Whether destined to be remembered or forgotten, a cowhand clung to life with all the zeal with which he approached his trade. He was the most loyal of employees, repeatedly putting his neck on the line for a mere dollar a day. Patrick Dearen has brought these reckless and risky adventures to life with colorful stories from interviews with 76 men who cowboyed in the West before 1932 as well as 150 archival interviews and written accounts from as early as the 1870s and well into the mid-twentieth century.