i9 6 A Trip on the Prairie. 



I started in the very earliest morning, when the in- 

 tense brilliancy of the stars had just begun to pale before 

 the first streak of dawn. By the time I left the river 

 bottom and struck off up the valley of a winding creek, 

 which led through the Bad Lands, the eastern sky was 

 growing rosy ; and soon the buttes and cliffs were lit up 

 by the level rays of the cloudless summer sun. The air 

 was fresh and sweet, and odorous with the sweet scents of 

 the spring-time that was but barely passed ; the dew lay 

 heavy, in glittering drops, on the leaves and the blades 

 of grass, whose vivid green, at this season, for a short 

 time brightens the desolate and sterile-looking wastes of 

 the lonely western plains. The rose-bushes were all in 

 bloom, and their pink blossoms clustered in every point 

 and bend of the stream ; and the sweet, sad songs of the 

 hermit thrushes rose from the thickets, while the meadow 

 larks perched boldly in sight as they uttered their louder 

 and more cheerful music. The round-up had passed by 

 our ranch, and all the cattle with our brands, the maltese 

 cross and cut dewlap, or the elk-horn and triangle, had 

 been turned loose ; they had not yet worked away from 

 the river, and I rode by long strings of them, walking in 

 single file off to the hills, or standing in groups to look at 

 me as I passed. 



Leaving the creek I struck off among a region of 

 scoria buttes, the ground rising into rounded hills through 

 whose grassy covering the red volcanic rock showed in 

 places, while boulder-like fragments of it were scattered 

 all through the valleys between. There were a few clumps 

 of bushes here and there, and near one of them were two 



