76 



RANCH LIFE AND THE HUNTING TRAU. 



gradually chilling the rider to the bones, as he draws his fur cap tight 

 over his ears and muffles his face in the huge collar of his wolf-skin coat, 

 and making the shaggy little steed drop head and tail as it picks its way 

 over the frozen soil. There are few moments more pleasant than the 

 home-coming, when, in the gathering darkness, after crossing the last 

 chain of ice-covered l)uttes, or after coming round the last turn in the 

 wind-swept valley, we see, through the leafless trees, or across the frozen 

 river, the red gleam of the firelight as it shines through the ranch win- 

 dows and flickers over the trunks of the cottonwoods outside, warming a 

 man's blood by the mere hint of the warmth awaiting him within. 



The winter scenery is especially striking in the Bad Lands, with their 

 queer fantastic formations. Among the most interesting features are the 

 burning mines. These are formed by the coal seams that get on fire. 

 They vary greatly in size. Some send up smoke-columns that are visible 

 miles away, while others are not noticeable a few rods off. The old ones 

 gradually burn away, while new ones unexpectedly break out. Thus, last 

 fall, one suddenly appeared but half a mile from the ranch house. We 

 never knew it was there until one cold moonlight night, when we were 

 riding home, we rounded the corner of a ravine and saw in our path a tall 

 white column of smoke rising from a rift in the snowy crags ahead of us. 

 As the trail was over perfectly familiar ground, we were for a moment 

 almost as startled as if we had seen a ghost. 



The burning mines are uncanny places, anyhow. A strong smell of 

 sulphur hangs round them, the heated earth crumbles and cracks, and 

 through the lone clefts that form in it we can see the lurid orlow of the 

 subterranean fires, with here and there tongues of blue or cherry colored 

 flame dancing up to the surface. 



The winters vary greatly in severity with us. During some seasons 

 men can go lightly clad even in January and February, and the cattle 

 hardly suffer at all ; during others there will be spells of bitter weather, 

 accompanied by furious blizzards, which render it impossible for days and 

 weeks at a time for men to stir out-of-doors at all, save at the risk of 

 their lives. Then line rider, ranchman, hunter, and teamster alike all 

 have to keep within doors. I have known of several cases of men freez- 

 ing to death when caught in shelterless places by such a blizzard, a 

 strange fact being that in about half of them the doomed man had evi- 

 dently gone mad before dying, and had stripped himself of most of his 

 clothes, the body when found being nearly naked. On our ranch we have 

 never had any bad accidents, although every winter some of us get more 

 or less frost-bitten. My last experience in this line was while returning 



