76. ALDRIDGE, Reginald. Life on a Ranch: Ranch Notes in Kansas, Colorado,
the Indian Territory, and Northern Texas. New York: D. Appleton and Company,
1884. vi [2] 227 [1] [4, ads] pp., engraved frontispiece, 3 engraved plates.
12mo, original stiff terracotta decorated wrappers. Fragile wraps moderately
worn and with a few minor chips and stains, outer blank margin of frontispiece
water stained, overall a very good copy of a scarce book “seldom seen in original
wrappers” (Herd).
First American edition (Adams lists the American edition
first, and Merrill cites the British edition; apparently, there is no priority).
Athearn, Westward the Briton, p. 187: “In his introduction, the author
pointed out that since there were so many young men turning their attention
to stock raising in the Far West at that time, he decided to jot down the experiences
of one who tried his hand at it. In 1877 he was out of a job, and influenced
by the writings of ‘St. Kames’ [Samuel Nugent Townshend] in Field, he
decided to try his luck in the American West.” Braislin Sale 26: “Contains
the only account we have of the outbreak of 150 Cheyenne Indians in 1878 from
their reservation in the Cherokee Strip.” Campbell, My Favorite 101 Books
about the Cattle Industry 4. Dobie, p. 95: “Aldridge, an educated Englishman,
got into the cattle business before, in the late eighties, it boomed itself
flat.” Dykes, Collecting Range Life Literature, p. 13. Eberstadt 103:1.
Graff 30. Herd 23: “One of the standard books on cattle. The author was
a partner of Benjamin S. Miller in the ranching business in the states and territories
mentioned.” Howes A110. Merrill, Aristocrats of the Cow Country, p. 15
(listing the British edition; see next entry). Rader 83. Wynar 6389. $1,250.00
Item 76
77. ALDRIDGE, Reginald. Ranch Notes in Kansas, Colorado, the Indian
Territory and Northern Texas. London: Longman, Green and Co., 1884. [8]
227 [1] [4, ads] 12 (ads) pp., engraved frontispiece, 3 engraved plates. 12mo,
original navy blue gilt-pictorial cloth. Slightly shelf-slanted, binding a bit
dark and with a few stains and bumps, frontispiece darkened, front hinge cracked,
first few leaves foxed.
First British edition. $500.00
78. ALDRIDGE, Reginald. Ranch Notes in Kansas, Colorado, the Indian Territory and Northern Texas. London: Longman, Green and Co., 1884. Another copy. 12mo, rebound in navy blue buckram (frontispiece reversed when rebound). Occasional mild to moderate foxing (primarily confined to first few leaves), old tape repair to frontispiece (not affecting image), generally very good, text cleaner than usually found. Charles Nordhoff’s copy with his ink stamp and signature on title. Nordhoff (1830-1901), Prussian-born journalist and author, wrote books on California that stimulated much settlement (see Hart, Companion to California). $440.00
79. ALFORD, Sara C. Thrills on a Texas Ranch. San Antonio: Naylor,
1938. [6] 263 pp. 8vo, original terracotta cloth. Slight stain to upper joint,
else fine in d.j.
First edition. Novel set on a ranch between Devil’s River
and the Rio Grande in 1880. Two young women freshly graduated from Vassar return
to the family ranch and dress in male attire for more fun, freedom, and adventure.
$65.00
80. ALLARD, William Albert. Vanishing Breed: Photographs of the Cowboy
and the West. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, [1982]. 144 pp., profusely
illustrated with color photographs by Allard. Large oblong 8vo, original blue
cloth. Very fine in fine d.j.
First edition. Foreword by Thomas McGuane. Superb photographs
of working cowboys, rodeo, and ranch life, including Canada, the American West,
and Mexico. Includes Native Americans and unusual human interest subjects, such
as rodeo queens applying Vaseline to their teeth before a beauty contest.
$110.00
81. ALLDREDGE, Eugene Perry. Cowboys and Coyotes. [Nashville:
Marshall & Bruce Co., 1945]. 184 pp., text illustrations. 8vo, original
blue cloth. Covers discolored, text uniformly age-toned, generally good to very
good in the scarce d.j. (slightly worn). With J. Frank Dobie’s signed inscription:
“Fair narratives, but they do not illuminate wolf nature or any other form of
nature except the dog’s (in last chapter)...Dec. 29/46.”
