ity for entangling the
hearts of men, lay undefiled by the mercenary plowshare; unprostituted
by the commercialism of the days that were to be.

Into such a country Y.D. had ridden from the South, trailing his little
bunch of scrub heifers, in search of grass and water and, it may be, of
a new environment. Up through the Milk River country; across the Belly
and the Old Man; up and down the valley of the Little Bow, and across
the plains as far as the Big Bow he rode in search of the essentials of
a ranch headquarters. The first of these is water, the second grass,
the third fuel, the fourth shelter. Grass there was everywhere; a fine,
short, hairy crop which has the peculiar quality of self-curing in the
autumn sunshine and so furnishing a natural, uncut hay for the herds
in the winter months. Water there was only where the mountain streams
plowed their canyons through the deep subsoil, or at little lakes of
surface drainage, or, at rare intervals, at points where pure springs
broke forth from the hillsides. Along the river banks dark, crumbling
seams exposed coal resources which solved all questions of fuel,
and fringes of cottonwood and poplar afforded rough but satisfactory
building material. As the rancher sat on his horse on a little knoll
which overlooked a landscape leading down on one side to a sheltering
bluff by the river, and on the other losing itself on the rim of the
heavens, no fairer prospect surely could have met his eye.

And yet he was not entirely satisfied. He was looking for no temporary
location, but for a spot where he might drive his claim-stakes deep.
That prairie, which stretched under the hot sunshine unbroken to the rim
of heaven; that brown grass glowing with an almost phosphorescent light
as it curled close to the mother sod;--a careless match, a cigar stub, a
bit of gun-wadding, and in an afternoon a million acres of pasture land
would carry not enough foliage to feed a gopher.

Y.D. turned in his saddle. Along the far western sky hung the purple
draperies of the Rockies. For fifty miles eastward from the mighty range
lay the country of the foothills, its great valleys lost to the vision
which leapt only from summit to summit. In the clear air the peaks
themselves seemed not a dozen miles away, but Y.D. had not ridden
cactus, sagebrush and prairie from the Rio Grande to the St. Mary's for
twenty years to be deceived by a so transparent illusion. Far over
the plains his eye could trace t