Pardner of the Wind

"A 'sure-enough cowhand' and cattleman, from the grassroots under his boots to the top of his wide-brimmed hat" - so Neil M. Clark describes N. Howard (Jack) Thorp (1867-1940) in his affectionate introduction to Pardner of the Wind. The son of a wealthy lawyer, Thorp's early years were spent in New York, Newport, and St. Paul's School in New Hampshire; but in the 1890s he headed West and From then on it was his real home. The first person to attempt a systematic study of cowboy songs and range ballads, he made trips of hundreds of miles through half a dozen cow-country states, picking up a song here or a fragment of one there, and writing songs himself (the most famous is "Little Joe the Wrangler"). But Jack was primarily a man of action and, in his collaborator's words, "for fifty years and more, he rode the range. lived a life, made his living out of cattle, and was an integral part of the cowboy scene."