er how much water you irrigate with,
one good downpour from Nature's fertilizing watering-can is worth more
than weeks of irrigation. Rain water has a quality of its own which well
or tank water cannot supply. Plants respond to it at once by adopting a
cheery, healthy aspect. It had another equally valuable character in
that it destroyed the overwhelming bugs. How it destroyed them I don't
know: perhaps it drowned them; anyway they disappeared at once.

In my own pasture in New Mexico I for various reasons decided to
"breed," instead of simply handle steers. Steers were certainly safer
and surer, and the life was an easy one. But there appeared to me
greater possibilities in breeding if the cows were handled right and
taken proper care of. It will be seen by-and-by that my anticipations
were more than justified, so that the success of this little ranch has
been a source of pride to me.

The ranch was called "Running Water," because situated on Running Water
Draw, a creek that never to my knowledge "ran" except after a very heavy
rain. Prairie fires were the greatest danger in this level range
country, there being no rivers, canons, or even roads to check their
advance. Lightning might set the grass afire; a match carelessly dropped
by the cigarette-smoker; a camp fire not properly put out; or any
mischievously-inclined individual might set the whole country ablaze.
Indeed, the greatest prairie fire I have record of was maliciously
started to windward of my ranch by an ill-disposed neighbour (one of the
men whose cattle the Scotch Company had closed out and who ever after
had a grudge against me) purposely to burn me out. He did not quite
succeed, as by hard fighting all night we managed to save half the
grass; but the fire extended 130 miles into Texas, burning out a strip
from thirty to sixty miles wide. On account of a very high wind blowing
that fire jumped my "guard," a term which needs explanation. All round
my pasture, on the outside of the fence, for a distance of over forty
miles was ploughed a fire-guard thus: two or three ploughed furrows and,
100 feet apart, other two or three ploughed furrows, there being thus a
strip of land forty miles long and 100 feet wide. Between these furrows
we burnt the grass, an operation that required great care and yet must
be done as expeditiously as possible to save time, labour and expense. A
certain amount of wind must be blowing so as to insure a clean and rapid
burn; but a