The above was the longest number of consecutive hours I ever had to be in the saddle.  But, as I have said, I changed horses five times, and it is a great lightening of labor for a rider to have a fresh horse.  Once when with Sylvane Ferris I spent about sixteen hours on one horse, riding seventy or eighty miles.  The round-up had reached a place called the ox-bow of the Little Missouri, and we had to ride there, do some work around the cattle, and ride back.

Another time I was twenty-four hours on horseback in company with Merrifield without changing horses.  On this occasion we did not travel fast.  We had been coming back with the wagon from a hunting trip in the Big Horn Mountains.  The team was fagged out, and we were tired of walking at a snail’s pace beside it.  When we reached country that the driver thoroughly knew, we thought it safe to leave him, and we loped in one night across a distance which it took the wagon the three following days to cover.  It was a beautiful moonlight night, and the ride was delightful.  All day long we had plodded at a walk, weary and hot.  At supper time we had rested two or three hours, and the tough little riding horses seemed as fresh as ever.  It was in September.  As we rode out of the circle of the firelight, the air was cool in our faces.  Under the bright moonlight, and then under the starlight, we loped and cantered mile after mile over the high prairie.  We passed bands of antelope and herds of long-horn Texas cattle, and at last, just as the first red beams of the sun flamed over the bluffs in front of us, we rode down into the valley of the Little Missouri, where our ranch house stood.

I never became a good roper, nor more than an average rider, according to ranch standards.  Of course a man on a ranch has to ride a good many bad horses, and is bound to encounter a certain number of accidents, and of these I had my share, at one time cracking a rib, and on another occasion the point of my shoulder.  We were hundreds of miles from a doctor, and each time, as I was on the round-up, I had to get through my work for the next few weeks as best I could, until the injury healed of itself.  When I had the opportunity I broke my own horses, doing it gently and gradually and spending much time over it, and choosing the horses that seemed gentle to begin with.  With these horses I never had any difficulty.  But frequently there was neither time nor opportunity to handle our mounts so elaborately.  We might get a band of horses, each having been bridled and saddled two or three times, but none of them having been broken beyond the extent implied in this bridling and saddling.  Then each of us in succession would choose a horse (for his string), I as owner of the ranch being given the first choice on each round, so to speak.  The first time I was ever on a round-up Sylvane Ferris, Merrifield, Meyer, and I each chose his string in this fashion.  Three or four of the animals I got were