1887. At the end of 1886 Elliot resigned to join the forces of Clay, Robinson & Co., becoming managing partner at South Omaha, Neb. After two years he had to leave that position and lived in Scotland for many years, dying during the war. Charles W. Rynearson succeeded him and filled his place with credit. Rynearson was a product of Oregon. He had come to Wyoming about 1880 with a herd of horses and I discovered him at the Z ranch in 1884. He was a bronco-buster and was one of the most expert horsemen I ever saw. His legs fitted the saddle, and he had complete control of his horse. He had been poorly educated, but he had a lot of native shrewdness. He had complete confidence in himself, and as a handler of range cattle he may have had an equal, certainly no superior. While with the above outfit he saved a good deal of money, and he had quite a nice little herd of improved cattle near Higgins, Texas. Then he got inveigled into a big deal, a sort of get-rich-quick proposition, against the advice of his old friends. It swamped him. Now he is living on a little ranch near the above place, not very affluent, but with a reputation rich in honesty, full of merit and the good-will of his neighbors.

The results of the year 1887 were satisfactory except for prices obtained. We branded 2,820 calves, an increase of over 1,000 for the previous year. We sold 1,248 head at $20.79 per head; average weight about 1,050 pounds. With purchases of over 1,000 head, we had 16,050 cattle on hand. The year 1888 was favorable in many ways. We acquired in the fall the Hi Kollar lease lying directly north of us. It contained 90,000 acres, and while our payment had gone up to 4 cents per acre, we considered ourselves lucky and moderately safe for five years more on our present location. Our calf branding was 2,764, slightly less than the previous year. Our sales totaled 1,408 head, divided as follows: 768 steers, net $31.65 per head, weight 1,114 pounds; 640 cows, net $19.74 per head, weight 930 pounds. Our expenses, although burdened with $6,000 for rent, were less than $25,000, less than halfunder the old management. In the spring of 1889 the company

was reorganized. The capital of $1,000,000 of Preferred and Deferred shares was cut to $400,000. The Preferred shareholders got $300,000 of this issue and the Deferred $100,000, all these shares having equal rights in the property. It was merely a reduction in capital and an equalization of share rights. The calf brand for this year was 3,176. Our purchases were 4,000 steers, one and two-year olds, at $11 to $12.50 per head. Our sales were as follows: 2,006 steers, net $29.05 per head, average weight 1,131 pounds; 1,812 cows, net $13.74, average weight 895 pounds; 845 calves, net $3.40 per head, average weight 158 pounds; 237 bulls, net $16.47 per head, average weight 1,186 pounds. It was a regular slaughter, but we were forced into it. While the Cherokee council had made the cattlemen a lease, the Federal Government would not confirm it, and we had to prepare for the worst. We had 16,225 cattle on hand 30th November, more than half of the herd being steers, which put us in a fairly strong position if we had to leave our present location. We were ordered out of the Cherokee Strip without any ceremony. Here were a lot of good citizens paying rent, behaving themselves decently, turned into the cold. It made an awful smash and turmoil. Fortunately for us, south by fifty miles lay the Horseshoe Ranch of the Texas Land & Cattle Co. It controlled by patent lease and otherwise about 300,000 acres. This we leased, purchased 10,145 steers for $148,685; also a small mixed bunch of cattle, 753 head, at $12,449. By 1st December we were located at home in our new pasture. Our calf brand, notwithstanding depletion of cows, was 2,124. Our sales, 3,141 steers, net $19.64, average weight 988 pounds; 2,275 cows, net $11.91, average weight 851 pounds; 2 bulls, net $4.68, average weight 965 pounds; 710 calves at $4.90 per head. Dreadful, dreadful the present generation will say, but the truth must be told. It was a catastrophe in two ways-a vast number of immature cattle forced on the market and failure of corn crop. Ah me, but those were sad days. We had 21,000 cattle left after our sales.

