He chews tobacco like a man, smokes cigar-…
source date: 1891
availability: public-domain

he sufferings of the poor brutes. He chews tobacco like a man, smokes cigar- ettes like a Kearney dude and swears like a pirate. He is a perfect terror to the children of his own age, and it will be a miracle if he doesn’t become a murderer before he is a dozen years old. To the cowboys he is a source of endless amusement, and they are fast educating him in every form of depravity. A favorite sport of theirs is to get him in the saloon on Sunday, make him drunk on mixed drinks, and then tease him into a state of fenzy. He is a regular little toper, and will drink like a fish, and when drunk is about as ugly a little devil as you can scare up. He will curse the cowboys, and fight like the little savage that he is. His Indian nature crops out in this, though, for he fights in a peculiarly sneaking Apache way. He will snarl at his tormentor, and appar- ently forget all about it until he thinks his enemy is off his guard, when he will seize a beer glass or anything else that comes handy and hurl it with all his puny strength at the man who has angered him.