so
taken, almost incredible as that may seem. The young buffalo were easy
prey for the cowboy and these he often roped and made captive. In fact
the beginnings of all the herds of buffalo now in captivity in this
country were the calves roped and secured by cowboys; and these few
scattered individuals of a grand race of animals remain as melancholy
reminders alike of a national shiftlessness and an individual skill and
daring.

The grizzly was at times seen by the cowboys on the range, and if it
chanced that several cowboys were together it was not unusual to give
him chase. They did not always rope him, for it was rarely that the
nature of the country made this possible. Sometimes they roped him and
wished they could let him go, for a grizzly bear is uncommonly active
and straightforward in his habits at close quarters. The extreme
difficulty of such a combat, however, gave it its chief fascination for
the cowboy. Of course, no one horse could hold the bear after it was
roped, but, as one after another came up, the bear was caught by neck
and foot and body, until at last he was tangled and tripped and hauled
about till he was helpless, strangled, and nearly dead. It is said that
cowboys have so brought into camp a grizzly bear, forcing him to half
walk and half slide at the end of the ropes. No feat better than this
could show the courage of the plainsman and of the horse which he so
perfectly controlled.

Of such wild and dangerous exploits were the cowboy's amusements on the
range. It may be imagined what were his amusements when he visited the
"settlements." The cow-punchers, reared in the free life of the open
air, under circumstances of the utmost freedom of individual action,
perhaps came off the drive or round-up after weeks or months of unusual
restraint or hardship, and felt that the time had arrived for them
to "celebrate." Merely great rude children, as wild and untamed and
untaught as the herds they led, they regarded their first look at the
"settlements" of the railroads as a glimpse of a wider world. They
pursued to the uttermost such avenues of new experience as lay before
them, almost without exception avenues of vice. It is strange that the
records of those days should be chosen by the public to be held as the
measure of the American cowboy. Those days were brief, and they are
long since gone. The American cowboy atoned for them by a quarter of a
century of faithful labor.

The amusements of the co