Watertown Republican

The Cowboy Extinct.

The typical cowboy is seen no more his place is taken by barb wire fences and railroads. The towns where he once roamed during his outings have settled back into quiet cities, noted not for their disregard for law, but for their love of it. Here and there yet remains an old tumble-down frame building, which the old-timer will tell you was the headquarters of the El Reno or Paso Del Mar saloon. The number of murders committed in its rooms will be related, and perhaps some stained boards or walls can be shown to tell of the bloody deeds there committed. The men who took advantage of the cowboys' spendthrift ways have become retired capitalists or have joined the dead cowboys themselves in another world. Year by year "the drive" has grown less. Up to last season a few hundred stragglers were brought up through the territory in preference to shipping from Texas points. But there was no profit in it, and the probabilities are that the last herd has "dragged its slow length along" over the famous cattle trails of the West. The imaginative youth who longs for a cowboy's life will find that avenue to a stirring and adventurous existence closed to him in this country. Chicago Herald.