6. If a cowboy was "all spraddled out," one might say he was "puttin' on more dog than a Mexican officer of revenue."

Ans: If a cowboy were "all spraddled out," one might say he was "puttin' on more dog than a Mexican officer of revenue."

1) In a present unreal conditional sentence, the first and third person singular for the verb "to be" take "were" and not "was" as it would be in a regular simple past sentence. This is just one of the oddities of writing conditional sentences.