In Cowboy Land. 429 



north, skirting some particularly rough buttes, and as 

 soon as they struck the road to turn to the right and 

 follow it out to the prairie, where they would find camp ; 

 he particularly warned them to keep a sharp look-out, so 

 as not to pass over the dim trail unawares in the dusk and 

 the storm. They followed his advice, and reached camp 

 safely ; and after they had left him nobody ever again 

 saw him alive. Evidently he himself, plodding north- 

 wards, passed over the road without seeing it in the 

 gathering gloom ; probably he struck it at some point 

 where the ground was bad, and the dim trail in conse- 

 quence disappeared entirely, as is the way with these 

 prairie roads — making them landmarks to be used with 

 caution. He must then have walked on and on, over 

 rugged hills and across deep ravines, until his horse came 

 to a standstill ; he took off its saddle and picketed it to a 

 dwarfed ash. Its frozen carcass was found, with the 

 saddle near by, two months later. He now evidently 

 recognized some landmark, and realized that he had 

 passed the road, and was far to the north of the round-up 

 wagons ; but he was a resolute, self-confident man, and 

 he determined to strike out for a line camp, which he 

 knew lay about due east of him, two or three miles out 

 on the prairie, on one of the head branches of Knife 

 River. Night must have fallen by this time, and he missed 

 the camp, probably passing it within less than a mile ; 

 but he did pass it, and with it all hopes of life, and walked 

 wearily on to his doom, through the thick darkness and 

 the driving snow. At last his strength failed, and he lay 

 down in the tall grass of a little hollow. Five months 



