“A man’s personal belongings were denied to the curious if he packed them in his bed. In every roundup bed was a ‘war sack,’ usually a wheat sack or so-called seamless sack, in which he kept his clothes and any little personal belonging he had with him. The Anglo-Saxon maxim that ‘A man’s home is his castle’ was fiercely true in the cowboy’s case, but, as such, the only home he had was his bed. That was why Jimmie Harrell threatened to shoot me for raiding his bed and stealing his itch medicine. The law of privacy, the law of the range, called for complete sanctity of a man’s bedroll.”
Taken from the award-winning Cowboy Life: The Letters of George Philip, edited by Cathie Draine, illustrated by Mick B. Harrison, published by the South Dakota State Historical Society Press.
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