nd they will
neglect to feed or drink. Gradually they become accustomed to your
nearer presence, and finally you can get up quite close and even drive
them into your camp, where your companions are ready with snare ropes
to secure them, or at least the particular ones you want to catch.

Prince, a horse I used to ride when mustang hunting, once accidentally
gave me a severe tumble. He was running at full speed when suddenly a
foreleg found a deep badger hole; over he went of course, head over
heels, and it is a miracle it did not break his leg off. These badger
holes, especially abandoned ones, go right down to a great depth, and
the grass grows over them so that they are hardly visible. Dog holes
always have a surrounding pile of earth carefully patted firm and trod
on, no doubt to prevent entrance of rain flood-water; thus they are
nearly always noticeable. Dog towns are sometimes of great extent, one
in my pasture being two miles long and about a mile wide. They are
generally far from water, many miles indeed, often on the highest and
driest parts of the plain and where the depth to water may be 500 feet
or more. They must therefore depend entirely on the juices of the green
grass, though in dry seasons they cannot even have that refreshment; and
they never scrape for roots. But even the small bunnies (called
cotton-tails) are found in like places and must subsist absolutely
without water, as they do not, or dare not, on account of wolves, etc.,
get far away from their holes.

No sooner was the M---- trouble well over than my Company saw fit to
foreclose on two other cattle outfits, one of which bowed to the law at
once. The other gave us, or rather me, a lot of unnecessary trouble, and
I had again "to take chances" of personal injury. All these cattle were
thrown on to the M---- range, and this increased the herd so much as to
justify the running of our own wagon and outfit.

Eastern New Mexico, the country over which our cattle ranged, was a huge
strip of territory some 250 miles by 100 miles, no fences, no settlers,
occupied only by big cattle outfits owning from 8000 to 75,000 cattle
each. The range was, however, much too heavily stocked, the rains
irregular, severe droughts frequent, and the annual losses yearly
becoming heavier; so heavy in fact that owners only waited a slight
improvement in prices to sell out or drive their cattle out of the
country. The way the cattle were worked was thus. The spring round