82 RANCH LIFE AND THE HUNTING-TRAIL 



belts the coast, they looked out on the heaving waves of the greatest of all 

 the oceans. They lived for months, often for years, among the Indians, 

 now as friends, now as foes, warring, hunting, and marrying with them; 

 they acted as guides for exploring parties, as scouts for the soldiers who 

 from time to time were sent against the different hostile tribes. At long 

 intervals they came into some frontier settlement or some fur company's 

 fort, posted in the heart of the wilderness, to dispose of their bales of furs, 

 or to replenish their stock of ammunition and purchase a scanty supply of 

 coarse food and clothing. 



From that day to this they have not changed their way of life. But 

 there are not many of them left now. The basin of the Upper Missouri 

 was their last stronghold, being the last great hunting-ground of the 

 Indians, with whom the white trappers were always fighting and bicker- 

 ing, but who nevertheless by their presence protected the game that gave 

 the trappers their livelihood. My cattle were among the very first to come 

 into the land, at a time when the buffalo and beaver still abounded, and 

 then the old hunters were common. Many a time I have hunted with 

 them, spent the night in their smoky cabins, or had them as guests at my 

 ranch. But in a couple of years after the inrush of the cattle-men the last 

 herds of the buffalo were destroyed, and the beaver were trapped out of 

 all the plains' streams. Then the hunters vanished likewise, save that 

 here and there one or two still remain in some nook or out-of-the-way 

 corner. The others wandered off restlessly over the land, some to 

 join their brethren in the Cceur d'Alene or the northern Rockies, others 

 to the coast ranges or to far-away Alaska. Moreover, their ranks were 

 soon thinned by death, and the places of the dead were no longer taken 

 by new recruits. They led hard lives, and the unending strain of their 

 toilsome and dangerous existence shattered even such iron frames as 

 theirs. They were killed in drunken brawls, or in nameless fights with 

 roving Indians ; they died by one of the thousand accidents incident to 

 the business of their lives, by flood or quicksand, by cold or starvation, 

 by the stumble of a horse or a footslip on the edge of a cliff; they perished 

 by diseases brought on by terrible privation, and aggravated by the savage 

 orgies with which it was varied. 



Yet there was not only much that was attractive in their wild, free, 

 reckless lives, but there was also very much good about the men them- 

 selves. They were and such of them as are left still are frank, bold, and 

 self-reliant to a degree. They fear neither man, brute, nor element. They 

 are generous and hospitable; they stand loyally by their friends, and 

 pursue their enemies with bitter and vindictive hatred. For the rest, they 



