Springfield Globe Republic

How a Boston Sophomore Became A Cowboy and Won a Bride.
San Francisco Alta

The movements of a real cowboy on Kearney street attracted attention yesterday. He stood nearly six feet in his boots, and his regular features and drooping blonde moustache gave his face an aspect of beauty fully in keeping with his handsome proportions. His attire was that of the vaquero, consisting of buckskin trousers, a woolen shirt fastened at the throat with a carelessly knotted silk handkerchief, a coarse chinchilla sack coat and broad-brimmed felt hat of the sombrero pattern. An Alta reporter learned his name and his history. His name was Edward N. Willets and six years ago he was at college, when he received peremptory orders from his father, a wealthy Boston merchant, to enter the theological class and fit himself for the ministry. The command came like a thunderbolt to the happy-go-lucky young fellow, who had always believed himself destined to follow his father in business when the latter should be ready to retire. A quarrel with his parent was the result and the young fellow suddenly left for the west. At Cheyenne he laid over for a short hunt on the plains. The wild life of the cowboys caught his fancy. Salary proved little object, and he had little difficulty in attaching himself to a big ranch until he had mastered his new vocation. Finally he drifted through portions of Montana, Nebraska, Dakota, Idaho, Nevada and finally in Oregon and California. The opening of the summer found him engaged with three or four comrades in driving a small band of steers over the Santa Cruz mountains. Cattle in the mountains are not pleasant objects to deal with. Every unruly steer that broke from the band required an hour's chasing up and down steep slopes, over rocks and fallen trees, and through the spiteful brush.

Toward the end of the drive the steep bluffs that line the road on either hand kept the steers in fairly good order, and only occasionally did an unusually juicy bunch of grass tempt some hungry one to bolt up the slope or into the canyon below. It was an occasion of this sort that sent Willetts careering among the brakes and ferns on the slope above. A chase of half a mile had seen the truant returning to the road and Willetts was skirting the edge of the bank some distance in advance of the drove in search of a safe place to descend, when in the middle of the narrow road he saw a lovely girl. The drove was thundering down on her and promising to soon crush her young life out beneath their ponderous weight. Escape for the girl seemed impossible. From the road to where Willetts horse stood was a wall of rock fully twenty feet in height, and below to the bed of the stream was a sheer descent of double that distance. For only a second was the horseman inactive. Then with the speed born of long practice he lifted his trustworthy rawhide riata from the horn of his saddle and threw it. 'Put that under your arms, Miss,' was Willett's hasty injunction. It was obeyed, and, not a moment too soon, the girl was lifted above the heads and horns of the oncoming cattle.

When they were well by, Willetts slowly slacked down until his 'catch' dropped softly to the earth. Five minutes later when he managed to find a pathway down and reached the subject of his daring bit of horsemanship, she was lying in the dust in a faint. When she recovered he learned that she, too, was from Boston, and with her father and mother was spending the summer amid California's most favored spots. The old gentleman, her father, was highly delighted when he learned of Willett's identity, as he soon did. 'His daughter foolishly placed a high value on my little service,' explained Willetts blushing, 'and when I saw how she had over-estimated it, I meanly demanded the largest reward I could think of. The details were settled yesterday and I came up by the evening train to fit myself for her society. She swears that I look like an angel in my woolen shirt and buckskin trousers, but I will try and get her used to me in civilized garb, for a vaquero's dress is hardly the thing for aesthetic Boston.'

'Are you going back?'
'Yes, in September. We shall tour the Yosemite as man and wife, and then go back home. My father-in-law says that my father has long been anxious to have me come home, and that he will set me up if the old gentleman doesn't, so I think I had better go.'