The Day the Cowboys Quit

While Elmer Kelton’s 1971 novel The Day the Cowboys Quit features gunfights and cattle rustling, it goes beyond the clichés of pulp Western fiction, exploring a period of social upheaval in late nineteenth-century Texas. Loosely based on the historical Great Canadian River Cowboy Strike of 1883, the novel pits tradition against change. At the center of the story is Hugh “Hitch” Hitchcock, a principled cowboy who reluctantly leads the fight against forces working to limit frontier liberties.

In the introduction to his novel, Kelton provides a brief primer on the Texas cattle ranch industry “during the years before and just after the Civil War.” Ranch owners and their hired hands – cowboys – formed a partnership that operated according to unwritten, implicitly understood rules. One of these allowed “for anyone to claim an unbranded maverick [cow] and put his own mark and brand upon it.” This practice gave the wage-earning cowboy a means to gradually grow his own herd and potentially “become an independent operator” himself. The values of individualism and freedom that were central to the cowboy culture thus found expression in the informal policies of the large ranch outfits.

“Hitch” Hitchcock, the story’s protagonist, is a thirty-something cowboy whose integrity and good sense have earned him the position of wagon boss on the “W” Ranch. Located in the Canadian River region of Texas, the W is a large outfit owned by Charlie Waide, one of the territory’s first ranch operators. Hitch admires Waide, who values the cowboys he employs and pays them good wages.



Hitch reflects on real cowboys and the reasons for their strike in 1883. Contrary to popular belief, Hitch muses, most real cowboys don’t carry guns. They’re skilled at riding, not shooting, and spend long days in the saddle wrangling cattle. Real cowboys pride themselves on their horsemanship and independence, and, Hitch concludes, that need for independence provoked the strike.

According to Hitch, “Looking back, it started the day Rascal McGinty and the Figure 4 rep” argued over the ownership of an old cow. Dayton Brumley, representing the interests of the wealthy investor Prosper Selkirk and his Figure 4 cattle operation, claims the cow belongs to Selkirk. Rascal, who with his brother Law works on the W ranch, insists the cow is part of the small herd he has cobbled together for himself. They call on Hitch to settle the dispute, but he concedes he cannot decipher the brand as it was badly done. Finally, Waide appears and declares the brand on the cow is “LR,” the McGinty brothers’ brand.

Later that evening, while Waide and his cowhands sit by a campfire, Prosper Selkirk arrives. In his late forties, Selkirk is a financier from an Eastern city. The major stockholder in the Figure 4 enterprise, he regards it as nothing more than a “beef factory” concerned only with satisfying the growing demands of beef buyers back East. Profits drive his policy, not the tradition of trust.



Selkirk informs Waide that he and other large ranch managers oppose letting hired cowboys acquire makeshift herds by marking their own brands on mavericks. He suggests the cowboys are actually stealing and re-branding cows already bearing ranch brands. Waide protests that he and his cowboys trust one another. Because Hitch and the McGinty brothers helped him turn his small herd into a prosperous ranch, Waide feels they deserve the opportunity to run their own cows. Dismissing Waide’s loyalty as misguided, Selkirk says most ranch owners favor “a blanket order that no man employed for wages be allowed to own cattle.” Waide refuses to support this idea.

The following morning, Hitch takes an injured cowhand to town, and there he encounters Asher Cottingham, a W Ranch cowboy. Alarmed that the business syndicates taking over large ranches want to lower cowboys’ wages and deny their right to own cattle, Cottingham and other cowboys are organizing a strike. Cottingham urges Hitch to join them, but he declines, reminding Cottingham that Waide rejects the syndicate’s proposed changes to the old order.

The big ranch owners meet and moneymaking interests prevail. Selkirk, speaking on behalf of the majority, explains that “the crux of the matter” is allowing “men on our payrolls to own cattle.” He argues that because this encourages cowboys to pilfer cows from their employers, it runs afoul of sound business practices. As they’re eager to maximize their profit margins, the ranch owners agree on a set of rules that curtail the freedoms of cowboys – including to own cattle.



Many cowboys protest the new rules by walking out in a strike. However, Law McGinty, Rascal’s younger and more rebellious brother, takes matters into his own hands. With a wife and new baby, he is determined to protect his future prospects by reckless, even underhanded means. When Law is caught altering a Figure 4 brand on a cow, his dishonest behavior confirms Selkirk’s suggestion that cowboys are thieves. Selkirk and another big ranch owner, Torrington, resolve to make an example of Law and recruit a killer-for-hire to lynch him.

Law McGinty’s betrayal of the cowboys’ moral code undermines Waide’s faith in the old system. Moreover, Selkirk uses his connections with the bank that gave Waide a loan to put the squeeze on him. After a sleepless night, Waide reluctantly decides to post the new rules on his ranch. When Hitch learns of Waide’s defection to the owners’ position, he joins the strike.

The strike fails, and the ranch managers get their way. To compel cowboys to surrender their herds, the managers enlist the services of a shady sheriff. Hitch tries to protect the small herd he has accumulated by moving his cows across the county line, beyond the sheriff’s jurisdiction. However, the sheriff disregards the county borders with impunity and confiscates Hitch’s cows by force.



In the next election, the disgruntled cowboys elect Hitch as sheriff. Hitch arrests Torrington for the murder of Law McGinty, and the trial ends in a hung jury. However, as the prosecuting lawyer says, “Even a hung jury is a sign of change and a warning” that the rough ways of the West are ending.

The inevitability of change is a major theme in Kelton’s novel. Although he wrote many Western novels, Kelton noted that the conflict in his stories is not between good and bad guys, but between one guy “trying to bring about change and the other resisting it.” This book received the Western Writers of America 1971 Spur Award.