A RANCHMAN'S RECOLLECTIONS 



for furs, and only the other day in Chicago, as I 

 looked into a Michigan Avenue shop window, I ven- 

 tured to ask the price of a wonderful mink garment. 

 My mind harkened back to the absurd price at which 

 the skins could be bought in the early days. John 

 Bowles, at the Chicago stockyards, wore a beaver 

 coat for which some friend had paid $1,500 and 

 loaned him to wear while he auctioned off John 

 Hubly's grand champion load of Aberdeen-Angus 

 steers at the 1919 International show. "Tom" Todd, 

 Fort Benton, Mont., showed me a coat forty years 

 ago made from selected Saskatchewan beaverskins 

 which cost him, including the making, $58. I slept 

 out in the snow between Great Falls and Belt, Mont, 

 in a bewildering storm thirty years ago wrapped up 

 in a beaver coat, which the driver offered to sell 

 me the next day for $90. Still, look where sugar 

 has gone in two years ! Perhaps furs are still cheap ! 

 "Buffalo Bill" was born in Salt Creek Valley, 5 

 miles from Leavenworth. Romance has made him 

 almost everything that the west, in its wildest woolli- 

 ness, is capable of; but as a matter of fact his real 

 business was that of supplying the Union Pacific 

 Railroad building crews and camps with meat, which 

 was mainly buffalo, and from which he took the 

 name known all over America and Europe. Nat- 

 urally this pursuit gave him endless adventures. I 

 think I have said before that I never look up nota- 

 bles, but when "Buffalo Bill" came to Stamford with 



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