SHERIFF'S WORK ON A RANCH 1 13 



before it came in sight round the bend above us. The ice kept pihng and 

 tossing up in the middle, and not only heaped itself above the level of the 

 banks, but also in many places spread out on each side beyond them, 

 grinding against the cottonwood trees in front of the ranch veranda, and 

 at one moment bidding fair to overwhelm the house itself It did not, 

 however, but moved slowly down past us with that look of vast, resistless, 

 relentless force that any great body of moving ice, as a glacier, or an ice- 

 berg, always conveys to the beholder. The heaviest pressure from the 

 water that was backed up behind being, of course, always in the middle, 

 this part kept breaking away, and finally was pushed on clear through, 

 leaving the river so changed that it could hardly be known. On each 

 bank, and for a couple of hundred feet out from it into the stream, was a 

 solid mass of ice, edging the river along most of its length, at least as far 

 as its course lay through lands that we knew ; and in the narrow channel 

 between the sheer ice-walls the water ran like a mill-race. 



At night the snowy, glittering masses, tossed up and heaped into fan- 

 tastic forms, shone like crystal in the moonlight ; but they soon lost their 

 beauty, becoming fouled and blackened, and at the same time melted and 

 settled down until it was possible to clamber out across the slippery 

 hummocks. 



We had brought out a clinker-built boat especially to ferry ourselves 

 over the river when it was high, and were keeping our ponies on the 

 opposite side, where there was a good range shut in by some very broken 

 country that we knew they would not be apt to cross. This boat had 

 already proved very useful and now^ came in handier than ever, as 

 without it we could take no care of our horses. We kept it on the bank, 

 tied to a tree, and every day would carry it or slide it across the hither 

 ice bank, usually with not a little tumbling and scrambling on our part, 

 lower it gently into the swift current, pole it across to the ice on the far- 

 ther bank, and then drag it over that, repeating the operation when we 

 came back. One day w^e crossed and walked off about ten miles to a 

 tract of wild and rugged country, cleft in every direction by ravines and 

 cedar canons, in the deepest of which we had left four deer hanging a 

 fortnight before, as game thus hung up in cold weather keeps indefinitely. 

 The walking was very bad, especially over the clay buttes ; for the sun at 

 midday had enough strength to thaw out the soil to the depth of a few 

 inches only, and accordingly the steep hillsides were covered by a crust 

 of slippery mud, with the frozen ground underneath. It w^as hard to keep 

 one's footing, and to avoid falling while balancing along the knife-like 

 ridge crests, or while clinging to the stunted sage brush as we went down 



