SIRINGO, Charles Angelo (1855-1928).. A Texas Cow Boy or, Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony.. Chicago and New York: Rand, McNally & Co., 1886., 1886.

Price: US$850.00 + shipping

Description: 8vo., (7 4/8 x 5 inches). 5-page publisher’s catalogue at end (text brown and brittle throughout). Chromolithographed frontispiece, lithographed advertisement for the Colorado Short Line with a woodcut portrait of the author on the verso, full-page woodcut advertisement for Colgate & Co on the verso of the dedication leaf, and full-page portrait of Billy the Kid (lacking 5 wood-engraved plates, quite brown and brittle). Original publisher’s brown cloth, decorated on the front cover with a fine gilt block of the Cow-boy on his horse (extremities scuffed, pale stains). THE FIRST AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY A COW-BOY Second edition, the issue with copyright notice dated 1886 on the verso of the title-page. After a troubled youth, Siringo returned toTexas in 1871, and an "adventurous life followed. Siringo was a cowboy for Abel H. "Shanghai" Pierce (1871), a Texas rancher, trailing stray cattle, rounding up mavericks, and branding them for Pierce's Rancho Grande, in Wharton County. When Shanghai and his brother Jonathan sold to Allen, Pool, and Company, Siringo worked for that firm until he was caught starting his own illegal herd with strays that were technically his bosses' property. He signed on at W. B. Grimes's ranch in Matagorda County, Texas, where he handled scattered horse herds. He skinned frozen cattle with a neighbor (1873-1874), was hired by the Muckleroy brothers to drive cattle up the Chisholm Trail to Kansas in 1874, and carried passengers and food inland by wagon from the port of Indianola, Texas. That failing, he hit the Chisholm Trail again for Grimes in 1876 and 1877. Soon after the Lincoln County War, in New Mexico (1878), Siringo met Billy the Kid in the Texas Panhandle. Siringo cofounded and worked for the LX Ranch in the Panhandle until 1883. That year he married Mamie Lloyd in Caldwell, Kansas, bought a store there, and sold cigars, ice cream, and oysters" (Robert L. Gale for ANB).

Seller: Arader Galleries - AraderNYC, New York, NY, U.S.A.