Ranching in the Bad Lands. 5 



often quite close to one another, say within a couple of 

 miles ; but the home ranch of a big outfit will not have 

 another building within ten or twenty miles of it, or, in- 

 deed, if the country is dry, not within fifty. The ranch- 

 house may be only a mud dugout, or a " shack " made of 

 logs stuck upright into the ground ; more often it is a 

 fair-sized, well-made building of hewn logs, divided into 

 several rooms. Around it are grouped the other buildings 

 log-stables, cow-sheds, and hay-ricks, an out-house in 

 which to store things, and on large ranches another house 

 in which the cowboys sleep. The strongly made, circular 

 horse-corral, with a snubbing-post in the middle, stands 

 close by ; the larger cow-corral, in which the stock is 

 branded, may be some distance off. A small patch of 

 ground is usually enclosed as a vegetable garden, and a 

 very large one, with water in it, as a pasture to be used 

 only in special cases. All the work is done on horseback, 

 and the quantity of ponies is thus of necessity very great, 

 some of the large outfits numbering them by hundreds ; on 

 my own ranch there are eighty. Most of them are small, 

 wiry beasts, not very speedy, but with good bottom, and 

 able to pick up a living under the most adverse circum- 

 stances. There are usually a few large, fine horses kept 

 for the special use of the ranchman or foremen. The best 

 are those from Oregon ; most of them come from Texas, 

 and many are bought from the Indians. They are broken 

 in a very rough manner, and many are in consequence 

 vicious brutes, with the detestable habit of bucking. Of 

 this habit I have a perfect dread, and, if I can help it, 

 never get on a confirmed bucker. The horse puts his 



