ar of the
Yellowstone, the Powder, the Musselshell, the Tongue, the Big Horn, the
Little Missouri.

The wild life, bold and carefree, coming up from the South now in a
mighty surging wave, spread all over that new West which offered to the
people of older lands a strange and fascinating interest. Every one on
the range had money; every one was independent. Once more it seemed that
man had been able to overleap the confining limitations of his life, and
to attain independence, self-indulgence, ease and liberty. A chorus of
Homeric, riotous mirth, as of a land in laughter, rose up all over the
great range. After all, it seemed that we had a new world left, a land
not yet used. We still were young! The cry arose that there was land
enough for all out West. And at first the trains of white-topped wagons
rivaled the crowded coaches westbound on the rails.

In consequence there came an entire readjustment of values. This
country, but yesterday barren and worthless, now was covered with
gold, deeper than the gold of California or any of the old placers. New
securities and new values appeared. Banks did not care much for the land
as security--it was practically worthless without the cattle--but they
would lend money on cattle at rates which did not then seem usurious. A
new system of finance came into use. Side by side with the expansion of
credits went the expansion of the cattle business. Literally in hundreds
of thousands the cows came north from the exhaustless ranges of the
lower country.

It was a wild, strange day. But withal it was the kindliest and most
generous time, alike the most contented and the boldest time, in all the
history of our frontiers. There never was a better life than that of the
cowman who had a good range on the Plains and cattle enough to stock his
range. There never will be found a better man's country in all the world
than that which ran from the Missouri up to the low foothills of the
Rockies.

The lower cities took their tribute of the northbound cattle for quite a
time. Wichita, Coffeyville, and other towns of lower Kansas in turn made
bids for prominence as cattle marts. Agents of the Chicago stockyards
would come down along the trails into the Indian Nations to meet the
northbound herds and to try to divert them to this or that market as
a shipping-point. The Kiowas and Comanches, not yet wholly confined to
their reservations, sometimes took tribute, whether in theft or in open
extortion