First edition. Guns 22. Herd 27. A minister’s
recollections of life in West Texas and New Mexico, including: “The Cowboy’s
Prayer,” “Putting Wolves Out of Business,” “Lost on the Trackless Prairie,”
“Last of the Longhorns,” “Tiger, the Outlaw Horse,” and “The Soul of a Cattleman.”
$65.00
82. ALLDREDGE, Eugene Perry. Cowboys and Coyotes. [Nashville: Marshall & Bruce Co., 1945]. Another copy. Very fine in d.j. $65.00
83. ALLEN, John Houghton. The Poetry of John Houghton Allen. N.p.:
Privately printed, 1944. [8] 78 pp. Small 4to, original terracotta cloth, printed
paper label on upper cover. Upper cover slightly warped and with a few minor
stains, a few pages creased (original flaw from printing or binding), generally
very good, mostly unopened.
First edition, limited edition (350 copies, stated as signed,
this copy unsigned). Anderson, Southwestern American Literature, p. 173.
Allen was born in Austin in 1909 into a family with 60,000 acres of ranch land.
After college (including studying art in Paris), he returned to the ranch in
Texas where he rode in rodeos, became a professional polo player, and built
a large house at Randado. This collection includes several poems with western
and range themes. $50.00
84. ALLEN, John Houghton. San Juan. [San Antonio: Privately printed,
1945]. [6] 53 [1] pp., frontispiece portrait by the author, 8 illustrations
by Bugbee. 8vo, original stiff brown wrappers with printed label on upper wrapper.
Old tape repair to spine, mild discoloration to upper cover, internally fine.
Bugbee’s signed presentation copy “To Carl Hertzog with best wishes.” Carl Hertzog
bookplate.
First edition, limited edition (420 copies). Dykes, Fifty
Great Western Illustrators (Bugbee 5). Herd 28. A finely printed,
powerful amalgam of drama, poetry, and prose narrated from the perspective of
an old vaquero from the South Texas country between the Nueces and the Rio Grande.
“We were vaqueros, herdsmen, señor. Our eyes were bloodshot from the
dust.... We were kept in the rain and under the stars year round, paid four
bits a day to break our bones and kill good horses, and discarded like an old
saddle blanket when our service was done. We worked in the brush, in country
that you couldn’t get ‘white’ men into, and our bodies rotted in thickets sometimes
where we died” (pp. 3-4). $100.00
85. ALLEN, John Houghton. San Juan. [San Antonio: Privately printed, 1945]. Another copy. Wrappers delaminating along spine (but not splitting), otherwise a very fine copy. $85.00
86. ALLEN, John Houghton. Southwest. Philadelphia & New York:
J. B. Lippincott Company, [1952]. 220 pp., frontispiece and text illustrations
by Paul Laune. 8vo, original maize pictorial cloth. A few minor spots on binding,
else fine.
First edition, special advance presentation copy (#26, signed
by author). Campbell, p. 153. Dobie, p. 95. Dobie & Dykes, 44 & 44
#82: “Vivid writing about the vaqueros and their work in the brush.” Greene,
The Fifty Best Books on Texas, p. 11: “John Houghton Allen...writes more
like a nobleman than a rancher. The short stories (or pieces) in Southwest
are subtly tinged with that air of privilege, of being birth-appointed to
a role in history that may be tragic, but was necessary. That’s not the tone
one expects to find in Texas ranch tales. His gentlemen ranchers (and their
spoiled sons) are as devoted to horses as to wives.... The Mexican ranch hands
and their folklore go back to Spanish times, and privilege comes naturally—an
inheritance passed along by the Spanish ranchers who settled the kingdom of
the Rio Grande in the eighteenth century to the dynastic Anglos who superseded
them.... A fascinating, unusual book about Texas that isn’t duplicated by any
other writer.” Herd 29. $165.00
87. ALLEN, John Houghton. Southwest. Philadelphia & New York:
J. B. Lippincott Company, [1952]. 220 pp., frontispiece and illustrations by
Paul Laune. 8vo, original tan pictorial cloth. Very fine in very good d.j.
First edition, trade issue. $35.00
88. ALLEN, J[ohn] Taylor. Early Pioneer Days in Texas. [Dallas:
Privately printed, 1918]. [6] [2, errata] 267 pp., photographic portraits of
pioneers. 12mo, original stiff grey printed wrappers. Light ex-library, with
ink stamp and ink notes of a private club in Houston on front free endpaper.