W

CHAPTER XXIII

E ARE carried along to 1886. While the winter of 1885 and '86 was good in the Northwest there were considerable losses in the South and Southwest but our present story lies in the West and Northwest. The summer was very dry-no rain of any moment in May, June and July, the growing months for grass on the range. Winter snows or any amount of moisture on the range matter very little if you do not get spring and early summer rains. In looking back over my 35 years' experience on the range it seems as if this was the worst season ever experienced. During July we had to foreclose a mortgage on the Dole Bros. at Rawlins, Wyo., one of the very few cases in which we had to go to the extreme limit in collecting a debt. After getting quit of this uncomfortable business, a friend and myself drove out to the ranch. We followed the stage road by Lost Soldier, Crooks Gap and thence eastward to the ranch. There was scarce a spear of grass by the wayside. We rode many miles over the range. Cattle were thin and green grass was an unknown quantity except in some bog hole, or where a stream had overflowed in early spring. It was a painful sort of trip. There you were helpless. There was no market for young cattle, your aged steers were not fat and your cows and calves were miserably poor.

We rounded up one day near to Wind River and as the cattle came in they were almost exhausted from want of water and quite a few of them had not shed their winter coats. It was the same everywhere. On the Belle Fourche, a heavily grassed country, it was dry as a bone. The same condition existed on the Little Missouri and over on the Powder. In the spring of 1886 Dorr Clark had resigned from his position with the VVV outfit. Duncan Plumb had organized the Dominion Cattle Co., taking up a range on Grand River

in South Dakota, and Clark became manager. Robert Robinson, son of the late Mr. J. M. Robinson and a half brother of Mr. Charles O. Robinson, took his place. Bobby had had a varied experience. He had worked in the yards, had seen a lot of the range, working for a while for Mr. Charles Coffey, now of Chadron, Nebraska. He was a man of the best kind of judgment and admirably suited for managing a large outfit. He was exceedingly economical, a fine judge of men and he had the faculty of gathering around him a capable bunch of cowpunchers, sobriety being his first requirement. Added to all this he was an excellent judge of range cattle, a gift possessed by very few men on the range, although it is their daily business. From him I learned many a lesson. In his daily life and work he was the exact opposite of his predecessor. About the first thing we had to decide was the important question about putting up our usual number of young steers. May was dry, June did not bring the usual rains, and by July 4th it looked so bad that we finally decided to do nothing. By August it was hot, dry, dusty and grass closely cropped. Every day made it apparent that even with the best of winters cattle would have a hard time and "through" cattle would only winter with a big percentage of loss.

Meantime a cattle owner of those days when he had money was anxious to spend it. Fortunately when in New York during August I met Mr. George Dixon Fisher, a director of the Cedar Valley Land & Cattle Co., a well known outfit in the Panhandle. Fisher was anxious to sell his steer yearlings and we traded for 2,000 head to be delivered next season as two-year-olds. The price was $14.00 per head. We paid $2.50 for wintering and allowed a loss of 5 per cent during the winter. This made a sure thing. We spent our money but escaped the coming winter. As events turned out the trade was a life saver. Some people will say good luck, others good management. The reader can judge for himself. Our neighbors kept piling cattle onto the bone dry

range. The Continental Cattle Co. drove up 32,000 head of steers. The Worsham Cattle Co., with no former holdings turned loose 5,000 head or thereabouts. Major Smith, who had failed to sell 5,500 southern three-year-old steers, was forced to drive them to his range on Willow Creek near to Stoneville, now Alzada, Mont. The Dickey Cattle Co., as previously related, had brought up 6,000 mixed cattle from the Cheyenne and Arapahoe country and turned them over to their outfit whose headquarters were twenty or twentyfive miles below the above hamlet on the Little Missouri. Thousands of other cattle were spread over the western and northwestern country in the most reckless way, no thought for the morrow. Even with the best of winters it would have been a case of suicide. As things turned out it was simple murder, at least for the Texas cattle. Winter came early and it stayed long. The owners were mostly absent and even those who remained could not move about or size up the situation.

It was not till the spring round-ups that the real truth was discovered and then it was only mentioned in a whisper. Bobby Robinson, acute judge of conditions, estimated the loss among through cattle at less than 50 per cent. It turned out to be a total loss among this class of cattle and the wintered herds suffered from thirty to sixty per cent. I had gone to Europe in June, just as the round-ups had commenced. I got back the first days of August and for the first time heard of the terrific slaughter. It was simply appalling and the cowmen could not realize their position. From Southern Colorado to the Canadian line, from the 100th Meridian almost to the Pacific slope it was a catastrophe which the cowmen of today who did not go through it can never understand. Three great streams of ill-luck, mismanagement, greed, met together. In other words, recklessness, want of foresight and the weather, which no man can control. The buffalo had probably gone through similar winters with enormous losses and thus natural conditions were evened up in the countless years they had grazed the