Cow People

Cow People records the fading memories of a bygone Texas, the reminiscences of the cow people themselves. These are the Texans of the don't—fence—me—in era, their faces pinched by years of squinting into the desert glare, tanned by the sun and coarsened by the dust of the Chisholm Trail. Their stories are often raucous but just as often quiet as hot plains under a pale Texan sky.

A native Texan, J. Frank Dobie had an inborn knowledge of the men and customs of the trail camps. Cattlemen were ...