This book is a sometimes humorous, sometimes serious, but always thrilling autobiography of Charles A. Siringo, a real Texas Cowboy. He became a "Prince of the Plains" when he was just 15 years old and rode the range for fifteen years. This book is the first true look into the life of a cowboy, written by someone who actually lived the life. This edition was re-created from the original book published in 1885 with additional photos and addendums added by Badgley Publishing Company. It was a great read over a hundred and twenty years ago and is still a great read today.

Charlie Siringo was real, a genuine lawman who was a friend of Charlie Bowdrie, who was a friend and often companion of William Bonney, "Billy the Kid". Siringo drifted uphill from his birth on the Texas Gulf coast, and was a spectator (...just a spectator, honest! ) of many colourful parts of the Old West. He eventually became a technical adviser to the William S. Hart Movies. This is his version of his salad days, and it's a good read. His later book on the use of private security forces to carry out class warfare "Two Evil Isms: Anarchism and Pinkertonism" is always hard to find, though it's more valuable to the historian. Check out the final episodes of HBO's "Deadwood" for the results of that book. ( )

It has been said that A Texas Cowboy was the original western. Will Rogers said it was "the Cowboy's Bible" when he was growing up. An historian said it was the first authentic memoir by a real cowboy. It contains a gold mine of names, cowboy lingo, places and events such as "Whiskey Pete", Billy the Kid's secret hideout, and "grub". I felt a constant déjà vu since so many later books and movies drew from things described here (though not only here). It's not a romanticized account, it reads like non-fiction and is unflinching - children beat up and generally very harsh times in particular during the 1860s when Siringo left home a young teenager. It seemed Siringo initially became a cowboy because he could at least obtain meat on the prairie since there were so many cattle around for the taking, he was otherwise a starving homeless kid. The story of Billy the Kid is the most famous and attracted much attention, then and now, but there is a lot of incident of the regular cowboy life that I found interesting. (Via the excellent David Wales narration at LibriVox). ( )