Fore-edges lightly discolored, otherwise fine.
First edition. Campbell, p.170. Herd 30: “A chapter
on cowboy life.” Rader 107. In his chapter “Ten Years a Cowboy in the Wild West,”
Allen (b. 1840, Honey Grove, Texas) vividly relates his early experiences riding
the range, rounding up cattle, and driving herds over the Chisholm Trail. The
book includes much excellent material on Texas Indians, social history, and
firsthand narratives by pioneer women. At the end is selected poetry of the
pioneers, including the author’s “The Dying Cowboy” (“Oh bury me not on the
lone prairie....”). $150.00
89. ALLEN, Jules Verne. Cowboy Lore. San Antonio: Naylor, 1933.
xiii [3] 165 [1] [8, ads] pp., frontispiece portrait of author, illustrations
by Ralph Pereida, brands, printed music. 8vo, original fuchsia gilt-pictorial
cloth. Spine and upper edge of binding sunned, light foxing to fore-edges and
adjacent to frontispiece, generally very good, signed by author.
First edition, limited edition (#180 of 200 copies, signed
by author). Dykes, Kid 186. Herd 31. Rader 108: “Songs of the
range, with music; cowboy dictionary, provincialism of the Southwest.” Saunders
3792. $75.00
90. ALLEN, Jules Verne. Cowboy Lore. San Antonio: Naylor Printing
Company, 1933. xiii [3] 165 [1] [8, ads] pp., frontispiece portrait of author,
illustrations by Ralph Pereida, brands, printed music. 8vo, original printed
pictorial wrappers with border of brands. Light wear and staining to wraps,
uniformly browned (due to acidic paper).
First edition, third printing. $20.00
91. ALLEN, Ruth. Chapters in the History of Organized Labor in Texas.
Austin: University of Texas, Publication No. 4143, November 15, 1941. 258 pp.
8vo, original cream printed wrappers. Moderate marginal foxing to upper wrap,
else fine.
First printing. Winegarten I, p. 121: “Pioneer study of labor
in the Southwest.” Account of the Cowboy Strike of 1883 (“the first and only
cowboy strike”) on pp. 33-42. The author’s The Great Southwest Strike
(pub. no. 4214) is in Adams, Guns (24). $65.00
92. ALLEN, William A. Adventures with Indians and Game; or, Twenty
Years in the Rocky Mountains. Chicago: A. W. Bowen & Co., 1903. 302
pp., frontispiece portrait, plates (3 by Russell, others mostly photographic).
8vo, original three-quarter black leather over marbled boards. Spine detached,
fragile leather on binding rubbed, interior fine.
First edition. Guns 26: “Scarce.... In relating a
story about Calamity Jane and the killing of Wild Bill Hickok, the author quotes
Buffalo Bill, who tells a most preposterous tale.” Graff 44: “The author, known
to his friends as ‘Montana Allen,’ tells some wild and possible tales of pioneer
life in the West.” Howes A165. Yost & Renner, Russell I:16. This
sporting book includes material on Custer and a chapter on Native American horse
racing and equestrian practices. $150.00
93. ALLEN, Winnie & Corrie Allen (eds.). Pioneering in Texas:
True Stories of the Early Days. Dallas: Southern Publishing Company, [1935].
[6] 290 pp., text illustrations. 12mo, original turquoise pictorial cloth. A
few notations to “Texas Book Label” endpapers, else fine.
First edition. Campbell, pp. 170-71. Rader 114. Texas textbook
with chapters “An English Cowboy in Texas” (J. M. Pollock in the Panhandle),
“Nesters and Sheepmen” (also Pollock), and “The SMS Kid Grows Up.”
$20.00
94. ALLHANDS, J. L. Gringo Builders. N.p.: Privately printed,
[1931]. 283 [14] pp., photographic illustrations. 8vo, original navy blue cloth.
Very fine, signed by author.
