The Hollywood version, of a "frontier" of shabby villages and strangers wandering in from nowhere was almost certainly mostly nonsense, though the real homes were likely very uncomfortable and grubby.

The so-called "Wild West" was of quite short duration.

The itinerant labourers would have been paid in money or in kind for whatever work they could find, but their lives must have been very hard and miserable. Presumably they worked as farm-hands, forestry labourers or in mines and quarries.

They would have had to keep what little money they had, with them.

An avid reader an fan of cowboys the average cowboy was usually much closer to a working-class laborer commuting between jobs than the solitary gunslinger portrayed in Western films.

A single gold piece sew into clothing was bein' strapped back in the day.

In the movies and books the cowboys always seem to have this uncanny ability to know what direction to go in.
As a boy Scout, we got lost on an orienteering course with a map and a compass. We made it back the same time the SFS arrived to search for us. 😅

In there boots.

Lotta dried foods, meats that don't go bad, beef jerky etc.