ndian being all alike admirable riders in their espective styles, and each cherishing the same rofound and ignorant contempt for every method but his own. The flash riders, or horsereakers, always called "bronco busters," an perform really marvelous feats, riding with ase the most vicious and unbroken beasts, nat no ordinary cowboy would dare to tackle. lthough sitting seemingly so loose in the addle, such a rider can not be jarred out of it y the wildest plunger, it being a favorite feat sit out the antics of a bucking horse with Iver half-dollars under each knee or in the irrups under each foot. But their method of reaking is very rough, consisting only in sadling and bridling a beast by main force and en riding him, also by main force, until he exhausted, when he is turned over as broken." Later on the cowboy himself may ain his horse to stop or wheel instantly at touch of the reins or bit, to start at top speed a signal, and to stand motionless when ft. An intelligent pony soon picks up a pod deal of knowledge about the cow busiess on his own account. All cattle are branded, usually on the hip, oulder, and side, or on any one of them, ith letters, numbers, or figures, in every comnation, the outfit being known by its brand. ear me, for instance, are the Three Sevens, the histle, the Bellows, the OX, the VI., the Sevty-six Bar (76), and the Quarter Circle Diaond () outfits. The dew-lap and the ears ay also be cut, notched, or slit. All brands are gistered, and are thus protected against imitors, any man tampering with them being unished as severely as possible. Unbranded imals are called mavericks, and when found 1 the round-up are either branded by the wner of the range on which they are, or else e sold for the benefit of the association. At very shipping point, as well as where the eef cattle are received, there are stock in>ectors who jealously examine all the brands a the live animals or on the hides of the aughtered ones, so as to detect any foul play, hich is immediately reported to the associaon. It becomes second nature with a cowoy to inspect and note the brands of every unch of animals he comes across. Perhaps the thing that seems strangest to the aveler who for the first time crosses the bleak lains of this Upper Missouri grazing country the small number of cattle seen. He can ardly believe he is in the great stock region, here for miles upon miles he will not see a ingle head, and will then come only upon a traggling herd of a few score. As a matter f fact, where there is no artificial food put p for winter use cattle always need a good leal of ground per head; and this is peculiarly the case with us in the North-west, where much of the ground is bare of vegetation and where what pasture there is is both short and sparse. It is a matter of absolute necessity, where beasts are left to shift for themselves in the open during the bitter winter weather, that they then should have grass that they have not cropped too far down; and to insure this it is necessary with us to allow on the average about twenty-five acres of ground to each animal. This means that a range of country ten miles square will keep between two and three thousand head of stock only, and if more are put on, it is at the risk of seeing a severe winter kill off half or three-quarters of the whole number. So a range may be in reality overstocked when to an Eastern and unpracticed eye it seems hardly to have on it a number worth taking into account. Overstocking is the great danger threatening the stock-raising industry on the plains. This industry has only risen to be of more than local consequence during the past score of years, as before that time it was confined to Texas and California; but during these two decades of its existence the stockmen in different localities have again and again suffered the most ruinous losses, usually with overstocking as the ultimate cause. In the south the drought, and in the north the deep snows, and everywhere unusually bad winters, do immense damage; still, if the land is fitted for stock at all, they will, averaging one year with another, do very well so long as the feed is not cropped down too close. But, of course, no amount of feed will make some countries worth anything for cattle that are not housed during the winter; and stockmen in choosing new ranges for their herds pay almost as much attention to the capacity of the land for yielding shelter as they do to the abundant and good quality of the grass. High up among the foot-hills of the mountains cattle will not live through the winter; and an open, rolling prairie land of heavy rainfall, and where in consequence the snow lies deep and there is no protection from the furious cold winds, is useless for winter grazing, no matter how thick and high the feed. The three essentials for a range are grass, water, and shelter: the water is only needed in summer and the shelter in winter, while it may be doubted if drought during the hot months has ever killed off more cattle than have died in consequence of exposure on shelterless ground to the icy weather, lasting from November to April. The finest summer range may be valueless either on account of its lack of shelter or because it is in a region of heavy snowfall-portions of territory