330 CRUISINGS IN THE CASCADES 



to six miles along the river. The owners of the 

 stock seldom live on the ranches themselves, many 

 of them being residents of Eastern cities, and others 

 having their homes in the railroad towns within 

 convenient distance of the ranches. The occupants 

 of the "shack," as the ranch house is called, are 

 the foreman, the cook, and a sufficient number of 

 cowboys or herders to look after and handle the 

 stock properly. Some of the choice bits of natural 

 meadow are fenced and hay cut on them, and each 

 ranch has more or less hay land about the heads of 

 creeks on its range, for it is necessary to make 

 hay enough each season to feed at least the calves 

 uiid some of the weaker cattle through the severe 

 blizzards that so frequently occur in winter. The 

 cattle belonging to each of these ranches are allowed 

 to range almost at will over the adjacent hills and 

 table-lands, though the limits proper of each range 

 are supposed to extend ten to fifteen miles in each 

 direction from the ranch house. 



The Montana Stock Growers' Association, at its 

 meeting in March, designated the seventh day of 

 May as the day for beginning the roundup in the 

 Powder river district this year, and selected a fore- 

 man to take charge of it who had seen many years 

 of service in the saddle, .who has a happy faculty of 

 controlling the men under his charge perfectly, and 

 yet of putting himself on free and friendly terms 

 with them all. He can throw a riata with such pre- 

 cision as to take a steer by the head or by either foot 

 he Avishes in almost every instance, , and beasts as 

 well as men soon learn to obey his wishes. 



Anyone who has only seen the great plains late in 



