nUXTIXG THE PRONG-BUCK. 107 



For an hour or two more I continued my 

 search for water in the creek bed ; then 

 abandoned it and rode straight for the river. 

 By the time we reached it my thirst had come 

 back with redoubled force, my mouth was 

 parched, and the horse was in quite as bad a 

 pHght; we rushed down to the brink, and it 

 seemed as if we could neither of us ever drink 

 our fill of the tepid, rather muddy water. Of 

 course this experience was merely unpleasant ; 

 thirst is not a source of real danger in the 

 plains country proper, whereas in the hideous 

 deserts that extend from southern Idaho 

 through Utah and Nevada to Arizona, it ever 

 menaces with death the hunter and explorer. 



In the plains the weather is apt to be in 

 extremes ; the heat is tropical, the cold 

 arctic, and the droughts are relieved by furi- 

 ous floods. These are generally most severe 

 and lasting in the spring, after the melting of 

 the snow ; and fierce local freshets follow the 

 occasional cloudbursts. The large rivers then 

 become wholly impassable, and even the 

 smaller are formidable obstacles. It is not 

 easy to get cattle across a swollen stream, 

 where the current runs like a turbid mill-race 

 over the bed of shifting quicksand. Once 

 five of us took a thousand head of trail steers 

 across the Little Missouri when the river was 

 up, and it was no light task. The muddy 

 current was boiling past the banks, covered 

 with driftwood and foul yellow froth, and the 

 frightened cattle shrank from entering it. At 

 last, by hard riding, with much loud shouting 

 and swinging of ropes, we got the leaders in, 

 and the whole herd followed. After them we 



