The Herding Day

I

WHEN the preacher warned his congregation, ‘Don’t do as I do; do as I say do,’ he was merely voicing in another form the sad human experience that there is a vast difference between theory and practice. Nowhere, perhaps, is this contrast more strongly revealed than in the difference between herding as it might be and herding as it is.

In theory, the herder rises with the dawn, cooks his simple but substantial breakfast, does his few housekeeping tasks, and is ready for the day’s work. He gently pushes the sheep off the bed ground, — that is, the place where they have slept, — and they move slowly out on to the prairie, keeping well together, grazing steadily toward the place where they will water. The eager and intelligent dog goes this way and that as the herder motions him, working just enough to turn the sheep as desired, but not so fast as to cause them to bunch up. Finally the band arrives at the stream or water hole, drinks there, and lies down for an hour or so, white the herder, a short distance away on a hill, eats his lunch and reads a good story. Then the sheep, one after another, begin to graze again, working toward the wagon, filling themselves to bursting with the rich prairie grasses. Seeing that they are headed in the right direction, the herder walks slowly on before them and, arriving at the wagon, sets about preparing his evening meal. Behind him the sheep come steadily onward, and sometime after sunset graze on to the bed ground and lie down, chewing the cud of fullness and content. Such days do happen, but when one occurs the herder puts a red mark on the calendar and neglects to say his prayers.

What is much more likely to happen is this. Just as the herder, who has overslept, begins to eat his breakfast, the sheep leave the bed ground. Of course he could dog them back to the wagon, but they might leave immediately in the opposite direction. So he takes the other alternative — bolts his breakfast, puts up a hasty lunch, and starts in pursuit. The sheep have only a twenty-minute start, but that is all any bunch of sheep needs. They are almost a mile from the wagon when they are overhauled, with the aid of a long-distance run by the dog. But just as the dog reaches them he forgets which way he was motioned to turn them, and races up the wrong side, throwing them in the opposite direction from that which the herder intended. There is no help for it now, and the herder calls the dog back. The sheep, however, have not yet had their run out, and they start off zestfully in a new direction. They have to be checked again, for there is no point or profit in letting them run all over the country instead of settling down to graze as they ought to do. So the dog is sent again, and once more he checks them in their headlong flight. The sheep are disappointed, but still hopeful, and they step out in a new direction with an enthusiasm worthy of a much better cause. By this time the herder is wildeyed, and is rapidly becoming hoarse. Instead of sending the dog, he goes around them himself two or three times, tying them up in a knot and turning them back as they attempt to break this way and that. Finally it dawns on whatever the sheep use for a mind that it is unwise to attempt any more cross-country runs just at present, and so they do the next best thing and settle down to graze, which they might just as well have done in the first place.

The herder makes sure that they are settled, and then goes to the top of the nearest hill with the idea of taking his weight off his feet. Since it is nearly noon, and the sheep seem quiet, he unwraps his hastily prepared and unappetizing lunch and begins to eat. A brisk wind has sprung up, and suddenly over a low rise of ground comes a tumbleweed, or Russian thistle, rolling over and over and making good time. As it reaches the outskirts of the bunch the nearest sheep look up startled, mistake it for the dog, and promptly run toward the centre of the band. Each sheep communicates its fright to the next, and in fifteen seconds they are all in a compact mass. Then, obeying a common impulse, they start out again on their travels, in any direction except toward the wagon.

The herder sees them go, but he is eating his lunch and is tired from a morning of steady walking. He decides to wait till he has finished, but he pays dearly for this indulgence. For, by the time he has wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, the sheep have not only traveled quite a distance, but have split up. Some old sister has recollected that just over the hill is an abandoned field (always grown up to weeds), and she thinks she would like a weed diet for a change. About five hundred others think this is a pretty good idea and trail after her. The rest of the bunch prefer to keep on going in the direction in which they were headed, except three or four lame ones and a couple of old skinnies who elect to remain right where they are.

