After a nomadic childhood, Charles Siringo signed on as a teenage cowboy for the noted Texas cattle king Shanghai Pierce and began a life that embraced all the hard work, excitement, and adventure readers today associate with the cowboy era. He "rid the Chisholm Trail," driving 2,500 head of cattle from Austin to Kansas; knew Tascosa - now a historic monument - when it was home to raucous saloons, red-light districts, and a fair share of violence; and joined a posse of cowboys in pursuit of Billy the Kid and his gang.First published in 1885, Siringo's chronicle of his life as an itchy-footed boy, cowhand, range detective, and adventurer was one of the first classics about the Old West and helped to romanticize the West and its myth of the American cowboy. Will Rogers delcared, "That was the Cowboy's Bible when I was growing up."
