Is anyone more qualified to write about the Wild West days than Charles Siringo? Siringo personally knew virtually every famous personality of the Old West and still somehow managed to survive his days as a cowboy, New Mexico Ranger, and Pinkerton detective. He rode over every cow trail in the west and was personally acquainted with many of the most notorious characters killers, men who had many notches on their guns.
In 1919, Charles A. Siringo (1855-1928) published "A Lone Star Cowboy," which contains information on both his early days as a cowboy as well as his time as a Mexico Ranger and Pinkerton detective.
Siringo, "an old stove-up 'cow puncher,'" has written in "A Lone Star Cowboy" an account of his 50 years' experience on the great Western cattle ranges as Cowboy, Detective and New Mexico Ranger-on every cow trail in the Wooly Old West, spanning Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and Nebraska.
Now that the cowboy is almost extinct outside the movie lots, those who knew him as he really was are beginning to correct the false impressions that have been conveyed by the flood of cowboy fiction and Wild West films. Here is given the true story of many thrilling adventures on mountain and plain, among moonshiners, cattle thieves, tramps, dynamiters, and other strong-arm men, when the cowboys, buffalo hunters, and Indians had room to come and go, before the wire fences cut off the trails. His story includes first-hand accounts of his encounters with some “Bad” Cowboys, such as “Billy the Kid," Wess Harding and “ Kid Curry.”
Siringo introduces the book, stating: "This volume is to take the place of 'A Texas Cowboy'. Since its first publication, in 1885, nearly a million copies have been sold. In this, 'A Lone Star Cowboy,' much cattle history is given which has never before been published."
It is a cow-boy's book; lively, spirited, energetic, slangy, and coarse; a book with a great deal of courage, adventure, roughness, and incident; a book which gives a life-like picture of cattle raising; and one that is full of the flavor of the " Wild West," but which is rude company for people with the tastes and refinements of civilization.
Cowboys will read it as it is with zest; the more refined and sensitive "higher grade of readers" may protest that it has not been purged of its sins against grammar and good manners. It has an underlying substance which is excellent.
