The cowboy of myth and reality had his beginnings in Texas. Their cattle grew wild with few natural enemies; by the end of the Civil War, there were an estimated 5 million of them. It was then that the cowboy entered his twenty-year golden age, the era of the open range and the great cattle drives. The men who worked the cattle in the expanses of the West became known as cowboys. The image of the courageous, spirited horseman living a dangerous life carried with it an appeal that refuses to disappear. Driving a thousand to two thousand cattle hundreds of miles to market; facing lightning and cloudbursts and drought, stampedes, rattlesnakes, and outlaws; sleeping under the stars and catching chow at the chuckwagon—the Cowboys dominated the American galaxy of folk heroes.
