over 100,000 cattle and all the side issues connected with such an outfit. Al Bowie as a superintendent was a most capable man, with an instructive knowledge of the range and range work. He succeeded to the management when I left, but as a manager he was more or less of a failure. Whether he was altogether to blame or not is a question I have never been able to answer. He was dominated more or less by the Board in Edinburgh, he had to meet changing conditions and latterly he came under influences which to say the least were unfortunate and evil in their effect. In the eight years I was intimately associated with him I never met a more sterling, honest man, although I realized his limitations when he got away from the range or his beaten path. He was promoted to the above position 1st July, 1896, a time when this country was undergoing evolution. Populism, Bryanism and a lot of other semi-political issues were on the eve of disintegration and we were facing a great outburst of expansion and prosperity. The Swan needed a big man mentally with broad experience to guide its affairs. It lacked both at home and abroad a genius, a guiding star. Some things were done but much was left undone. It would be impossible to tell the whole story that is wrapped round all of these old employes, but mention must be made of Duncan Grant and William Booker.

Grant is a Scotchman, for he still lives on the Sybille. He was with Colin Hunter at the TY ranch on the Chug in early days. How many years he was with the Swan Company I cannot say. He had a wonderful knowledge of land and agriculture, knew all about irrigation from its practical side and had a grip of his business that you could scarcely match anywhere, but he could not adapt himself to the changes, to lessening expenses, to the necessity of consulting with his employers, so he left the service of the Company about a year after after I went there. To this day there is a strong bond of union between us.

Booker is a man of a different stamp; not that he was more capable than his associate, but he had more tact, a keener

insight into the future and met without murmur or comment the cutting down in expense that had to come. He was general cattle foreman for two years after the change in management and he went into the accounting department in 1890. When I resigned, or was pushed rather unceremoniously out of the management in 1896, Booker was asked for his resignation. Why or wherefore, I never actually found out, but range gossip says that his opposition to Mr. Dun's painting scheme was never either forgotten or forgiven and the old man got even with him to the loss of the company, for a more competent man never roped a calf or handled a pen. The day he left he got a position as manager of the Tolland Co. (V R), a prosperous concern near Glenrock, Wyo., and which he still holds.

It is an easy job to slide down the toboggan, a wearisome business to climb the steps to the starting point. For eight years I seemed to be climbing, fighting, quarreling, making gigantic efforts to produce prosperity out of poverty, and accomplishing very little. After glancing over the winter statements of the ranch, I asked Bowie why he had not cut his expenses, why he had maintained an office in Cheyenne. He replied that Mr. Dun had instructed him to leave matters as they were and so about 15th March, 1888, I found this impecunious company with an office in Cheyenne, Mr. F. W. Lafrentz (now in a high position in Eastern Insurance circles) as cashier, Al Bowie in town a good portion of the time, the bank account depleted, the Company's credit gone and general financial disorganization. On the range it was much the same thing. After going over the different ranches carefully, it seemed to be running full steam in spending money and eating grub. They had seven cooks with helpers at two places, nine men in all, at about $40 a month all found. They had to have a general headquarters, a farming ditto, a cattle ditto, then one foreman did not care to live with another, and so on. Meantime the Swan Company paid the bill. The widow and the orphan back in Scotland were not considered. Lafrentz resigned, the Cheyenne offices were closed, Bowie

rented his house in town and settled down at Chugwater, the regiment of cooks disbanded leaving one at headquarters, the ranches were rented or worked on shares. These violent changes made a manager unpopular, but it is fair to say that Bowie did his best to economize when encouraged. Mr. Frank H. Connor, now a partner in John Clay & Company, became book-keeper at Chugwater and stayed there two years. The labor bill and management salary, which in Swan's time was about $50,000, was gradually reduced about a half. Further comparisons cannot well be made for the system changed and we passed largely during my time from a range to a semi-feeding proposition. Even after the depletion of 1886-87 the range seemed to be overstocked, but during the period I was manager we had a run of dry years and except in 1888, when we had good grass and fairly fat cattle, the balance of the years were lean ones so far as outside feed was concerned.

The ranch was practically in two divisions. West of the hills dominated by Laramie Peak, the Pilatus of a small range running northwards from Sherman Hill to the North Platte was a high plateau, covered with sagebrush and except at some places very thinly grassed. Northwards over a line of rimrock it broke into Bates' Hole and westward the above river was our boundary, as it made a swing southwards to reach its birthplace in the North Park. East of this range of hills and mountains were the valleys of the Sybille and Chug and still going eastward over some finely grassed flats you jumped off the rimrock into Goshen's Hole. In previous days this was the main range of the Union Cattle Co., successors to the firm of Sturgis, Lane & Goodell. This company was in the hands of receivers (G. B. Goodell and William Sturgis) and the cattle they had left were being gathered up and driven to their range on the Cheyenne River. This great range was mainly used by the Swan Company for many years. No attempt during Swan's time had been made to separate these divisions; the cattle ran as they were dropped when calves and took their chance. Most of