98 The Wilderness Hunter. 



and kids, at which I would not shoot. As the sun set, 

 leaving bars of amber and pale red in the western sky, 

 the air became absolutely calm. In the waning evening 

 the low, far-off ridges were touched with a violet light ; 

 then the hues grew sombre, and still darkness fell on the 

 lonely prairie. 



Next morning we drove to the river, and kept near it 

 for several days, most of the time following the tracks 

 made by the heavy wagons accompanying the trail herds 

 this being one of the regular routes followed by the 

 great throng of slow-moving cattle yearly driven from the 

 south. At other times we made our own road. Twice 

 or thrice we passed ranch houses ; the men being absent 

 on the round-up they were shut, save one which was 

 inhabited by two or three lean Texan cow-punchers, with 

 sun-burned faces and reckless eyes, who had come up with 

 a trail herd from the Cherokee strip. Once, near the old 

 Sioux crossing, where the Dakota war bands used to 

 ford the river on their forays against the Crows and the 

 settlers along the Yellowstone, we met a large horse 

 herd. The tough, shabby, tired-looking animals, one or 

 two of which were loaded with bedding and a scanty 

 supply of food, were driven by three travel-worn, hard- 

 faced men, with broad hats, shaps, and long pistols in 

 their belts. They had brought the herd over plain and 

 mountain pass all the way from far distant Oregon. 



It was a wild, rough country, bare of trees save for 

 a fringe of cottonwoods along the river, and occasional 

 clumps of cedar on the jagged, brown buttes ; as we went 

 farther the hills turned the color of chalk, and were 



