The History of the Old American West – 4 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Emerson Hough
of every detail connected with his calling as he rides along, unconscious of his horse, his arm high and loose, his legs straight to the big stirrups, his body from the hips up supple and swinging, his eye ranging over the wide expanse of plain and coulee, butte and valley that lies before him. This wide book is his, and he knows it well. The little larks twitter and flit from in front of him low along the ground as the pony trots ahead, and the prairie dogs chatter from their mounds. If the horse makes a shying bound from some lazy rattlesnake that has come out from winter quarters to stretch awhile in the sun, the thighs of the rider tighten, and the ready oath leaps to his lip as he strikes the spur to the horse's flank and asks it, in the picturesque language of the plains, what are its intentions as connected with a future life.
And then comes on the summer time, with its swift and withering heat. The range shrivels and sears. The streams dwindle and shrink. The flowers are cut down by the torrid winds. The sage brush is gray and dismal. The grass is apparently burned to tinder. The edges of the water holes are trampled and made miry by the hoofs of the cattle which press in to water. Out in the hot air the white alkali flats glimmer and shift in the distance. Above them stalk the strange figures of the mirage, cousins of the Fata Morgana of the southern range. In this weird mirage the figures of the cattle appear large as houses, the mounted man tall as a church spire. The surface of the earth waves and trembles and throbs in the heat like an unsteady sea. The sun blisters the skin of any but the native, and the lips of the tenderfoot blacken and shrivel and crack open in the white dust that arises. In the soft mud which lies between the shore and the water at the watering places lie the figures of cattle which have perished there, but in this hot dry air they dry up like mummies, the skin tightening in parchment over their bones. Though the nights are cold, the day flames up into sudden heat. If there be a rain, it is a tempest, a torrent, a cloud burst which makes raging floods out of dried-up river beds, and turns the alkali flats into seas of slimy, greasy mud. Through it all, over it all, the cowpuncher rides, philosophical and unfretted. "With him it is unprofessional to complain.
In turn comes autumn, when the winds are keener. The cattle are sleek and fat now, though by this time the fattest have after the beef round-up found their mission in the far-off markets. Now the leaves of the quaking asp in the little mountain valley, which were light green in spring, dark green in summer, begin to pale into a faded yellow. The wild deer are running in the foothills, and over the plains sweep in ghostly flight the bands of the antelope. The bears have gone up higher into the table-lands to seek their food and look about for a sleeping place. The wild geese are again honking in the air, this time going toward the south. The mallards swim in the little eddies of the creeks, not to leave them till later in the winter when the ice closes up the water. The smaller birds seek warmer lands, except the mountain jays, the camp birds, and the ravens, which seem busy as with some burdening thought of winter. The rousing whistle of the challenging elk is heard by the cowboy whose duties take him up into the hills. The pause of Nature gathering her energies for the continuance of the war of life is visible and audible all about. The air is eager and stimulating. In the morning the cow-punchers race their plunging ponies as they start out from the ranch, and give vent in sheer exuberance to the shrill, wolf-keyed yell which from one end of the range to the other is their fraternal call.
The snows whitened long ago the tops of the mountains in the range. The foothills are white with snow every morning now, and the wind blows cold even down in the little valley where the willows break its force. Winter is coming. The wild deer press lower down from the mountains. The big bear long ago went to sleep up in the hills. With a rush and a whirl some night the winter breaks. In the morning the men look out from the cabin door and can see but a few feet into the blinding, whirling mass of falling snow. This is not the blizzard of midwinter, but the first soft falling of the season. Presently the storm ceases, the sun shining forth brilliantly as though to repent. The earth is a blinding mystery of white. The river has shrunken in its barriers of ice, and over the edges of the ice hang heavy masses of snow. The willows are heavy with snow, and the grouse that huddle in packs among them are helpless and apathetic.
Then the early snow settles and hardens, and is added to by other snows. The mallards in the little spring creek have but a narrow swimming place now left to them. Along the bank of the river appears the curious drag of a travelling otter, driven down by the too solid closing of the stream above. The great round track of the mountain lion has been seen at one or two places on the range, and that of the big gray wolf, the latter as large as the hoof mark of a horse. The cowpuncher at one of the out camps who steps to the door at midnight and looks out over the white plain, when the moon is cold and bright and the stars very large and beautiful, hears wafted upon the air the long, dreary, sobbing wail of the gray wolf, sweeping in its tireless gallop perhaps forty miles a night across the range in search of food. He will find food.
And now midwinter comes. The cold becomes intense. Horse and cow have now put on their longest coat of hair, all too thin to turn the edge of the icy air. Yet the wind is their friend. It sweeps constantly for them, moaning that it can do no better, the tops of the hills where the blessed bunch grass lies curled and cured for food. It sweeps at the hillsides, too, and makes the snow so thin that the horses can easily paw it away and get down to the grass, and the cattle find at least a little picking. From the hills the snow is blown away in masses that fill the ravines and gullies in deep drifts. It packs against the cut banks so hard that the cattle may cross upon it. The hand of the winter is heavy. It is appalling to the stranger in its relentless grasp at the throat of life. The iron range is striving bitterly with all its might to hold its own, to drive away these invaders who have intruded here. It Is hopeless. These men are the creatures for the place and hour. They survive.
And the cattle. Ah! the cattle. They did not choose of their own volition this Northern country of cold and ice. They were driven here from a very different clime. Yet they retain the common desire of animate things, and seek to prevail over their surroundings. Gradually the creature shall adapt itself to the surroundings or perish. The cattle feed on the swept hillsides, losing flesh, but living. A thaw followed by a freeze is the worst thing that can befall them, for then the grass is sealed away from them, and upon their backs is formed a cake of ice, a blanket of cold continually freezing their very vitals and oppressing them with a chill which it is useless to attempt to escape. The cattle then soon cease in their struggle for life. They huddle together in little ragged groups in the lee of such shelter as they can find, their rough coats upright and staring. They no longer attempt to feed. One by one they lie down.
The Northern cattle range is not a hay country, and the early cowman counted naught on hay. Yet sometimes a little hay was made, and, in the case of a prolonged cold season such as that described, an attempt was made to feed the cattle. Of course, the thousands of the herds can not be fed, but some of the weaker of the cattle are rounded up and a rough effort is made at giving them a little care. The hay is thrown off the wagons to them in the corrals as they stand where they were driven, humped up, shivering in mortal rigours, many of them frozen. At times their legs, frozen to the bone, are too stiff to have feeling or to be capable of control. The animals stumble or fall or are jostled over, and are too feeble ever to rise. The croak of the raven is the requiem of the range.
It is winter on the northern range, but though it be winter the work of the cowboy is not yet done. At times he must ride the range, in a partial way at least, to keep track of the cattle, to see whether any are back in box canons from which they should be driven, to see whether any are "drifting." Knowing the danger of a sudden storm upon such a ride, he goes well prepared for the work. Many men have gone out upon the range in winter who never came back again to the cabin. Their rough companions at the ranch do not say much if the cowpuncher does not return from out the sudden raging storm that may set in without an hour's warning. Each man would risk his own life to save that of his fellow, but each man knows how futile is the thought of help. The whole atmosphere is a whirling, seething, cutting drift of icy white, in which the breath is drawn but in gasps, and that only with face down wind. The heaviest of clothing does not suffice, and not even the buffalo coat can stop the icy chill that thickens the blood into sluggishness and makes drowsy every vital energy. The snow covers the trail of the wanderer, as it winds his burial sheet about him and hides him from hope even before death has come to stop his last feeble,