126 RANCH LIFE AND THE HUN IING-TRAIL 



Indeed, if the time was tedious to us, it must have seemed never-end- 

 ing- to our prisoners, who had nothing to do but to He still and read, 

 or chew the bitter cud of their reflections, always conscious that some pair 

 of eyes was watching them every moment, and that at least one loaded 

 rifle was ever ready to be used against them. They had quite a stock of 

 books, some of a rather unexpected kind. Dime novels and the inevitable 

 " History of the James Brothers" — a book that, together with the "Police 

 Gazette," is to be found in the hands of every professed or putative ruffian 

 in the West — seemed perfectly in place ; but it was somewhat surprising 

 to find that a large number of more or less drearily silly "society" novels, 

 ranging from Ouida's to those of The Duchess and Augusta J. Evans, were 

 most greedily devoured. As for me, 1 had brought with me "Anna Karen - 

 ina," and my surroundings were quite gray enough to harmonize well 

 with Tolstoi. 



Our commons grew shorter and shorter ; and finally even the flour was 

 nearly gone, and we were again forced to think seriously of abandoning 

 the boats. The Indians had driven all the deer out of the country ; 

 occasionally we shot prairie fowl, but they were not plentiful. A flock of 

 geese passed us one morning, and afterward an old gander settled down 

 on the river near our camp ; but he was over two hundred yards off, and a 

 rifle-shot missed him. Where he settled down, by the way, the river was 

 covered with thick glare ice that would just bear his weight ; and it was 

 curious to see him stretch his legs out in front and slide forty or fifty feet 

 when he struck, balancing himself with his outspread wings. 



But w^hen the day was darkest the dawn appeared. At last, having 

 worked down some thirty miles at the tail of the ice jam, we struck an 

 outlying cow-camp of the C Diamond (C O) ranch, and knew that our 

 troubles were almost over. There was but one cowboy in it, but w^e were 

 certain of his cordial help, for in a stock country all make common cause 

 against either horse-thieves or cattle-thieves. He had no wagon, but told 

 us we could get one up at a ranch near Killdeer Mountains, some fifteen 

 miles off, and lent me a pony to go up there and see about it — which I 

 accordingly did, after a sharp preliminary tussle when I came to mount 

 the wiry bronco (one of my men remarking in a loud aside to our cowboy 

 host, "the boss ain't no bronco-buster "). When I reached the solitary 

 ranch spoken of, I was able to hire a large prairie schooner and two 

 tough little bronco mares, driven by the settler himself, a rugged old 

 plainsman, who evidently could hardly understand why I took so much 

 bother wath the thieves instead of hanging them off-hand. Returning to 

 the river the next day, we walked our men up to the Killdeer Mountains. 