The herder wearily gets to his feet and starts after the farthest of his three bunches. Just at this critical juncture two horsemen come into sight, ride past in full view of the sheep, and go on toward the ranch. The herder knows to a moral certainty that when they get there they will tell the boss that ‘the sheep were split in three bunches and scattered all over hell!’ With rage in his heart, and consequently with faulty judgment, the herder sends his dog when still a great distance from the farthest bunch. The dog runs about half the distance, then stops and looks around, ostensibly for further orders, but really because he would rather stand and look back than run any farther ahead. The herder motions him forward, and he runs about half the remaining distance and looks back again. This time when the herder motions him on he drops to the ground and begins to lick one of his forefeet. He does n’t really have a cactus in it, but he tries his best to make the herder believe he has. However, he has not quite enough confidence in this timeworn alibi to let the herder come right up to him, for as the latter approaches with blood in his eye the dog gets up and trots on ahead, keeping just out of reach, barking brightly from time to time, trying to centre the herder’s attention on the iniquities of the sheep, though knowing all the time that the blasts of lurid language assailing him from the rear are directed solely and pointedly at him. Finally as dog and man, tandem fashion, at last approach the sheep, the dog seeks to redeem himself by a burst of speed and quickly sends the offending sheep to join the others.

After two hours of leg work that would shame a cub reporter during a street-car strike, the herder finally manages to get his three bunches into one, and he heads them toward the distant wagon, keeping them under close and sullen guard. He arrives at the wagon at dark, with all his chores to do and supper to get before he can take any rest. Considering all the things that can and do happen to a herder in the course of his work, the wonder is not that some of them are supposed to go crazy, but that any of them stay sane.

II

Those of you who know the devastation that may be wrought in a hitherto peaceful and well-ordered household by the arrival of one little nine-pound stranger are asked to stretch your imagination and envisage the arrival of a thousand or fifteen hundred little si rangers at one address within a period of twenty days. It sounds improbable, and yet this is what happens every spring on hundreds of sheep ranches throughout the West. It takes place about the time the green grass has become abundant enough to supply the ewes with milk. As might be expected, all other activity on the ranch ceases while lambing is going on. Extra help is hired, extra hours are added to the working day. The days themselves are almost at their longest, and the boss’s temper at its shortest. It is at once the hardest and the most interesting part of the sheepman’s year.

There are almost as many ways of conducting a lambing as there are sheepmen. Every method, however, is based on one bed-rock, all-important fact — namely, that for several days after its birth a ewe knows her lamb only by smell. She gradually comes to know its voice, but that takes time. Until she does know it, her lamb must not be kept with too many others, because to find her lamb the ewe has to smell every Iamb till she comes to her own, and if she has to smell too many she becomes confused, and may not know her own lamb when she comes to it. Worse still, she may become discouraged and stop looking for it, which, naturally, is fatal to the lamb. For the first day or so, therefore, the ewe and her lamb must be members of a comparatively small bunch.

It is in providing for and manipulating these small bunches that the methods of sheepmen differ. Take, however, the simplest of all plans as an illustration. The drop bunch, composed of the ewes that are to lamb, is driven slowly, day by day, along the banks of a stream. The wagon follows, being set in a different spot each night. Every morning the lambs born during the night and their mothers are separated from the rest of the bunch and left behind. Every evening, likewise, the lambs born during the day are cut out and left where the drop bunch was held that day, so that the bunch goes ‘clean’ to the new bed ground. Each day’s drop and each night’s drop are left undisturbed for about twenty-four hours. Then a day’s drop will be combined with a night’s drop and left for another twenty-four hours, when they will be combined with another bunch of the same size and as nearly as possible the same age. A day or two later this combined group will be put with another similarly constituted; and so the building-up process goes on. Meanwhile the ewe is learning to find her lamb in an ever larger bunch, and is getting his voice firmly fixed in her mind. Once she is certain of that, she will find her lamb among two thousand. The building-up process goes on till there are four or five hundred lambs, and then this bunch is given a special herder and another lamb bunch is started. However, when this second bunch has reached a hundred or two, it is added to the big lamb bunch, and this procedure is followed till all but the few inevitable ‘drys’ have lambed. These too are finally put with the rest, and lambing is over.

Having taken a look at the general outline of lambing, let us view it at closer quarters, first from the standpoint of the individual ewe. An hour or so before the lamb is born the ewe stops grazing and begins to think exclusively about her lamb. She walks about calling for it, and takes a great interest in other lambs, especially those that are newborn. The curious part of it is that she does n’t know whether her lamb has been born or not. She tries to mother the lambs of other ewes, and when some jealous ewe shoulders her away she goes to some other ewe’s lamb. But usually as soon as her own lamb is born uncertainty vanishes, and she devotes herself exclusively to him.

When a lamb is born, he is frequently a bright orange color. Is n’t this, perhaps, nature’s way of ensuring that the ewe will find him? It seems reasonable to suppose so, because this bright color fades to a rusty brown in the course of an hour or two, and by that time the lamb is either mothered-up or doomed.

