30 Ranching in the Bad Lands. 



plainsman. Nor is it likely that the game will disappear 

 much before ranch life itself is a thing of the past. It is 

 a phase of American life as fascinating as it is evanescent, 

 and one well deserving an historian. But in these pages I 

 propose to dwell on only one of its many pleasant sides, 

 and to give some idea of the game shooting which forms 

 perhaps the chief of the cattle-man's pleasures, aside from 

 those more strictly connected with his actual work. I 

 have to tell of no unusual adventures, but merely of just 

 such hunting as lies within reach of most of the sport- 

 loving ranchmen whose cattle range along the waters of 

 the Powder and the Bighorn, the Little Missouri and the 

 Yellowstone. 



Of course I have never myself gone out hunting under 

 the direction of a professional guide or professional hunter, 

 unless it was to see one of the latter who was reputed 

 a crack shot ; all of my trips have been made either by 

 myself or else with one of my cowboys as a companion. 

 Most of the so-called hunters are not worth much. There 

 are plenty of men hanging round the frontier settlements 

 who claim to be hunters, and who bedizen themselves in 

 all the traditional finery of the craft, in the hope of getting 

 a job at guiding some " tender-foot " ; and there are plenty 

 of skin-hunters, or meat-hunters, who, after the Indians 

 have been driven away and when means of communication 

 have been established, mercilessly slaughter the game in 

 season and out, being too lazy to work at any regular 

 trade, and keeping on hunting until the animals become 

 too scarce and shy to be taken without more skill than they 

 possess ; but these are all mere temporary excrescences, 



