midnight
His handkerchief , red cotton , is loosely knotted about the cowboy 's neck , knot to the rear . He wipes the sweat from his brow therewith on those hot Texas days when in a branding pen he `` flanks '' calves or feeds the fires or handles the irons or stands off the horned indignation of the cows , resentful because of burned and bawling offspring . It would take two hundred thousand words to tell in half fashion the story of the cowboy . His religion of fatalism , his courage , his rides at full swing in midnight darkness to head and turn and hold a herd stampeded , when a slip on the storm-soaked grass by his unshod pony , or a misplaced prairie-dog hole , means a tumble , and a tumble means that a hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of cattle , with hoofs like chopping knives , will run over him and make him look and feel and become as dead as a cancelled postage stamp ; his troubles , his joys , his soberness in camp , his drunkenness in town , and his feuds and occasional `` gun plays '' are not to be disposed of in a preface . One can not in such cramped space so much as hit the high places in a cowboy career . At work on the range and about his camp -- for , bar accidents , wherever you find a cowboy you will find a camp -- the cowboy is a youth of sober quiet dignity . There is a deal of deep politeness and nothing of epithet , insult or horseplay where everybody wears a gun .