The HORRIFYING Life of a Cowboy with Tuberculosis

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They told you the West was freedom. Wide horizons, clean air, a fresh start. What you found was dust thick enough to choke a horse, bunkhouses crawling with lice, wages too thin to buy a second pair of boots, and a cough that never let go. Consumption stalked cowboys as closely as the cattle they drove — turning young men hollow before their time, bleeding them dry in bunkhouses, on cattle trails, and beneath makeshift canvas shelters.

This isn’t the ballad of fearless riders under open skies. This is the reality of fevered nights, bloody rags, indifferent comrades, and shallow prairie graves.

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