74 



RANCH LIFE AND THE HUNTING-TRAIL 



In the winter there is much less work than at any other season, but 

 what there is involves great hardship and exposure. Many of the men 

 are discharged after the summer is over, and during much of the cold 

 weather there is little to do except hunt now and then, and in very bitter 

 days lounge listlessly about the house. But some of the men are out in 

 the line camps, and the ranchman has occasionally to make the round of 

 these ; and besides that, one or more of the cowboys who are at home 

 ought to be out every day when the cattle have become weak, so as to pick 

 up and drive in any beast that will otherwise evidently fail to get through 

 the season — a cow that has had an unusually early calf being particularly 

 apt to need attention. The horses shift for themselves and need no help. 

 Often, in winter, the Indians cut down the cottonwood trees and feed the 

 tops to their ponies ; but this is not done to keep them from starving, but 

 only to keep them from wandering off in search of grass. Besides, the 

 ponies are very fond of the bark of the young cottonwood shoots, and it is 

 healthy for them. 



The men in the line camps lead a hard life, for they have to be out in 

 every kind of weather, and should be especially active and watchful during 

 the storms. The camps are established along some line which it is pro- 

 posed to make the boundary of the cattle's drift in a given direction. For 

 example, we care very little whether our cattle wander to the Yellow- 

 stone ; but we strongly object to their drifting east and south-east 

 towards the granger country and the Sioux reservation, especially as 

 when they drift that way they come out on flat, bare plains where there 

 is danger of perishing. Accordingly, the cowmen along the Little 

 Missouri have united in establishing a row of camps to the east of the 

 river, along the line where the broken ground meets the prairie. The 

 camps are usually for two men each, and some fifteen or twenty miles 

 apart ; then, in the morning, its two men start out in opposite ways, each 

 riding till he meets his neighbor of the next camp nearest on that side, 

 when he returns. The camp itself is sometimes merely a tent pitched in 

 a sheltered coulee, but ought to be either made of logs or else a dug-out 

 in the ground. A small corral and horse-shed is near by, with enough 

 hay for the ponies, of which each rider has two or three. In riding over 

 the beat each man drives any cattle that have come near it back into the 

 Bad Lands, and if he sees by the hoof-marks that a few have strayed out 

 over the line very recently, he will follow and fetch them home. They 

 must be shoved well back into the Bad Lands before a great storm strikes 

 them ; for if they once begin to drift in masses before an icy gale it is 

 impossible for a small number of men to hold them, and the only thing is 



