Ajnong the High Hills. loi 



fall we lay down, in a log hut or tent, if at a line camp ; 

 under the open sky, if with the round-up wagon. 



After ten days or so of such work, in which every 

 man had to do his full share — for laggards and idlers, no 

 matter who, get no mercy in the real and healthy democ- 

 racy of the round-up — I would go back to the ranch to 

 turn to my books with added zest for a fortnight. Yet 

 even during these weeks at the ranch there was some 

 out-door work ; for I was breakino- two or three colts. I 

 took my time, breaking them gradually and gently, not, 

 after the usual cowboy fashion, in a hurry, by sheer main 

 strength and rough riding, with the attendant danger to 

 the limbs of the man and very probable ruin to the man- 

 ners of the horse. We rose early ; each morning I stood 

 on the low-roofed verandah, looking out under the line of 

 murmuring, glossy-leaved cottonwoods, across the shallow 

 river, to see the sun flame above the line of bluffs opposite. 

 In the evening I strolled off for an hour or two's walk, rifle 

 in hand. The roomy, homelike ranch house, with its log 

 walls, shingled roof, and big chimneys and fireplaces, stands 

 in a glade, in the midst of the thick forest, which covers 

 half the bottom ; behind rises, bare and steep, the wall of 

 peaks, ridges, and table-lands. 



During the summer in question, I once or twice shot a 

 whitetail buck right on this large bottom ; once or twice I 

 killed a blacktail in the hills behind, not a mile from the 

 ranch house. Several times I killed and brought in prong- 

 bucks, rising before dawn, and riding off on a good horse 

 for an all day's hunt in the rolling prairie country twelve 

 or fifteen miles away. Occasionally I took the wagon and 