As the ewe stands above her newborn lamb, she utters a sound that she has not used for a year, a low rumble in the throat, made without opening the mouth. This rumble is used only by a ewe talking to her lamb, or by a buck talking to a ewe, and therefore must denote deep affection. The lamb bleats, the ewe rumbles. Of course, if the lamb is at a distance, or is temporarily mislaid, as he is half the time, the ewe calls for him with a full open-mouthed bleat. Once in a while you will see a ewe in search of her lamb going through all the motions of bleating without uttering a sound. She has been calling her lamb for so long that she has entirely lost the use of her voice. Yet she is still making the attempt to call. After she finds her lamb and rests her vocal chords, her voice comes back.

During the first hour of the lamb’s life the ewe pays him closer attention than she ever will again. She licks him, she answers his every bleat with a rumble, she anxiously superintends his first attempts to stand and his first meal. This hour is the most critical period of the lamb’s whole life. If he gets to his feet and sucks, he has a good chance; if he does not, he is doomed, barring human aid. Following this time of intense anxiety on the ewe’s part, her interest in the lamb steadily declines, until at weaning time it reaches zero. Paralleling this, the lamb’s dependence on her decreases in exactly the same ratio. In his first hour of life he is absolutely dependent on her. For many days it is she who must keep track of him; he does not know her from any other ewe. Later he comes to assume half the responsibility for their finding one another. At weaning time the lamb no longer needs his mother, she no longer cares for him.

Up to this point we have been considering lambing as it is when everything goes well. That it does not always do so is a cause of much sorrow and profanity to the boss and the lambing crew. In fact, there are so many things that can and do go wrong that the nerves and tempers of all are tried to the utmost. The commonest trouble is that a ewe refuses to own her lamb. This may result from any of a variety of causes. If, for example, a ewe mothers another lamb before the birth of her own, she may become so attached to the first lamb that she will neglect her own entirely. Cases of this kind are by no means uncommon. Fortunately the remedy is simple. The ewe and her own lamb are transferred to another bunch, and there she soon forgets about the other lamb and devotes herself to her own.

Then there is the ewe who, while owning her lamb, does not feel like giving up her social duties in order to take care of him — that is, she persists in following the bunch, and, as the lamb cannot keep up the pace at that early age, he is left behind. The remedy for this is to hobble the social gadder, thus making it impossible for her to move at other than a snail’s pace, while leaving her free to graze. The lamb easily keeps up with her slow progress, and as soon as the ewe shows evidence of being willing to carry out her family duties she is set at liberty again.

Then there is the old ewe that has no milk. It is a remarkable provision of nature that a ewe in this condition rarely shows any affection for her lamb. She cannot raise him, and she has no interest in him. In this case there is nothing to do but let the ewe go and either kill the lamb or raise it by hand.

But sometimes it is possible to give one ewe’s lamb to another ewe. Suppose a ewe who is a good mother and has plenty of milk gives birth to a dead lamb, and the same day a lamb is born to a ewe that has no milk. The practice is to skin the dead lamb and pull this skin over the live lamb, as you would pull on a sweater. This doubleskinned lamb is then shut up with the dead lamb’s mother. The ewe smells the topmost skin, and very often accepts the lamb as her own. The skin is left on, and by the time it is dried up and useless the ewe has become accustomed to the smell of the foster lamb, and raises him as hers. This does not always work, but where it does it means one lamb saved. Sometimes, in the case of a ewe very anxious for a lamb, it is enough to squirt some of her milk on the head of the lamb to be adopted.

I saw one case of deliberate lamb stealing. A ewe had lost her lamb shortly after it was born; it was from the first not destined to live — a spindling, puny thing. Nevertheless she walked all over the place calling for it. The next time I saw her she was mothering another lamb, whose own mother was also along. When I next saw her, and ever after that, she had the lamb to herself. The best mother had won.

III

‘Ten thousand white ones and sixty black ones! Go round ’em, Shop!’ This command was supposed to have been given to a certain sheep dog in Montana, and presumably he thereupon rounded up the sheep and counted them. But the poor dog is dead now; brain fever, no doubt. It is strange that when anyone tells a tale of some extraordinary animal, be it dog, horse, or cat, he usually adds as an afterthought, ‘He’s dead now, poor fellow.’

