across the river as I stood on the piazza.  In the winter, in the days of iron cold, when everything was white under the snow, the river lay in its bed fixed and immovable as a bar of bent steel, and then at night wolves and lynxes traveled up and down it as if it had been a highway passing in front of the ranch house.  Often in the late fall or early winter, after a hard day’s hunting, or when returning from one of the winter line camps, we did not reach the ranch until hours after sunset; and after the weary tramping in the cold it was keen pleasure to catch the first red gleam of the fire-lit windows across the snowy wastes.

The Elkhorn ranch house was built mainly by Sewall and Dow, who, like most men from the Maine woods, were mighty with the ax.  I could chop fairly well for an amateur, but I could not do one-third the work they could.  One day when we were cutting down the cottonwood trees, to begin our building operations, I heard some one ask Dow what the total cut had been, and Dow not realizing that I was within hearing, answered:  “Well, Bill cut down fifty-three, I cut forty-nine, and the boss he beavered down seventeen.”  Those who have seen the stump of a tree which has been gnawed down by a beaver will understand the exact force of the comparison.

In those days on a cow ranch the men were apt to be away on the various round-ups at least half the time.  It was interesting and exciting work, and except for the lack of sleep on the spring and summer round-ups it was not exhausting work; compared to lumbering or mining or blacksmithing, to sit in the saddle is an easy form of labor.  The ponies were of course grass-fed and unshod.  Each man had his own string of nine or ten.  One pony would be used for the morning work, one for the afternoon, and neither would again be used for the next three days.  A separate pony was kept for night riding.

The spring and early summer round-ups were especially for the branding of calves.  There was much hard work and some risk on a round-up, but also much fun.  The meeting-place was appointed weeks beforehand, and all the ranchmen of the territory to be covered by the round-up sent their representatives.  There were no fences in the West that I knew, and their place was taken by the cowboy and the branding-iron.  The cattle wandered free.  Each calf was branded with the brand of the cow it was following.  Sometimes in winter there was what we called line riding; that is, camps were established and the line riders traveled a definite beat across the desolate wastes of snow, to and fro from one camp to another, to prevent the cattle from drifting.  But as a rule nothing was done to keep the cattle in any one place.  In the spring there was a general round-up in each locality.  Each outfit took part in its own round-up, and all the outfits of a given region combined to send representatives to the two or three round-ups that covered the neighborhoods near by into which their cattle might drift.