Among the High Hills. ior 



fall we lay down, in a log hut or tent, if at a line camp ; 

 under the open sky, if with the round-up wagon. 



After ten days or so of such work, in which every 

 man had to do his full share for laggards and idlers, no 

 matter who, get no mercy in the real and healthy democ- 

 racy of the round-up I would go back to the ranch to 

 turn to my books with added zest for a fortnight. Yet 

 even during these weeks at the ranch there was some 

 out-door work ; for I was breaking two or three colts. I 

 took my time, breaking them gradually and gently, not, 

 after the usual cowboy fashion, in a hurry, by sheer main 

 strength and rough riding, with the attendant danger to 

 the limbs of the man and very probable ruin to the man- 

 ners of the horse. We rose early ; each morning I stood 

 on the low-roofed verandah, looking out under the line of 

 murmuring, glossy-leaved cottonwoods, across the shallow 

 river, to see the sun flame above the line of bluffs opposite. 

 In the evening I strolled off for an hour or two's walk, rifle 

 in hand. The roomy, homelike ranch house, with its log 

 walls, shingled roof, and big chimneys and fireplaces, stands 

 in a glade, in the midst of the thick forest, which covers 

 half the bottom ; behind rises, bare and steep, the wall of 

 peaks, ridges, and table-lands. 



During the summer in question, I once or twice shot a 

 whitetail buck right on this large bottom ; once or twice I 

 killed a blacktail in the hills behind, not a mile from the 

 ranch house. Several times I killed and brought in prong- 

 bucks, rising before dawn, and riding off on a good horse 

 for an all day's hunt in the rolling prairie country twelve 

 or fifteen miles away. Occasionally I took the wagon and 



