Jan

12

Recollections of a Cowpuncher

January 12, 2025 |

Perhaps the basis for Lonesome Dove:

We Pointed Them North: Recollections of a Cowpuncher

Edward Charles "Teddy Blue" Abbott was born in England in 1860. He came to the United States in 1871, with his parents, settling around Lincoln, Nebraska. Teddy Blue is hailed as one of the greatest of the cowboys who brought herds of Longhorns north from Texas. His charming looks and rebel ways have forever etched him into Montana history.

Gyve Bones offers:

If a storm came along and the cattle started running — you'd hear that low, rumbling noise along the ground and the men on herd wouldn't need to come in and tell you, you'd know — then you'd jump for your horse and get out there in the lead, trying to head them and get them into a mill before they scattered to hell-and-gone [The cowboys would attempt to make the cattle run in an ever-tightening circle until they could no longer move.] It was riding at a dead run in the dark, with cut banks and prairie dog holes all around you in a shallow grave…

One night it come up an awful storm. It took all four of us to hold the cattle and we didn't hold them, and when morning come there was one man missing. We went back to look for him, and we found him among the prairie dog holes, beside his horse. The horse's ribs was scraped bare of hide, and all the rest of the horse and man was mashed into the ground as flat as a pancake. The only thing you could recognize was the handle of his six-shooter. We tried to think the lightning hit him, and that was what we wrote his folks in Henrietta, Texas, but we couldn't really believe it ourselves. I'm afraid it wasn't the lightning. I'm afraid his horse stepped into one of them holes and they both went down before the stampede.

The awful part of it was that we had milled them cattle over him all night, not knowing he was there. That was what we couldn't get out of our minds. And after that, orders were given to sing when you were running with a stampede so the others would know where you were as long as they heard you singing, and if they didn't hear you they would figure something happened. After awhile, this grew to be a custom on the range, but you know, this was still a new business in the seventies and we was learning all the time.

- Teddy Blue Abbott, We Pointed Them North, Recollections of an Old Cowpuncher, 1939


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