Ranching in the Bad Lands 37 



cences, and the true old Rocky Mountain hunter and 

 trapper, the plainsman, or mountain-man, who, with 

 all his faults, was a man of iron nerve and will, is 

 now almost a thing of the past. In the place of these 

 heroes of a bygone age, the men who were clad in 

 buckskin and who carried long rifles, stands, or rath- 

 er rides, the bronzed and sinewy cowboy, as pictu- 

 resque and self-reliant, as dashing and resolute as 

 the saturnine Indian fighters whose place he has 

 taken ; and, alas that it should be written ! he in his 

 turn must at no distant time share the fate of the 

 men he has displaced. The ground over which he 

 so gallantly rides his small, wiry horse will soon 

 know him no more, and in his stead there will be 

 the plodding grangers and husbandmen. I suppose 

 it is right and for the best that the great cattle coun- 

 try, with its broad extent of fenceless land, over 

 which the ranchman rides as free as the game that 

 he follows or the horned herds that he guards, should 

 be in the end broken up into small patches of fenced 

 farm land and grazing land ; but I hope against hope 

 that I myself shall not live to see this take place, 

 for when it does one of the pleasantest and freest 

 phases of Western American life will have come 

 to an end. 



The old hunters were a class by themselves. They 

 penetrated, alone or in small parties, to the furthest 

 and wildest haunts of the animals they followed, 

 leading a solitary, lonely life, often never seeing a 

 white face for months and even years together. 

 They were skilful shots, and were cool, daring, and 