It is said that in some parts of the West there is a set price for a trained sheep dog — about forty dollars. Such a dog would be one taught to work entirely by motions, to go to the right or left, to stop and lie down, and to return to the herder. If a wind is blowing against the herder, it is impossible for him to make the dog hear at any great distance, but he can direct him by motions as far as the dog can see him. Of course it takes good dog material to make a first-class sheep dog, as well as a good man to train him. However, in our part of the country we use any kind of dog that will turn the sheep, and then do as they do in Kansas, where they do the best they can. Naturally collies predominate, for they seem to take to sheep and herding by instinct.

Instinct, however, will not tell any dog the various things he must not do. A pup always wants to work too fast. When he starts going around a bunch of sheep, he gets so excited and is having such a good time that he forgets to pay attention to the herder, and often goes completely around the bunch, sometimes two or three times. Of course this ties the sheep up in a knot, causes them unnecessary worry and alarm, and delays their grazing. Often, too, the pup will cut off a little bunch of sheep and drive them away from the main band. This makes serious trouble for the herder, who may have to walk half a mile after them, and naturally he makes trouble for the dog. Perhaps the commonest fault a pup has is cutting off a single sheep and trying to run it down, keeping between it and the rest of the bunch. This herding of one sheep instead of fifteen hundred is looked on by the herder with strong disfavor. Gradually, after being punished for one thing and another, the dog learns what he must and must not do and becomes the herder’s indispensable ally.

Of course it is just as easy to ruin a dog in the training as it is to spoil a horse or a child. Though without any first-hand knowledge of the last-named process, it is my belief that all three rest on much the same principles. They all call for firmness, for kindness, for genuine affection, and above all for infinite patience.

One of the worst habits a dog can form is rabbit chasing. The bunch may be scattered out peacefully grazing, when the dog scents a rabbit somewhere up the wind. He goes to investigate; the rabbit jumps up, and the chase is on. The rabbit will always go uphill if he can, because, on account of his short front legs, he is a better hill climber than the dog. He may or may not go through the sheep; he has no prejudice against so doing. If he does go through them, followed of course by the dog, it means that they will bunch up, lose valuable grazing time, and perhaps start running. Besides this, the dog will tire himself out and get sore feet by habitual rabbit running, and then when the herder has to call on him for help he is often unable or unwilling to give it.

One dog is all a herder needs, but the dog seems to enjoy life more if he has a companion. He eats better, and he has an opportunity to play and romp. But if a herder has more than two dogs, he might as well go somewhere and get a job as pound master, where he will get paid for taking care of dogs. If he has three dogs, one or two of them will be misbehaving in some way all the time, and the herder will find that he is taking care of dogs instead of sheep. It is the application of the old saying, ‘One boy’s a boy, two boys half a boy, three boys no boy.’ Then there is the serious problem of feeding them. A herder can always scrape up enough for one dog, but three dogs will eat twice as much as the herder himself.

A dog is the one thing of which sheep are afraid. They move merely enough to keep out of a herder’s way, and they care nothing about a horse, in case the herder happens to be riding. Many a sheep’s leg has been broken by a horse stepping on it. But a dog is a horse of another color. The sheep have the same respect for him that a small boy has for a policeman, and about the same liking. They can tell a strange dog as far as they can see him. They are always curious about a new dog, and when one is around you can see every sheep on the edge of the bunch sizing him up. They come as close to him as they dare, to investigate. But they move for him when he is on business.

There is, however, a great difference in the way sheep react to different dogs after they know them. From a fast-working dog they run in terror, while for a slow dog, usually an old one, they move with corresponding leisure. The ideal dog is one that works slowly but steadily, looking back frequently for further directions from the herder.

There is no doubt that a dog, especially a young one, enjoys herding, for any dog likes to chase something that will run. There are, however, only two motives that will keep a dog working — namely, love of the work and liking for the herder. Fear of the herder will not influence him, because while he is working he is out of the herder’s reach; and a dog that is abused will quit the herder altogether and go to the ranch.

While the dog is the herder’s everpresent companion, there are two occasions on which he sticketh closer than a brother. If the herder is climbing a slippery bank and taking each step with extreme care, the dog invariably senses this as a good opportunity to demonstrate the affection that has been piling up within him. He gets in front of the herder, about on a level with the latter’s face, and unless he is warned off he will put his paws on the herder’s shoulders and roll him to the bottom. And if the herder happens to be crossing new and thin ice where an additional pound or two may cause him to break through and give him wet feet for the rest of the day, the faithful dog will stick close at his heels and no amount of low-voiced cursing can drive him away.

