The Spirit of Dogie Long

The Spirit of Dogie Long is the story of an infant boy who is found by cowboys on a cattle drive from New Mexico to California in the 1870s. During his first 12 years, the crew teaches the boy how to handle himself among cattle, horses and cowboys the Cowboy Way, with honesty, compassion, and integrity. His horses, in effect, teach him the same values.On the trail, cowboys tell stories of bravery, cowardice, anger and comedy, friendship and enmity, tales about the goodness of their mothers and sisters, or other relationship they’ve had with women. Conversation, stories, and songs are their only entertainment. Dogie grows up deeply interested in his way of life, because his cowboy partners are proud, zealous, skilled, and very happy about what they do. They also are as careful about what they say and do around the boy, as they are about anyone they deeply respect. So, Dogie also learns from the great good example of men who do their best at the way they make a living and become good men and good hands at being cowboys, physically and morally. In Dogie’s day cowboys respected all women and were careful to watch their language and their behavior in the presence of women. Alas, Dogie grows up knowing only one woman, a very efficient and very cold person who works at the headquarters of the ABC Cattle Company that hires the cowboys who raise him. Aside from schooling him in reading, writing, and arithmetic, that woman doesn’t have much to do with him.The ABC’s have a ranch near Magdalena, New Mexico. In the Spring, Summer and Fall the cowboys run the ranch and cattle. In the Fall, the owners also buy their neighbors’ cattle and combine them with the ABC’s herd that that will be driven across the winter trail to California for sale.Dogie’s life goes on fine for the first 12 years, although he never knows the affections that only mothers and sisters can give. However, one day when he is 12 a young mother and her daughters come to his rescue after he is lost in a snowstorm after a stampede. In their company he continues as a trail driver, but he also fulfills his ambition as a horse-breaker and trainer and starts what he thinks will be a new life.However, too soon, he is forced to go out on his own again, as orphaned or otherwise displaced young cowboys often did in those days. He is separated from his outfit in an extraordinary and unexpected way.