"And what sort are the cowboys?" Barrett inquired, curiously, glad that it wasn't romance, but something very substantial and prosaic, indeed, that had brought him to the range.
"Swearing, unwashed, wicked drunkards, taking them as they come," Alma replied, not halting for a word.
"There are chivalrous men, nature's gentlemen, among them, Alma," Mrs. Nearing corrected, "I've known them, you must have, too."
"I've never been under the necessity of proving their chivalry," Alma returned, without heat, deeply as Barrett could see she felt on the subject of the romance of the range. "I've known them to pick up my hat when it blew off—when I was a little girl riding straddle-legged out to camp to get flapjacks from the cook, I'll grant them a certain rough chivalry, under restraint. Let them go, and they're wolves, ignorant, blasphemous, foul of body and soul."
"I'm afraid I'm at least a generation too late," said Barrett, making out that he did not take her seriously. "Cowboys must have changed scandalously."
"They're all alike," said Alma, "yesterday and today the same. Cowboys live by tradition, their tricks are all handed down, their cuss words, their stories and songs. They all come from Texas and Montana, the real ones. I can tell one of them a mile off. They came up here from Texas with the old drives and established the breed in Montana, No genuine ones are natives of this part of the country at all."
"I wonder if the boy that brought me out is from