lying in the same latitude and not very far apart often differing widely they will not try to make their way back against in this respect. This loss, of course, had noth- the storm, but will simply stand with their tails ing to do with overstocking; and the same to it until they drop dead in their tracks; and, was true of the loss that visited the few herds accordingly, in some parts of the country which spent the hard winter of 1880 on but luckily far to the south of us very the northern cattle plains. These were the pioneers of their kind, and the grass was all that could be desired; yet the extraordinary severity of the weather proved too much for the cattle. This was especially the case with hose herds consisting of "pilgrims," as they re called-that is, of animals driven up on o the range from the south, and therefore n poor condition. One such herd of pilrims on the Powder River suffered a loss of thirty-six hundred out of a total of four housand, and the survivors kept alive only by rowsing on the tops of cottonwoods felled or them. Even seasoned animals fared very adly. One great herd in the Yellowstone Talley lost about a fourth of its number, the Oss falling mainly on the breeding cows, alves, and bulls, always the chief sufferers, s the steers, and also the dry cows, will get hrough almost anything. The loss here would ave been far heavier than it was had it not een for a curious trait shown by the cattle. They kept in bands of several hundred each, nd during the time of the deep snows a and would make a start and travel several iles in a straight line, plowing their way rough the drifts and beating out a broad rack; then, when stopped by a frozen waterourse or chain of buttes, they would turn ack and graze over the trail thus made, the nly place where they could get at the grass. A drenching rain, followed by a severe snap f cold, is even more destructive than deep 10w, for the saturated coats of the poor easts are turned into sheets of icy mail, and le grass-blades, frozen at the roots as well as bove, change into sheaves of brittle spears as neatable as so many icicles. Entire herds ave perished in consequence of such a storm. [ere cold, however, will kill only very weak nimals, which is fortunate for us, as the spirit in le thermometer during winter often sinks to fty degrees below zero, the cold being literlly arctic; yet though the cattle become thin uring such a snap of weather, and sometimes ave their ears, tails, and even horns frozen ff, they nevertheless rarely die from the cold lone. But if there is a blizzard blowing in at ach a time, the cattle need shelter, and if aught in the open, will travel for scores of iles before the storm, until they reach a break the ground, or some stretch of dense woodind, which will shield them from the blasts. f cattle traveling in this manner come to some bstacle that they can not pass, as, for instance, wire fence or a steep railway embankment, VOL. XXXV.-70–71. - the railways are fringed with countless skeletons of beasts that have thus perished, while many of the long wire fences make an almost equally bad showing. In some of the very open country of Kansas and Indian Territory, many of the herds during the past two years have suffered a loss of from sixty to eighty per cent., although this was from a variety of causes, including drought as well as severe winter weather. Too much rain is quite as bad as too little, especially if it falls after the 1st of August, for then, though the growth of grass is very rank and luxuriant, it yet has little strength and does not cure well on the stalk; and it is only possible to winter cattle at large at all because of the way in which the grass turns into natural hay by this curing on the stalk. But scantiness of food, due to overstocking, is the one really great danger to us in the north, who do not have to fear the droughts that occasionally devastate portions of the southern ranges. In a fairly good country, if the feed is plenty, the natural increase of a herd is sure shortly to repair any damage that may be done by an unusually severe winter- unless, indeed, the latter should be one such as occurs but two or three times in a century. When, however, the grass becomes cropped down, then the loss in even an ordinary year is heavy among the weaker animals, and if the winter is at all severe it becomes simply appalling. The snow covers the shorter grass much quicker, and even when there is enough, the cattle, weak and unfit to travel around, have to work hard to get it by exertion tending to enfeeble them and render them less able to cope with the exposure and cold. Again, the grass is, of course, soonest eaten off where there is shelter; and, accordingly, the broken ground to which the animals cling during winter may be grazed bare of vegetation though the open plains, to which only the hardiest will at this season stray, may have plenty; and insufficiency of food, although not such as actually to starve them, weakens them so that they succumb readily to the cold or to one of the numerous accidents to which they are liable as slipping off an icy butte or getting cast in a frozen washout. The cows in calf are those that suffer most, and so heavy is the loss among these and so light the calf crop