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These roads lead down the river-bottoms or along the crests of the divides or else strike out fairly across the prairie, and a man may sometimes journey a hundred miles along one without coming to a house or a camp of any sort.
the bulk of it being unsurveyed and still the property of the National Government — for the latter refuses to sell the soil except in small lots, acting on the wise principle of distributing it among as many owners as possible.
At the spring meeting of the association, the entire territory mentioned above, including perhaps a hundred thousand square miles, is mapped out into round-up districts, which generally are changed but slightly from year to year, and the times and places for the round-ups to begin refixed so that those of adjacent districts may be run with a view to the best interests of all.
Many of the men gamble and drink, but many do neither; and the conversation is not worse than in most bodies composed wholly of male human beings.
For the ranchman the winter is occasionally a pleasant holiday, but more often an irksome period of enforced rest and gloomy foreboding.
Yet, to my surprise, I found that they were, in a certain sense, fugitives from justice.
Another time, at a ranch not far from my own, I found among the cowboys gathered for the round-up two Bible-reading Methodists. They were as strait-laced as any of their kind, but did not obtrude their opinions on any one else,
they were fond of adventure, and, to tell the truth, they were by no means averse to the prospect of plunder.
There could have been no better men for a trip of this kind than my two companions, Seawall and Dow. They were tough, hardy, resolute fellows, quick as cats, strong as bears, and able to travel like bull moose.
Hunters can thus occasionally rake very large bags of antelope, but a true sportsman who only shoots for peculiarly fine trophies, or to supply the ranch table, will not commit such needless butcheries.
To a man totally unaccustomed to it the sense of utter loneliness is absolutely appalling: the feeling of being lost in the wilderness seems to drive him into a state of panic terror that is frightful to behold, and that in the end renders him bereft of reason.
This is not very comfortable on a cold day in November or December, the months in which I have usually hunted big-horn, devoting the early fall to the chase of elk and deer. But it is often the only way to secure success: patience and perseverance are two of the still-hunter’s cardinal virtues.
No other building is so warm as a dug-out, and in the terrible winter weather of Dakota and Montana warmth is the one thing for which all else must be sacrificed.
