HUNTING FROM THE RANCH. 35 



closed by the cowboy who had driven them 

 in. 



After breakfast we strolled over to the cor- 

 ral, with our lariats, and, standing by the 

 snubbing-post in the middle, roped the horses 

 we wished for the party some that were 

 gentle, and others that were not. Then every 

 man saddled his horse ; and at the moment of 

 mounting for the start there was, as always, a 

 thrill of mild excitement, each rider hoping 

 that his own horse would not buck, and that 

 his neighbor's would. I had no young horses 

 on the ranch at the time ; but a number of the 

 older ones still possessed some of the least 

 amiable traits of their youth. 



Once in the saddle we rode off down river, 

 along the bottoms, crossing the stream again 

 and again. We went in Indian file, as is nec- 

 essary among the trees and in broken ground, 

 following the cattle-trails which themselves 

 had replaced or broadened the game paths 

 that alone crossed the plateaus and bottoms 

 when my ranch house was first built. Now 

 we crossed open reaches of coarse grass, 

 thinly sprinkled with large, brittle cotton-wood 

 trees, their branches torn and splintered ; now 

 we wound our way through a dense jungle 

 where the gray, thorny buffalo bushes, span- 

 gled with brilliant red berry clusters, choked 

 the spaces between the thick-growing box- 

 alders ; and again the sure-footed ponies 

 scrambled down one cut bank and up another, 

 through seemingly impossible rifts, or with 

 gingerly footsteps trod a path which cut the 

 side of a butte or overhung a bluff. Some- 

 times we racked, or shacked along at the fox 



