4 Ranching in the Bad Lands. 



come a prominent feature of Western life during the last 

 score of years. When the Civil War was raging, there 

 were hundreds of thousands of bony, half wild steers and 

 cows in Texas, whose value had hitherto been very slight ; 

 but toward the middle of the struggle they became a most 

 important source of food supply to both armies, and when 

 the war had ended, the profits of the business were widely 

 known and many men had gone into it. At first the stock- 

 raising was all done in Texas, and the beef-steers, when 

 ready for sale, were annually driven north along what be- 

 came a regular cattle trail. Soon the men of Kansas and 

 Colorado began to start ranches, and Texans who were 

 getting crowded out moved their herds north into these 

 lands, and afterward into Wyoming. Large herds of year- 

 ling steers also were, and still are, driven from the breed- 

 ing ranches of the south to some northern range, there to 

 be fattened for three years before selling. The cattle trail 

 led through great wastes, and the scores of armed cow- 

 boys who, under one or two foremen, accompanied each 

 herd, had often to do battle with bands of hostile Indians ; 

 but this danger is now a thing of the past, as, indeed, will 

 soon be the case with the cattle trail itself, for year by 

 year the grangers press steadily westward into it, and 

 when they have once settled in a place, will not permit 

 the cattle to be driven across it 



In the northern country the ranches vary greatly in 

 size ; on some there may be but a few hundred head, on 

 others ten times as many thousand. The land is still in 

 great part unsurveyed, and is hardly anywhere fenced in, 

 the cattle roaming over it at will. The small ranches are 



