Here's the thing about the Code of the West. When I ask who originated the code, I get blank looks. A typical response is: "Well, I don't know the fellow's name, but I assume it was written around the time we settled the West." That's partly right. Cowboys and ranchers of the 1870s and '80s had expectations about keeping your word and sticking by your outfit, but nobody wrote them down as a formal code. That job fell to novelists like Owen Wister and Zane Grey, whose 1934 novel was titled The Code of the West, and to Hollywood after them. The ten-point list that became our state's official code of behavior is far more recent.