a rocking-chair--I am very fond of rocking-chairs--and enough books to
fill two or three shelves, and a rubber bathtub so that I could get
a bath. And then I do not see how any one could have lived more
comfortably. We had buffalo robes and bearskins of our own killing. We
always kept the house clean--using the word in a rather large sense.
There were at least two rooms that were always warm, even in the
bitterest weather; and we had plenty to eat. Commonly the mainstay
of every meal was game of our own killing, usually antelope or deer,
sometimes grouse or ducks, and occasionally, in the earlier days,
buffalo or elk. We also had flour and bacon, sugar, salt, and canned
tomatoes. And later, when some of the men married and brought out their
wives, we had all kinds of good things, such as jams and jellies made
from the wild plums and the buffalo berries, and potatoes from the
forlorn little garden patch. Moreover, we had milk. Most ranchmen at
that time never had milk. I knew more than one ranch with ten thousand
head of cattle where there was not a cow that could be milked. We made
up our minds that we would be more enterprising. Accordingly, we started
to domesticate some of the cows. Our first effort was not successful,
chiefly because we did not devote the needed time and patience to the
matter. And we found that to race a cow two miles at full speed on
horseback, then rope her, throw her, and turn her upside down to milk
her, while exhilarating as a pastime, was not productive of results.
Gradually we accumulated tame cows, and, after we had thinned out the
bobcats and coyotes, more chickens.

The ranch house stood on the brink of a low bluff overlooking the broad,
shallow bed of the Little Missouri, through which at most seasons there
ran only a trickle of water, while in times of freshet it was filled
brimful with the boiling, foaming, muddy torrent. There was no neighbor
for ten or fifteen miles on either side of me. The river twisted down