In the cow-country there is nothing more refreshing than the light-hearted belief entertained by the average man to the effect that any animal which by main force has been saddled and ridden,or harnessed and driven a couple of times,is a "broke horse."My present foreman is firmly wedded to this idea,as well as to its complement,the belief that any animal with hoofs,before any vehicle with wheels,can be driven across any country.One summer on reaching the ranch I was entertained with the usual accounts of the adventures and misadventures which had befallen my own men and my neighbors since Ihad been out last.In the course of the conversation my foreman remarked:"We had a great time out here about six weeks ago.There was a professor from Ann Arbor come out with his wife to see the Bad Lands,and they asked if we could rig them up a team,and we said we guessed we could,and Foley's boy and I did;but it ran away with him and broke his leg!He was here for a month.I guess he didn't mind it though."Of this I was less certain,forlorn little Medora being a "busted"cow-town,concerning which I once heard another of my men remark,in reply to an inquisitive commercial traveller:"How many people lives here?Eleven--counting the chickens--when they're all in town!"My foreman continued:"By George,there was something that professor said afterwards that made me feel hot.I sent word up to him by Foley's boy that seein'as how it had come out we wouldn't charge him nothin'for the rig;and that professor he answered that he was glad we were showing him some sign of consideration,for he'd begun to believe he'd fallen into a den of sharks,and that we gave him a runaway team a purpose.That made me hot,calling that a runaway team.
Why,there was one of them horses never /could/have run away before;it hadn't never been druv but twice!And the other horse maybe had run away a few times,but there was lots of times he /hadn't/run away.Iesteemed that team full as liable not to run away as it was to run away,"concluded my foreman,evidently deeming this as good a warranty of gentleness as the most exacting could require.
The definition of good behavior on the frontier is even more elastic for a saddle-horse than for a team.Last spring one of the Three-Seven riders,a magnificent horseman was killed on the round-up near Belfield,his horse bucking and falling on him."It was accounted a plumb gentle horse too,"said my informant,"only it sometimes sulked and acted a little mean when it was cinched up behind."The unfortunate rider did not know of this failing of the "plumb gentle horse,"and as soon as he was in the saddle it threw itself over sideways with a great bound,and he fell on his head,and never spoke again.
Such accidents are too common in the wild country to attract very much attention;the men accept them with grim quiet,as inevitable in such lives as theirs--lives that are harsh and narrow in their toil and their pleasure alike,and that are ever-bounded by an iron horizon of hazard and hardship.During the last year and a half three other men from the ranches in my immediate neighborhood have met their deaths in the course of their work.One,a trail boss of the O X,was drowned while swimming his herd across a swollen river.Another,one of the fancy ropers of the W Bar,was killed while roping cattle in a corral;his saddle turned,the rope twisted round him,he was pulled off,and trampled to death by his own horse.
The fourth man,a cowpuncher named Hamilton,lost his life during the last week of October,1891,in the first heavy snowstorm of the season.Yet he was a skilled plainsman,on ground he knew well,and just before straying himself,he successfully instructed two men who did not know the country how to get to camp.They were all three with the round-up,and were making a circle through the Bad Lands;the wagons had camped on the eastern edge of these Bad Lands,where they merged into the prairie,at the head of an old disused road,which led about due east from the Little Missouri.It was a gray,lowering day,and as darkness came on Hamilton's horse played out,and he told his two companions not to wait,as it had begun to snow,but to keep on towards the north,skirting some particularly rough buttes,and as soon as they struck the road to turn to the right and follow it out to the prairie,where they would find camp;he particularly warned them to keep a sharp look-out,so as not to pass over the dim trail unawares in the dusk and the storm.They followed his advice,and reached camp safely;and after they had left him nobody ever again saw him alive.Evidently he himself,plodding northwards,passed over the road without seeing it in the gathering gloom;probably he struck it at some point where the ground was bad,and the dim trail in consequence disappeared entirely,as is the way with these prairie roads--making them landmarks to be used with caution.He must then have walked on and on,over rugged hills and across deep ravines,until his horse came to a standstill;he took off its saddle and picketed it to a dwarfed ash.Its frozen carcass was found with the saddle near by,two months later.He now evidently recognized some landmark,and realized that he had passed the road,and was far to the north of the round-up wagons;but he was a resolute,self-confident man,and he determined to strike out for a line camp,which he knew lay about due east of him,two or three miles out on the prairie,on one of the head branches of Knife River.Night must have fallen by this time,and he missed the camp,probably passing it within less than a mile;but he did pass it,and with it all hopes of life,and walked wearily on to his doom,through the thick darkness and the driving snow.At last his strength failed,and he lay down in the tall grass of a little hollow.Five months later,in the early spring,the riders from the line camp found his body,resting,face downwards,with the forehead on the folded arms.
