888 THE PEOPLE'S FARM AND STOCK CYCLOPEDIA. 



range. For this reason : A storm comes up, you are careful that 

 your own stock is all safe in their shelter, and retire to your 

 shack or dugout feeling that all is well. You turn in and sleep 

 soundly, only to awake in the morning to find your herd com- 

 pletly s'wallowed up by a perfect sea of cattle that have been 

 drifting in on you all night, and may continue to come for a week, 

 seeking shelter, water, and food, in your favored spot, stampeded 

 from other herds, or turned loose by their owners, some of them 

 coming a hundred miles or more, and numbered by the thou- 

 sands perhaps. In such a case, although you do your utmost, 

 many of your own brand will be lost, and you will be compelled 

 to resort to the great spring round-up and claim your stock. By 

 all means make a good, strong barb- wire fence that will defend your 

 herd while in shelter from the vagabond cattle of the careless 

 herder or the possible incoming of a drifting or stampeded herd. 



Fire-guards. Those who have never lived in a sparsely 

 settled prairie country have no adequate idea of the danger from 

 fire, for which reason I will sound a note of warning by saying : 

 If your range is so situated and the land of such a nature as will 

 admit of using the plow, by no means neglect to protect your 

 range from fire. If you had ever been burned out by the rush- 

 ing, devouring flames, as the writer has, this warning might be 

 unnecessary. I shall presume that you can use the plow by 

 taking advantage of a recent shower. Run at least two good 

 furrows around your whole herd-ground, and then, one hundred 

 feet away, and parallel with the first furrows, two more ; and 

 then some time when the wind is dead, and before the grass is 

 too dry, burn out your space between your furrows. You 

 may think one hundred feet pretty wide for your guard. My 

 reply is, that if you ever stand and watch a head fire rushing on 

 to your range with only that little black strip of earth between 

 your all and a fiery deluge, you will wish that your guard was 

 one hundred yards wide. 



Prepare yourself for the work when you burn out the center 

 of your guard, for you will find it quite a job. Take your wagon 

 with a barrel of water (one head out) ; have a strong new gun- 

 ney or coffee-sack in the barrel for each man, which will prevent 



