CRACKER COWBOYS OF FLORIDA


ONE can thresh the straw of history until he is well worn out, and also
is running some risk of wearing others out who may have to listen, so I
will waive the telling of who the first cowboy was, even if I knew; but
the last one who has come under my observation lives down in Florida,
and the way it happened was this: I was sitting in a "sto' do'," as the
"Crackers" say, waiting for the clerk to load some "number eights," when
my friend said, "Look at the cowboys!" This immediately caught my
interest. With me cowboys are what gems and porcelains are to some
others. Two very emaciated Texas ponies pattered down the street,
bearing wild-looking individuals, whose hanging hair and drooping hats
and generally bedraggled appearance would remind you at once of the
Spanish-moss which hangs so quietly and helplessly to the limbs of the
oaks out in the swamps. There was none of the bilious fierceness and
rearing plunge which I had associated with my friends out West, but as a
fox-terrier is to a yellow cur, so were these last. They had on about
four dollars' worth of clothes between them, and rode McClellan saddles,
with saddle-bags, and guns tied on before. The only things they did
which were conventional were to tie their ponies up by the head in
brutal disregard, and then get drunk in about fifteen minutes. I could
see that in this case, while some of the tail feathers were the same,
they would easily classify as new birds.

"And so you have cowboys down here?" I said to the man who ran the
meat-market.

He picked a tiny piece of raw liver out of the meshes of his long black
beard, tilted his big black hat, shoved his arms into his white apron