152 : RECREATION 
way wasnamed. It has hearkened to the 
red men’s yells and whoops and seen them 
slaying and slain, conquerorsand conquered, 
captive laden and captive led. No wonder 
it is a coward and shrinks from sight on its 
perilous itinerary. It has heard the laugh 
and merry song of cowboys and been 
trampled into a mire by the thousands of 
hoofs of cattle. There are many bad and 
tragic sights to witness on the plains, but 
a herd of half-wild cattle stampeding is 
among the most thrilling and appalling 
ones. At the base of a cliff in the Bad 
Lands that makes a sheer drop of nearly a 
quarter of a mile, to-day lie the decaying 
bodies of nearly 5,000 head of cattle that 
plunged over it in one awful night. Ca- 
lamity and disaster, like fortunes and favors, 
occur in large measures out here. The 
little tame things go away to happen. 
This Indian Creek comes in hailing dis- 
tance of the more-than-century-old British 
America and the Santa Fé Trail, on which 
the thrifty fur traders from the North 
made their benevolent way, laden to the 
ground with priceless glass beads and 
nickel-a-piece looking-glasses and other 
valuable trinkets, to barter in a fair, open 
way with the wily Indians, exchanging 
their far-fetched wares for mere beaver and 
bear and buffalo hides, et cetera—a sort of 
charity dicker as it were. And the euchred 
and cheated Indians, when their addled 
heads had subsided from excessive drink 
of kill-on-sight whisky and their keen 
enough wits recovered, followed, on this 
same trail, the traders returning, fairly 
well satisfied with making ninety-five per 
cent. on a dollar profit, to their respective 
homes in the North, and scalped them as they 
bivouacked with their fortress and fortunes 
of furs about them. About this time there 
was a hue and cry in provincial papers 
regarding such performances. Justice in 
the West was sometimes a trifle severe, but 
as a rule salutary. . 
Once the old Jesuit Fathers passed down 
this trail, singing chants in a not always 
melodious voice, and planted the Calvary 
Cross on the gray buttes, paving and 
marking the way to a possible civilization. 
Indian Creek is yet eyewitness to many 
tragic and pathetic things. The great 
buffalo wolves have followed its banks, 
and even as I write I can hear their dismal 
howling, for the caverns and washouts 
along the creek banks are still, as of old, the 
haunt and home of this animal. Only the 
other day eleven were killed in one den, 
two mothers and nine puppies, and many 
packs more remain to slaughter the young 
wild calves and hamstring the new foaled 
colts of the wild horses. There are, at 
this writing, fifteen in one pack and nine 
in another in the vicinity of Indian Creek, 
and neither strychnine nor gun has thus far 
availed in thinning their numbers. 
It is still a wild country through which 
this little stream ventures on its almost 
foolhardy way. And so much country! 
The eye, unaided, takes in fifty miles of dis- 
tance at one lonesome, fatiguing look. Lone- 
some? Without stopping to calculate and 
reason, one is inclined to believe that there 
is but one man and one shack in the world. 
But, of course, this is a mistake. 
The little creek passes over innumer- 
able beaver dams where the water runs so 
deep and sluggish that it puts one to 
imagining that there may be dead men at 
the bottom, clutching guns and covered 
with ooze. And the beavers are quietly 
plying their trade, utterly unconscious that 
there is any particular stir in the world. 
Such wonders do they accomplish! And 
never once pose to be admired and eulo- 
gized. Such feats of hydraulic engineer- 
ing as they do! They are university bred 
without knowing it. And such woodsmen ! 
Trees eighteen inches in diameter go crash- 
ing cross Indian Creek, felled with a fine 
accuracy as to where they should fall by 
these chisel-teethed, industrious, silent 
workers. One large dam is in sight of my 
shack and I often sit on the high bank 
above it, pipe in mouth, and wonder and 
ponder and admire. There is no question 
that man is not irredeemably a fool, nor any 
more does he represent all wisdom. The bea- 
ver knows a lot of things that might be of 
practical value to him if it chose to impart 
its knowledge. The State of South Dakota 
makes an effort to protect this little animal, 
and in a measure it succeeds, but not 
altogether. This year some trappers made 
a laborious excavation in search of them, 
but as good luck would have it, their 
operations were directed to the wrong 
