In the company of cowboys
(Book)

Includes index.

Fans of Louis L'Amour may want to saddle up with another talented Western writer after reading Howard E. Greager's collection of flavorful and informative cowboy lore In the Company of Cowboys. Like TV's "Death Valley Days," all these asagas are true-to-life episodes from the days of the untamed frontier and provide unforgettable history lessons about that rough-and tumble time period and place. Greager's gift is to imbue these well documented case studies with the bracing tone of good fiction. All the colorful characters of Disappointment Valley are here- from the cattle rustler to the tenderfoot. Rather than register as cliches, these rawhide prototypes are fleshed out so thoroughly by the author ,you can practically smell the campfire vittles and hear the thundering hooves of stampeding herds. The most astonishing aspect of Greager's loving remembrances is his portrait of a West tat was still pretty wild even in the early part of the twentieth century. In the course o this book, you'll ride hell bent for leather as a posse gallops after an Indian shepherd who ambushed two of the author's neighbors in 1926. You'll track down grizzly bears and rope wild broncs. In the Company of Cowboys is a book no aficionado of Western lore will want to miss. ,Howard E Greager more or less grew up with a horse between his legs. Even when only a few months old his mother would place him on a pillow in front of the saddle on a nice gentle old mare so that she could ride over to the neighbors for an afternoon visit. By the time he was two years old, there would be five of them riding bareback on one horse. The Greager family took lots of falls and were regularly scraped off by low hanging branches. People said cowboys didn't mind getting bucked off or taking a fall and to them it was all a part of growing up. Being raised among ranching families had its advantages. It seems that wherever Mr. Greager went in his later years, he could always be found "in the company of cowboys."