reached Utah and Nevada, and penetrated every open park and mesa
and valley of Colorado, and found all the high plains of Wyoming.
Cheyenne and Laramie became common words now, and drovers spoke
as wisely of the dangers of the Platte as a year before they had
mentioned those of the Red River or the Arkansas. Nor did the
Trail pause in its irresistible push to the north until it had
found the last of the five great transcontinental lines, far in
the British provinces. Here in spite of a long season of ice and
snow the uttermost edges of the great herd might survive, in a
certain percentage at least, each year in an almost unassisted
struggle for existence, under conditions different enough, it
would seem, from those obtaining at the opposite extreme of the
wild roadway over which they came.

The Long Trail of the cattle-range was done! By magic the cattle
industry had spread over the entire West. Today many men think of
that industry as belonging only to the Southwest, and many would
consider that it was transferred to the North. Really it was not
transferred but extended, and the trail of the old drive marks
the line of that extension.

Today the Long Trail is replaced by other trails, product of the
swift development of the West, and it remains as the connection,
now for the most part historical only, between two phases of an
industry which, in spite of differences of climate and condition,
retain a similarity in all essential features. When the last
steer of the first herd was driven into the corral at the Ultima
Thule of the range, it was the pony of the American cowboy which
squatted and wheeled under the spur and burst down the straggling
street of the little frontier town. Before that time, and since