78 RANCH LIFE AND THE HUNTING-TRAIL 



middle of November the storms began. Day after day the snow came 

 down, thawing and then freezing and piling itself higher and higher. By 

 January the drifts had filled the ravines and coulees almost level. The snow 

 lay in great masses on the plateaus and river bottoms ; and this lasted 

 until the end of February. The preceding summer we had been visited by 

 a prolonged drought, so that the short, scanty grass was already well 

 cropped down ; the snow covered what pasturage there was to the depth 

 of several feet, and the cattle could not get at it at all, and could hardly 

 move round. It was all but impossible to travel on horseback except 

 on a few well-beaten trails. It was dangerous to attempt to penetrate the 

 Bad Lands, whose shape had been completely altered by the great white 

 mounds and drifts. The starving cattle died by scores of thousands 

 before their helpless owners' eyes. The bulls, the cows who were suck- 

 ling calves, or who were heavy with calf, the weak cattle that had just been 

 driven up on the trail, and the late calves suffered most; the old range 

 animals did better, and the steers best of all ; but the best was bad 

 enough. Even many of the horses died. An outfit near me lost half its 

 saddle-band, the animals having been worked so hard that they were very 

 thin when fall came. 



In the thick brush the stock got some shelter and sustenance. They 

 gnawed every twig and bough they could get at. They browsed the bitter 

 sage brush down to where the branches were the thickness of a man's 

 finger. When near a ranch they crowded into the outhouses and sheds 

 to die, and fences had to be built around the windows to keep the wild- 

 eyed, desperate beasts from thrusting their heads through the glass panes. 

 In most cases it was impossible either to drive them to the haystacks or to 

 haul the hay out to them. The deer even were so weak as to be easily run 

 down ; and on one or two of the plateaus where there were bands of 

 antelope, these wary creatures grew so numbed and feeble that they could 

 have been slaughtered like rabbits. But the hunters could hardly get out, 

 and could bring home neither hide nor meat, so the game went unharmed. 



The way in which the cattle got through the winter depended largely 

 on the different localities in which the bands were caught when the first 

 heavy snows came. A group of animals in a bare valley, without under- 

 brush and with steepish sides, would all die, weak and strong alike ; they 

 could get no food and no shelter, and so there would not be a hoof left. 

 On the other hand, hundreds wintered on the great thickly wooded bot- 

 toms near my ranch house with little more than ordinary loss, though a 

 skinny sorry-looking crew by the time the snow melted. In intermediate 

 places the strong survived and the weak perished. 



