yearling or a two-year-old, the owner might perhaps offer the
animal as a gift, or he might smile and say "Con mucho gusto" as
he was handed a few pieces of silver. There were plenty of cows
everywhere in the world!

Let us, therefore, give the old Spaniard full credit alike in
picturesque romance and in the organized industry of the cow. The
westbound thrust which came upon the upper part of the range in
the days of more shrewd and exacting business methods was simply
the best-known and most published phase of frontier life in the
cow country; hence we have usually accepted it as typical. It
would not be accurate to say that the cattle industry was
basically much influenced or governed by northern or eastern men.
In practically all of its great phenomena the frontier of the old
cow-range was southern by birth and growth.

There lay, then, so long unused, that vast and splendid land so
soon to write romantic history of its own, so soon to come into
the admiration or the wonder of a great portion of the earth--a
land of fascinating interest to the youth of every country, and a
region whose story holds a charm for young and old alike even
today. It was a region royal in its dimensions. Far on the west
it was hedged by the gray-sided and white-topped mountains, the
Rockies. Where the buffalo once lived, the cattle were to live,
high up in the foothills of this great mountain range which ran
from the Rio Grande to Canada. On the east, where lay the
Prairies rather than the Plains, it was a country waving with
high native grasses, with many brilliant flowers hiding among
them, the sweet-William, the wild rose, and often great masses of
the yellow sunflower.