Pulling Leather: Being the Early Recollections of a Cowboy on the Wyoming Range, 1884 - 1889 by Reuben B. Mullins

“During April in 1884, I took Horace Greeley’s advice and headed for the big, open spaces in Wyoming. After dodging brakemen night and day, sleeping in boxcars, and living on crackers part of the time, I arrived in Cheyenne, after being incarcerated in a boxcar of lumber for twenty-four hours without food or water. Oh, yes, the old stomach felt as though it had gone on a prolonged vacation, while thirst had become a habit. Searching through my pockets, I found a lone fifty-cent piece, the only cash between me and starvation. Leaving the station yards, I found an eating joint where I filled up, but when I left that restaurant, I was broke and no job in sight.”

Roundups, trail drives, a lynching, mail-order romances, blacksmithing, Indians, the blizzard of 1885-86, bunkhouse humor, Calamity Jane, cattle barons—Reuben Mullins experienced the West as it will never be again. This first-hand account, told by a man who lived the life, has become a respected range classic.