“In the times I’m dreamin’ of all this is different.  I recalls how we frequent works a month with a beef herd, say of four thousand head, out on the stark an’ open plains, ropin’ an’ throwin’ an’ runnin’ a road-brand onto ’em.  Thar’s a dozen different range brands in the bunch, mebby, and we needs a road-brand common to ’em all, so in case of stampedes on our trip to the no’th we knows our cattle ag’in an’ can pick ‘em out from among the local cattle which they takes to minglin’ with.  It’s shorely work, markin’ big strong steers that-away!  Throwin’ a thousand-pound longhorn with a six hundred-pound cayouse is tellin’ on all involved an’ a gent who’s pitchin’ his rope industrious will wear down five broncos by sundown.

“It’s a sharp winter an’ cattle dies that fast they simply defies the best efforts of ravens an’ coyotes to get away with the supply.  It’s been blowin’ a blizzard of snow for weeks.  The gales is from the no’th an’ they lashes the plains from the Bad Lands to the Rio Grande.  When the storm first prounces on the cattle up yonder in the Yellowstone country, the he’pless beasts turns their onprotestin’ tails and begins to drift.  For weeks, as I remarks, that tempest throws itse’f loose, an’ night an’ day, what cattle keeps their feet an’ lives, comes driftin’ on.

“Nacherally the boys comes with ’em.  Their winter sign-camps breaks up an’ the riders turns south with the cattle.  No, they can’t do nothin’; you-all couldn’t turn ’em or hold ’em or drive ’em back while the storm lasts.  But it’s the dooty of the punchers to keep abreast of their brands an’ be thar the moment the blizzard abates.

“It’s shore a spectacle!  For a wild an’ tossin’ front of five hundred miles, from west to east, the storm-beat herds comes driftin’.  An’ ridin’ an’ sw’arin’ an’ plungin’ about comes with ’em the boys on their broncos.  They don’t have nothin’ more’n the duds on their backs, an’ mebby their saddle blankets an’ slickers.  But they kills beef to eat as they needs it, an’ the ponies paws through the snow for grass, an’ they exists along all right.  For all those snow-filled, wind-swept weeks they’re ridin’ an’ cussin’.  They comes spatterin’ through the rivers, an’ swoopin’ an’ whoopin’ over the divides that lays between.  They crosses the Heart an’ the Cannon Ball an’ the Cheyenne an’ the White an’ the Niobrara an’ the Platte an’ the Republican an’ the Solomon an’ the Smoky an’ the Arkansaw, to say nothin’ of the hundreds of forks an’ branches which flows an’ twines an’ twists between; an’ final, you runs up on boys along the Canadian who’s come from the Upper Missouri.  An’ as for cattle! it looks like it’s one onbroken herd from Fort Elliot to where the Canadian opens into the Arkansaw!