1890.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 85 



to sell next year. Cannot show them to you ; don't know 

 where they all are, but shall have them all back on the 

 range within a month, but may have to go a hundred miles 

 after some of them down to the reservation. This is the 

 worst-looking country, and the hardest to find anything in, 

 that man or pony ever trod ; but there is feed enough, and 

 it is the best to winter stock in there is in the whole realm. 

 They huddle into these gulches and ravines, and do not 

 drift before the blizzards ; and when the storms are over 

 they nose their way out of the snow, rustle around and fill 

 themselves with willow and cotton-wood browse. I don't 

 lose more than about fifteen per cent of them in a year, from 

 cold, snow, wolves, bears, cats, and accidents, all combined ; 

 but away south on the plains, drifting before storms, freezing 

 and starvation are liable to clean out from fifty to ninety per 

 cent; and if it doesn't take cow-boys, too, they are lucky. 

 We don't do much in the winter, and would not do anything 

 but eat, sleep, and keep a fire, if the cattle did not rove ; 

 but they do sometimes, when we have to rustle around 

 and keep them on the range, regardless of snow, wind or 

 weather. Game? Yes, game is plenty, and we get it 

 without much trouble when looking after cattle. We get 

 letters occasionally, and papers ; and I know that a month 

 ago Philadelphia still stood on the banks of the Delaware ; 

 but can't say that I know much of the prevailing fashions 

 there, and care less, for I know we are in the full swim of 

 fashion out here. The mail comes every day down at the 

 station ; but that is ten miles away, and in winter that is 

 farther than a hundred miles anywhere in the East. In the 

 summer we get down there once a week sometimes ; then 

 again we are away on the range, and don't bring around 

 once a month. We don't have the advantage of lectures, 

 conventions, balls and circuses ; but we don't care much 

 about that, for our business is about equal to a perpetual 

 circus. Oh, we sha'n't starve, with eight hundred head of 

 stock around us, and deer's heads sticking out of every 

 other bunch of scrub. We get some canned goods, coflee, 

 tea, salt, etc. ; should like fresh vegetables and apples. We 

 have deer-skins in abundance, and that supplies most of our 

 want of dry goods. Our establishment is rather primitive, 



