History through a cow's horn: Joseph G. McCoy and his Historic sketches of the cattle trade.--The rancher as writer: Theodore Roosevelt's sketches of the cattle trade.--Prose and poetry of the cattle industry.--Classics of the cattle trade.--Freedom and individualism on the range.--The fence line between cowboy history and cowboy fiction.--Theory of the cowboy novel.--The left side of the American ranges.--The cowboy with a sense of the past.--A notice left at the gate still open.