In the late nineteenth century, many young Texans were lured by dreams of adventure and fortune into signing up as cowboys on cattle drives to the north. James C. Shaw, a schoolteacher who dreamed of staking out a ranch of his own on the lush northern ranges, was one of those cowboys. Shaw's story of his cattle trail experiences has become a classic in the literature of the American West.
First privately published in 1931 as a pamphlet titled "Pioneering in Texas and Wyoming: Incidents in the Life of James C. Shaw," then edited and annotated by western historian Herbert O. Brayer for...