d; and the Marquis, who never missed an opportunity to "boom"
his new town in the newspapers, insisted stoutly not only that he
habitually "walked and rode about comfortably without an overcoat";
but also that he "felt the cold much more severely in New York, and in
Washington even." Other landowners maintained the same delusion, and
it was considered almost treason to speak of the tragedies of the
cold. The fact remained, however, that a snowfall, which elsewhere
might scarcely make good sleighing, in the Bad Lands became a foe to
human life of inconceivable fury. For with it generally came a wind so
fierce that the stoutest wayfarer could make no progress against it.
The small, dry flakes, driven vertically before it, cut the flesh like
a razor, blinding the vision and stifling the breath and shutting out
the world with an impenetrable icy curtain. A half-hour after the
storm had broken, the traveler, lost in it, might wonder whether there
were one foot of snow or five, and whether the greater part of it
were on the ground or whirling about him in the air. With the snow
came extreme cold that pierced the thickest garments.

The horses, running free on the range, seemed to feel the cold
comparatively little, eating the snow for water, and pawing through it
to the stem-cured prairie-grass for food. But the cattle suffered
intensely, especially the Southern stock which had not yet learnt that
they must eat their way through the snow to the sustenance beneath.
They stood huddled together at every wind-break, and in the first
biting storm of the new year even sought the shelter of the towns,
taking possession of the streets. The cows, curiously enough, seemed
to bear the hardship better than the bulls. The male, left to his own
resources, had a tendency to "give up" and creep into the brush and
die, while the females, reduced to skin and bones, struggled on,
gnawing at the frozen stumps of sagebrush, battling to the last.

Western newspapers, "booming" the cattle business, insisted that every
blizzard was followed by a warm wind known as a "chinook" which
brought a prompt return of comfort and sleekness to the most unhappy
steer; but wise men knew better. For the cattle, seeking a livelihood
on the snowy, wind-swept wastes, the winter was one long-protracted
misery.

It was in fact not an unalloyed delight for human beings, especially
for those whose business it was to guard the cattle. The hardest and
the bitterest wor