Considering the indispensable help that a dog renders a herder, it is not strange that between the two there exists an unusually close bond. Certainly it is a feeling that could not be comprehended by the proprietor of some three-and-a-half-pound mixture of long hair and bad temper masquerading under the name of dog; for the affection existing between a herder and his dog rests on the solid basis of mutual respect. Moreover, the dog is the herder’s sole companion during most of the time, because the sheep cannot by any stretch of the imagination be termed good company. They are too intent on their own affairs. The dog, however, stays by his side during the day, and sleeps in the wagon at night; and when the herder is without his dog for a day or so he misses this companionship quite as much as he does the dog’s aid.

One evening when I came to my wagon, I found on the table a note from a neighboring herder, asking me to come over to his wagon, about half a mile away. I went over immediately, and found that both of his dogs had died that afternoon from picking up poison baits put out for coyotes. The herder had not known the location of the poison. He was about half a mile from the wagon when the dogs were taken sick, and he started for the wagon immediately to do what he could for them. He carried the pup in his arms, and when he arrived he gave both dogs salt and water as an emetic, followed by warm lard as an antidote. But he could not save them. The young dog, having less resistance, died first. Then the herder had to go out after his sheep, as it was getting dark. The old dog, in spite of all the herder could do, started out with him. The herder was a middle-aged man, and hard-boiled at that, but his face was working as he told me how the old dog insisted on struggling after him through the deep snow, how he would fall down in convulsions, then rise and drag himself on again, until that final convulsion from which he did not rise. As the herder finished he went to the door of his wagon and looked out at the falling snow. ‘Well,’ he said, ’the snow will cover them, and they will rest forever.’ I knew what he felt, because two of my own dogs were sleeping that same sleep, fallen soldiers in the grim and unrelenting war against the killers of the sheep.

IV

When I began to herd, the boss said to me, ‘Herding is what you make it.’ In that brief statement he put the whole lure of herding. In other words, it leaves a man free to live his own life. It may seem strange at first sight to speak of freedom in connection with an occupation that ties the worker to his job seven days in the week and cuts him off more or less from his fellow man. But it so happens that the same conditions that enslave the herder’s body are the very ones that free his mind. They prevent the herder’s feet from taking him more than a mile or two in any one direction, but they leave his mind free to roam that other world which knows no bounds save those of time and space.

If a farm hand gives his boss an honest day’s work, he is likely to be tired at night and fit only for bed. The same is doubtless true in numberless other lines of work. But such an ending to the day is an exception for the herder. Occasionally he may come back to the wagon in the evening so tired that he can scarcely drag one foot after the other, but this is distinctly the exception. Usually he will be as fresh at night as he was in the morning. He will have had ample opportunity to read during the day, and he can look forward to an uninterrupted evening of reading, writing, solitaire, or whatever he wishes.

Like most country dwellers, I subscribe to a number of magazines — fifteen at the present time. I also have a library of about five hundred volumes, to which I am constantly adding. So I am abundantly supplied with reading matter. For purely personal reasons, I am deeply interested in a certain figure in English literature — Samuel Pepys. I have borrowed from the university library and have bought many a volume concerning him and his times, and I expect to buy and borrow many more. If for any reason my interest in him should wane, there are a hundred other bypaths that beckon. The heritage is inexhaustible; it is only a question of choice.

There was formerly a community dedicated to the principles of plain living and high thinking. Almost any herder might have applied for charter membership there. As to the plainness of his living there can be scarcely any argument. It is true that when the boss or the sheep misbehave the thinking of the herder is apt to be decidedly low, not to say coarse. But no one can stand the rarefied atmosphere of Everest’s peak, and even those who attempt its upper slopes are obliged to carry their oxygen with them. The herder has at least the privilege and opportunity of climbing as high as he is able.

The herder’s life is a free one in still other ways. He is cut off from many of the benefits of civilization, but he is also free from many of its shackles. He can boast of freedom from the insistent telephone, from the mammoth and time-wasting daily papers, from the evening-destroying movies, and from the thousand and one petty distractions of city life that take a man’s time and sap his strength without adding proportionately to his happiness, until he becomes the passive recipient of whatever impact the next moment may bring.

