?I always wanted to be a cow-puncher,? says Shorty Caraway. ?As a little kid back on the farm in east Texas I couldn?t think of nothin? else.? Shorty?s father took some persuading, but in the end he staked his fourteen-year-old son to a white pony, a second-hand saddle, and ?forty dollars to go with the two I had, an? he said that ought to run me until I got a job.? What happened from that day until Shorty was taken on as a regular hand is told in the pages of Ross Santee?s Cowboy, first published in 1928.