On several occasions we had to fight fire. In the geography books of my
youth prairie fires were always portrayed as taking place in long grass,
and all living things ran before them. On the Northern cattle plains the
grass was never long enough to be a source of danger to man or beast.
The fires were nothing like the forest fires in the Northern woods. But
they destroyed large quantities of feed, and we had to stop them where
possible. The process we usually followed was to kill a steer, split it
in two lengthwise, and then have two riders drag each half-steer, the
rope of one running from his saddle-horn to the front leg, and that of
the other to the hind leg. One of the men would spur his horse over or
through the line of fire, and the two would then ride forward, dragging
the steer bloody side downward along the line of flame, men following
on foot with slickers or wet horse-blankets, to beat out any flickering
blaze that was still left. It was exciting work, for the fire and the
twitching and plucking of the ox carcass over the uneven ground maddened
the fierce little horses so that it was necessary to do some riding
in order to keep them to their work. After a while it also became very
exhausting, the thirst and fatigue being great, as, with parched lips
and blackened from head to foot, we toiled at our task.

In those years the Stockman's Association of Montana was a powerful
body. I was the delegate to it from the Little Missouri. The meetings
that I attended were held in Miles City, at that time a typical cow
town. Stockmen of all kinds attended, including the biggest men in the
stock business, men like old Conrad Kohrs, who was and is the finest
type of pioneer in all the Rocky Mountain country; and Granville
Stewart, who was afterwards appointed Minister by Cleveland, I think
to the Argentine; and "Hashknife" Simpson, a Texan who had brought his
cattle, the Hashknife brand, up the trail into our country. He and