Pulling Leather: Being the Early Recollections of a Cowboy on the Wyoming Range, 1884-1889
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.
“…[this] memoir represents as real a record
of life in the West as exists anywhere…”
•• Red
Neck Review of Literature
“Reuben B. Mullins could ride and write!”
•• Bloomsbury
Review
• 0-931271-10-x • trade paper • index • bibliography • photos • 247
pp • $14.95
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