the road to turn
to the right and follow it out to the prairie, where they would find
camp; he particularly warned them to keep a sharp look-out, so as not
to pass over the dim trail unawares in the dusk and the storm. They
followed his advice, and reached camp safely; and after they had left
him nobody ever again saw him alive. Evidently he himself, plodding
northwards, passed over the road without seeing it in the gathering
gloom; probably he struck it at some point where the ground was bad, and
the dim trail in consequence disappeared entirely, as is the way with
these prairie roads--making them landmarks to be used with caution.
He must then have walked on and on, over rugged hills and across deep
ravines, until his horse came to a standstill; he took off its saddle
and picketed it to a dwarfed ash. Its frozen carcass was found with
the saddle near by, two months later. He now evidently recognized some
landmark, and realized that he had passed the road, and was far to the
north of the round-up wagons; but he was a resolute, self-confident man,
and he determined to strike out for a line camp, which he knew lay about
due east of him, two or three miles out on the prairie, on one of the
head branches of Knife River. Night must have fallen by this time, and
he missed the camp, probably passing it within less than a mile; but he
did pass it, and with it all hopes of life, and walked wearily on to
his doom, through the thick darkness and the driving snow. At last his
strength failed, and he lay down in the tall grass of a little hollow.
Five months later, in the early spring, the riders from the line camp
found his body, resting, face downwards, with the forehead on the folded
arms.

Accidents of less degree are common. Men break their collar-bones, arms,
or legs by falling when riding at speed over dangerous ground, when
cutting cattle or trying to control a stampeded herd, or by being thrown
or rolled on by bucking or rearing horses; or their horses, and on rare
occasion even they themselves, are gored by fighting steers. Death by
storm or in flood, death in striving to master a wild and vicious horse,
or in handling maddened cattle, and too often death in brutal conflict
with one of his own fellows--any one of these is the not unnatural end
of the life of the dweller on the plains or in the mountains.

But a few years ago other risks had to be run from savage beasts, and
from the Indians. Since I have been ranching on