The West is proverbially freer than the East, its people a little more unconventional, a little more hospitable, a little more open-hearted. They are a little more apt to say what they mean and to mean what they say. When a Westerner makes a remark, you do not have to go through a system of mental calisthenics to decide just what he means by it. The apparent meaning is likely to be the real one. All these traits are apt to be still further intensified in a frontier section of the West, and it is only in a frontier country that sheep can be run profitably in large bands. Land at two hundred and fifty dollars an acre may be all right for the raising of corn, but land at two dollars and fifty cents an acre is a better bet for the raising of sheep.

As to the great open spaces that you hear so much about, we have them — at least, if you mean by that a great open space between neighbors. During vacation a few years ago, while on a Lake boat I met a man from Buffalo, New York. I said to him: ‘Every time you mention Buffalo, you make me homesick. That is the name of my home town — Buffalo, South Dakota.’ ‘How big is it?’ he asked. ‘A hundred and twenty-five.’ ‘A hundred and twenty-five thousand ? ’ ‘ No, a hundred and twenty-five people.’ He could n’t quite grasp that. And yet Buffalo, South Dakota, is the largest town in a county sixty miles long by fifty wide; and of the other three towns only one approaches it in magnitude. Any old-fashioned family would have a bigger population than either of the two remaining towns.

Owing to the altitude, the air here is so clear that hills which are miles away stand out against the sky with knifelike clearness. People who come here from the East or from the lowlands of the West are invariably fooled as to distances. They have always associated clearness with nearness, and sometimes they learn the difference to their sorrow. An old-timer told me how, when he first came here, he tried out a new rifle on the slopes of Bear Butte and was much disappointed at not seeing the dust fly from it. He learned later that the butte was many miles away. They tell a story of a stranger who set out to walk to a certain butte before breakfast. He walked a mile or two, and then met a native who told him that the butte was still several miles away, so he decided to return. They went by a slightly different route, and came to a small stream, a mere trickle across the sand. As the native stopped to water his horse, he was amazed to see the stranger busily stripping off his clothes. ‘What are you going to do?' he asked. ‘I’m going to swim this river,’ was the dogged response. ‘Swim it!’ ejaculated the native. ‘Why, you can step across it!’ ‘Well, I don’t know,’ was the cautious answer; ‘distances are deceiving in this country, and I’m not taking any chances.’

Six miles from the ranch buildings, and at the eastern edge of the range over which I herd, rise the white cliffs of the Slim Buttes, a high range of hills rising abruptly from the surrounding plain. Halfway to the top is a small bench, upon which is a spring capable of watering hundreds of cattle. This bench is the site of an old ranch called The Moonshine, a ranch that goes back to the old days of free grass and big outfits. As you stand on a hill above where the log ranch house lay, you find yourself in a natural amphitheatre. Behind you the rock-strewn earth rises almost sheer to the plateau, two hundred feet above you. To the north a great white limestone wall thrusts out into space, its rough sides forming many a niche for an eagle’s nest, and its jagged top their favored resting place. To the south a grass-covered, pine-clad shoulder reaches out like another protecting arm, with a giant pine crowning a knoll at its very tip, and below it a sheer upthrust of limestone wall is pierced by a roughly shaped window. Almost at your feet, nestling among the rough hummocks of the bench, is the Moonshine Lake, a bright jewel in a waterless landscape.

As your eyes go farther afield, you note that from the bench the land drops away another hundred feet or so to the plain beneath. Twenty miles to the northwest you see the large rolling outlines of the Cave Hills, while thirty miles west are the white-cliffed, pine-clad summits of the Short Pine Hills. Beyond them, a mere blue line, are the Long Pine Hills of Montana. As your eye follows the horizon south, it pauses at the Crow Buttes, where the Crow and Sioux Indians once fought a bloody battle, and at the twin peaks, Castle Rock and Square Top, rising in solitary state above many a flat and weary mile of gumbo. And just beyond them you see on the horizon what looks like a row of rounded blue hummocks. These are the Black Hills, one hundred miles from where you are standing.

One day last fall I procured a substitute herder and made a quick trip to Bellefourche, just north of the Hills. Our return journey was begun about dusk. The roads across the gumbo, forty miles wide, are always at this season as smooth as pavement. Until we reached the edge of the gumbo, houses were not infrequent, but from then on it was as if we were a comet rushing through a desolate void. The great car took the hills like a frightened rabbit, crashed across bridges and hurtled over the flats, forever chasing the spot of light that fled before it. Once in a while a pin prick of light would reveal the site of some lonely ranch house or sheep wagon. Then mile after mile of darkness, with only the steady droning roar of our engine to tie us to reality. Seventy-five miles of federal highway with never a town or a post office! The great open spaces.