30 RANCH LIFE AND THE HUNTING -TRAIL 



When the river is up it is a very common thing for a horseman to 

 have great difficulty in crossing, for the swift, brown water runs over a 

 bed of deep quicksand that is ever shifting. An inexperienced horse, or 

 a mule, — for a mule is useless in mud or quicksand, — becomes mad with 

 fright in such a crossing, and, after speedily exhausting its strength in 

 wild struo-ofles, will throw itself on its side and drown unless the rider 

 gets it out. An old horse used to such work will, on the contrary, take 

 matters quietly and often push along through really dangerous quicksand. 

 Old Manitou never loses his head for an instant ; but, now resting a few 

 seconds, now feeling his way cautiously forward, and now making two or 

 three desperate plunges, will go on wherever a horse possibly can. It is 

 really dangerous crossing some of the creeks, as the bottom may give 

 way where it seems hardest ; and if one is alone he may work hours in 

 vain before getting his horse out, even after taking off both saddle and 

 bridle, the only hope being to head it so that every plunge takes it an 

 inch or two in the right direction. 



Nor are mud-holes the only danger the horseman has to fear; for in 

 much of the Bad Lands the buttes are so steep and broken that it needs 

 genuine mountaineering skill to get through them, and no horse but a 

 Western one, bred to the business, could accomplish the feat. In many 

 parts of our country it is impossible for a horseman who does not know 

 the land to cross it, and it is difficult enough even for an experienced 

 hand. For a stretch of nearly ten miles along the Little Missouri above 

 my range, and where it passes through it, there are but three or four 

 l^laces where it is possible for a horseman to get out to the eastern prairie 

 through the exceedingly broken country lying back from the river. In 

 places this very rough ground comes down to the water; elsewhere it lies 

 back near the heads of the creeks. In such very bad ground the whole 

 country seems to be one tangled chaos of canyon-like valleys, winding 

 gullies and washouts with abrupt, unbroken sides, isolated peaks of sand- 

 stone, marl, or "gumbo" clay, which rain turns into slippery glue, and hill 

 chains the ridges of which always end in sheer cliffs. After a man has 

 made his way with infinite toil for half a mile, a point will be reached 

 around which it is an absolute impossibility to go, and the adventurer has 

 nothing to do but painfully retrace his steps and try again in a new direc- 

 tion, as likely as not with the same result. In such a place the rider dis- 

 mounts and leads his horse, the latter climbing with cat-like agility up 

 seemingly inaccessible heights, scrambling across the steep, sloping 

 shoulders of the bluffs, sliding down the faces of the clay cliffs with all 

 four legs rigid, or dropping from ledge to ledge like a goat, and accept- 



