Ranching in the Bad Lands. 9 



man stands almost erect in them, from his head to his feet 

 being a nearly straight line. It is difficult to compare the 

 horsemanship of a western plainsman with that of an 

 eastern or southern cross-country rider. In following 

 hounds over fences and high walls, on a spirited horse 

 needing very careful humoring, the latter would certainly 

 excel ; but he would find it hard work to sit a bucking 

 horse like a cowboy, or to imitate the headlong dash with 

 which one will cut out a cow marked with his own brand 

 from a herd of several hundred others, or will follow 

 at full speed the twistings and doublings of a refractory 

 steer over ground where an eastern horse would hardly 

 keep its feet walking. 



My own ranches, the Elkhorn and the Chimney Butte, 

 lie along the eastern border of the cattle country, where the 

 Little Missouri flows through the heart of the Bad Lands. 

 This, like most other plains rivers, has a broad, shallow 

 bed, through which in times of freshets runs a muddy tor- 

 rent, that neither man nor beast can pass ; at other seasons 

 of the year it is very shallow, spreading out into pools, be- 

 tween which the trickling water may be but a few inches 

 deep. Even then, however, it is not always easy to cross, 

 for the bottom is filled with quicksands and mud-holes. 

 The river flows in long sigmoid curves through an alluvial 

 valley of no great width. The amount of this alluvial 

 land enclosed by a single bend is called a bottom, which 

 may be either covered with cotton-wood trees or else 

 be simply a great grass meadow. From the edges of the 

 valley the land rises abruptly in steep high buttes whose 

 crests are sharp and jagged. This broken country ex- 