that it is yet an open question whether our northern ranges are as a whole fitted for breeding. When the animals get weak they will huddle into some nook or corner or empty hut and simply stay there till they die. Overstocking may cause little or no harm for two or three years, but sooner or later there comes a winter which means ruin to the ranches that have too many cattle on them; and in our country, which is even now getting crowded, it is merely a question of time as to when a winter will come that will understock the ranges by the summary process of killing off about half of all the cattle throughout the North-west In our northern country we have "free grass"; that is, the stockmen rarely own more than small portions of the land over which their cattle range, the bulk of it being unsurveyed and still the property of the National Government-for the latter refuses to sell the soil except in small lots, acting on the wise principle of distributing it among as many owners as possible. Here and there some ranchman has acquired title to narrow strips of territory peculiarly valuable as giving waterright; but the amount of land thus occupied is small with us, although the reverse is the case farther south, and there is practically no fencing to speak of. As a consequence, the land is one vast pasture, and the man who overstocks his own range damages his neighbors as much as himself. These huge northern pastures are too dry and the soil too poor to be used for agriculture until the rich, wet lands to the east and west are occupied; and at present we have little fear from grangers. Of course, in the end much of the ground will be taken up for small farms, but the farmers that so far have come in have absolutely failed to make even a living, except now and then by raising a few vegetables for the use of the stockmen; and we are inclined to welcome the incoming of an occasional settler, if he is a decent man, especially as, by the laws of the Territories in which the great grazing plains lie, he is obliged to fence in his own patch of cleared ground, and we do not have to keep our cattle out of it. At present we are far more afraid of each other. There are always plenty of men who for the sake of the chance of gain they themselves run are willing to jeopardize the interests of their neighbors by putting on more cattle than the land will support-for the loss, of course, falls as heavily on the man who has put on the right number as on him who has put on too many; and it is against these individuals that we have to guard so far as we are able. To protect ourselves completely is impossible, but the very identity of interest that renders all of us liable to suffer for the fault of a few also renders us as a whole able to take some rough measures to guard against the wrong-doing of a portion of our number; for the fact that the cattle wander intermixed over the ranges forces all the ranchmen of a locality to combine if they wish to do their work effectively. Accordingly, the stockmen of a neighborhood, when it holds as many cattle as it safely can, usually unitedly refuse to work with any one who puts in another herd. In the cow country a man is peculiarly dependent upon his neighbors, and a small outfit is wholly unable to work without their assistance when once the cattle have mingled completely with those of other brands. A large outfit is much more master of its destiny, and can do its own work quite by itself; but even such a one can be injured in countless ways if the hostility of the neighboring ranchmen is incurred. So a certain check is put to undue crowding of the ranges; but it is only partial. The best days of ranching are over; and though there are many ranchmen who still make money, yet during the past two or three years the majority have certainly lost. This is especially true of the numerous Easterners who went into the business without any experience and trusted themselves entirely to their Western representatives; although, on the other hand, many of those who have made most money at it are Easterners, who, however, t have happened to be naturally fitted for the work and who have deliberately settled down to learning the business as they would have learned any other, devoting their whole time and energy to it. As the country grows older, stock-raising will in some places die out, and in others entirely change its character; the ranches will be broken up, will be gradually modified into stock-farms, or, if on good soil, may even fall under the sway of the husbandman. In its present form stock-raising on the plains is doomed, and can hardly outlast the century. The great free ranches, with their barbarous, picturesque, and curiously fascinating surroundings, mark a primitive stage of existence as surely as do the great tracts of primeval forests, and like the latter must pass away before the onward march of our people; and we who have felt the charm of the life, and have exulted in its abounding vigor and its bold, restless freedom, will not only regret its passing for our own sakes only, but must also feel real sorrow that those who come after us are not to see, as we have seen, what is perhaps the pleasantest, healthiest, and most exciting phase of American existence. Theodore Roosevelt. |