Saddling Up Anyway: The Dangerous Lives of Old-Time Cowboys

Whether asleep or awake, afoot or astride, a cowboy in rattlesnake country was always at risk.  Jimmy Yiser, caught in the saddle amid a swarm of sunning rattlers in West Texas in the 1950's, could only give the horse its head and let it tiptoe to safety.  Sometimes, though, a pony wasn't so lucky; Texas puncher Ben Kinchlow was in the stirrups one day when a striking rattler hung its fangs in his bronc's leg. 

Patrick Dearen has brought these reckless and risky adventures to life with colorful stories from interviews with seventy-six men who cowboyed in the West before 1932 as well as 150 archival interviews and written accounts from as early as the 1870's and well into the mid-twentieth century.

By Patrick Dearen
Hardback
177 pages with black & white photos
Dimensions: 6" x 9 1/8"