowned feet had never been incased in shoe-leather up to that time.

After a nomadic childhood, Charles Siringo signed on as a teenage cowboy for the noted Texas cattle king, Shanghai Pierce, and began a life that embraced all the hard work, excitement, and adventure readers today associate with the cowboy era. He rid the Chisholm trail, driving 2,500 heads of cattle from Austin to Kansas; knew Tascosa-now a historic monument-when it was home to raucous saloons, red light districts, and a fair share of violence; and led a posse of cowboys in pursuit of Billy the Kid and his gang.First published in 1885, Siringo's chronicle of his life as a itchy-footed boy, cowhand, range detective, and adventurer was one the first classics about the Old West and helped to romanticize the West and its myth of the American cowboy. Will Rogers declared, That was the Cowboy's Bible when I was growing up.

After a nomadic childhood, Charles Siringo signed on as a teenage cowboy for the noted Texas cattle king, Shanghai Pierce, and began a life that embraced all the hard work, excitement, and adventure readers today associate with the cowboy era. He rid the Chisholm trail, driving 2,500 heads of cattle from Austin to Kansas; knew Tascosa-now a historic monument-when it was home to raucous saloons, red light districts, and a fair share of violence; and led a posse of cowboys in pursuit of Billy the Kid and his gang.First published in 1885, Siringo's chronicle of his life as a itchy-footed boy, cowhand, range detective, and adventurer was one the first classics about the Old West and helped to romanticize the West and its myth of the American cowboy. Will Rogers declared, That was the Cowboy's Bible when I was growing up.