28 RANCH LIFE AND THE HUNTING-TRAIL 



If any horses have strayed, one or two of the men will be sent off to 

 look for them ; for hunting lost horses is one of the commonest and most 

 irksome of our duties. Every outfit always has certain of its horses at 

 large; and if they remain out long enough they become as wild and wary 

 as deer and have to be regularly surrounded and run down. On one 

 occasion, when three of mine had been running loose for a couple of 

 months, we had to follow at full speed for at least fifteen miles before 

 exhausting them enough to enable us to get some control over them and 

 head them towards a corral. Twice I have had horses absent nearly a 

 year before they were recovered. One of them, after being on the ranch 

 nine months, went off one night and traveled about two hundred miles in 

 a straight line back to its old haunts, swimming the Yellowstone on the 

 way. Two others were at one time away nearly eighteen months, during 

 which time we saw them twice, and on one occasion a couple of the men 

 fairly ran their horses down in following them. We began to think they 

 were lost for good, as they were all the time going farther down towards 

 the Sioux country, but we finally recovered them. 



If the men do not go horse-hunting they may ride off over the range; 

 for there is generally some work to be done among the cattle, such as 

 driving in and branding calves that have been overlooked by the round- 

 up, or getting some animal out of a bog-hole. During the early spring 

 months, before the round-up begins, the chief work is in hauling out 

 mired cows and steers ; and if we did not keep a sharp lookout, the 

 losses at this season would be very serious. As long as everything is 

 frozen solid there is, of course, no danger from miring; but when the 

 thaw comes, along towards the beginning of March, a period of new 

 danger to the cattle sets in. When the ice breaks up, the streams are 

 left with an edging of deep bog, while the quicksand is at its worst. As 

 the frost goes out of the soil, the ground round every little alkali-spring 

 changes into a trembling quagmire, and deep holes of slimy, tenacious 

 mud form in the bottom of all the gullies. The cattle, which have had 

 to live on snow for three or four months, are very eager for water, and 

 are weak and in poor condition. They rush heedlessly into any pool and 

 stand there, drinking gallons of the icy water and sinking steadily into 

 the mud. When they try to get out they are already too deep down, 

 and are too weak to make a prolonged struggle. After one or two fits of 

 desperate floundering, they resign themselves to their fate with dumb 

 apathy and are lost, unless some one of us riding about discovers and 

 hauls them out. They may be thus lost in wonderfully small mud-holes ; 

 often they will be found dead in a gulch but two or three feet across, or 