First edition. Herd 39: “Scarce.... Contains a chapter
on Texas ranches and other cattle material.” Howes A172. Rader 117. Chronicle
of opening the Lower Rio Grande Valley through railroad construction, the reconnaissance
of which began at the King Ranch headquarters. With thousands of cattle to ship
north every year, the King Estate was vitally interested in the railroad outlet,
and Henrietta M. King donated a liberal land grant for the project. Includes
a chapter on women pioneers entitled “The Madonna of the Rails.” $140.00
95. ALLISON, Pauline. The History of Eaton, Colorado. [Eaton:
Eaton Herald, 1963]. [4] 206 pp., photographic illustrations. 8vo, original
beige printed wrappers. Fine, with small inkstamp on front flyleaf “Published
by the Eaton Herald, Eaton, Colorado 1942,” and signed by author.
Second book edition (first issued serially in the Eaton Herald
1937-42, and first published in book form in 1942). Wilcox, p. 7. Wynar 1440.
Eaton was founded north of Denver in Weld County in the early 1880s by early
Colorado governor Benjamin J. Eaton, a proponent of irrigated agriculture. This
work of mostly municipal history includes biographies of early pioneers, several
involved in ranching, an account of how fencing helped push back the “cattle
menace,” and sections on the blizzard of 1883 and the Wyatt brothers, a local
ranching clan. $20.00
96. ALLRED, B. W. Problems and Opportunities on U.S. Grass Lands.
Kansas City, Missouri: American Hereford Journal, 1964. 4 pp., photographs.
4to, leaflet. Fine.
First separate issue, offprint from the January 1, 1964,
issue. The beef cattle industry advocates Green Revolution techniques for controlling
the woody-brush invasion of native grasslands in the Southwest while also maintaining
some wildlife and game habitat. Methods implemented at Flat Top Ranch, Walnut
Springs, Texas, are cited for their effectiveness. $30.00
97. ALMIRALL, Leon V. Canines and Coyotes. Caldwell: Caxton Printers,
1941. 150 pp., frontispiece, photographic plates, text illustrations. 8vo, original
beige buckram. Very fine in lightly chipped d.j. With author’s signed presentation
inscription (on paper slip pasted to front free endpaper with scotch tape) to
author “William MacLeod Raine (Bill to me), my friend and one of those real
Old Timers, who made that Western idiom: ‘A man to ride the river with,’ famous.
Sincerely Leon V. Almirall.”
First edition. Smith 156. A book-length description of the
ranch sport, “running dogs.” From d.j. blurb: “Almost all ranchers owned a large
or small pack of these hounds and used every excuse to let them follow their
horses as they pursued their ranch duties.” $60.00
98. ALMIRALL, Leon V. Canines and Coyotes. Caldwell: Caxton Printers, 1941. Another copy. Very fine in lightly worn d.j. Author’s signed inscription “To Walter Wasson, M.D. a friend of long standing. Sincerely yours Leon V. Almirall.” $55.00
99. ALMIRALL, Leon V. From College to Cow Country. Caldwell: Caxton
Printers, 1956. 471 pp., frontispiece, photographic plates. 8vo, original blue
cloth. Very fine in fine d.j.
First edition. Dykes, Western High Spots, p. 77 (“A
Range Man’s Library”): “Some pertinent remarks...on ranching at the nine-thousand-foot
level.” Herd 40. Wynar 1018, 6390. An account of the author’s life as
he left the east coast and his law profession to become a cowboy and then a
cattleman in Colorado and New Mexico at the turn of the nineteenth century.
$75.00
100. ALTER, J. Cecil. Utah, the Storied Domain: A Documentary History
of Utah’s Eventful Career, Comprising the Thrilling Story of Her People from
the Indians of Yesterday to the Industrialists of Today. Chicago & New
York: American Historical Society, 1932. xxxv [1] 509 + 589 + 581 pp., frontispiece
portraits, plates (mostly photographic, many portraits), text illustrations,
maps. 3 vols., large 8vo, original maroon textured cloth, marbled edges. Very
fine set.
First edition. This good, solid history of Utah by respected
scholar Alter contains material on cattle and sheep raising, cattle drives,
early ranches, branding, ranges, Native American depredations against stock,
and the Church’s admonition to early incoming Mormon pioneers to bring their
best stock to Utah. The work is filled with biographies of noteworthy men and
women of Utah, many of whom were involved in ranching enterprises. Among the
most interesting is Frank W. Jennings, whose far-flung business ventures included
stockraising, breeding thoroughbred cattle that he then grazed on public ranges,
establishment of the first tannery in Utah, fabrication of saddles and boots,
and the purchase of Brigham Young’s Deseret Wooden Mills. $330.00
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