The first Spanish cattle --
The Texas breed --
Mavericks and Maverickers --
On the trail --
Stompedes --
The way they ran --
Epitaph on the lone prairie --
Bulls and the blood call --
Cows and curiosity --
Smell and thirst --
Vitality, drifts and die-ups --
Horns --
Rawhide --
Oxen and trails --
Sancho and other returners --
Lead steers and neck oxen --
Outlaws of the brush --
Hidden in the thickets --
Molded by horn and thorn --
Sundown.

The Texas Longhorn made more history than any breed of cattle the world has known-- and exciting history it is! The Longhorns were more than a breed-- they were a race apart. Gaunt, wiry, intractable, they were themselves pioneers in a hard, strange land. This is their story, told by a born teller of tales, who knows that legend and folklore are proper parts of history. It is the story, too, of the men the Longhorn brought into being-- the Texas cowboys who rode over the rim with all the energy, insolence and pride of the booming West. Mr. Dobie tells of the Spanish conquistadores, who brought their cattle with them; of ranching in turbulent Colonial times; of "Mavericks and Maverickers" and the abrupt justice of the rope. He catches the terrible excitement of the stampede, the poetry of the play of lightning on a sea of seething horns. He writes absorbingly of titanic bull fights on the range, "ghost" steers, fabulous treks and Indian torture. The twilight of the Longhorn has fallen. The noble breed is nearer extinction than the buffalo ever was. Yet in this rousing chronicle the great days of the Longhorn live again, a brave and surging part of our national heritage -- Back cover.

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