e sweet waters of the far North would fatten a range broadhorn to a
stature far beyond any it could attain on the southern range. The
Long Trail pushed rapidly even farther to the north where there still
remained "free grass" and a new market. The territorial ranges needed
many thousands of cattle for their stocking, and this demand took a
large part of the Texas drive which came to Abilene, Great Bend, and
Fort Dodge. Moreover, the Government was now feeding thousands of its
new red wards, and these Indians needed thousands of beeves for rations,
which were driven from the southern range to the upper army posts and
reservations. Between this Government demand and that of the territorial
stock ranges there was occupation for the men who made the saddle their
home.

The Long Trail, which had previously found the black corn lands of
Illinois and Missouri, now crowded to the West, until it had 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 ra