| Show ft Silent Place A cold grey April afternoon found me with a bunch of very tired cattle fifteen miles from the home ranch which I had planned that morning to reach before dark The drive was a long one but I had made it before and to have missed my calculations of the morning by fifteen miles — it was depressing It was very evident though that the cattle cows and calves mostly with no strength yet from the green grass anti very much weakened by a long hard winter were going but little further To leave them and ride to the ranch out in weather that might be any thing before morning meant thirty miles of extra ride to say nothing of being laughed at by the fellows for coming in without the cattle and I was young and green enough then to care a great deal about that sort of thing There was no other way out of it though and I headed my melancholy discouraged herd towards a ravine in which there grew a grove of cottonwoods There they would be protected from the wind and would perhaps remain until I came back after them in the morning Then I remembered that in another ravine some distance further off there was a cabin and a small corral in which There I hay had been stored could find shelter for the cows and perhaps feed so I changed the route The stretch of plateau though broken by deeply washed ravines on either side of the divide along which the trail led had the appearance half a mile away of unbroken prairie dull grey in its early spring foliage Only here and there where some grove of trees seemed to climb out of the ravine in which it grew was the sameness broken by patches of green A cold grey dismal sheet of low lying clouds met this prairie on all sides and seemed to shut out all the rest of the world A melancholy damp and penetrating seemed to be everywhere Even old Pete the saddle horse y had a homesick look in his eyes so sad and so real that I was sorry for him It seemed an age before those cows were at the corral and I had been impatient all the way to turn old Pete loose down the home trail and get away from the oppressiveness of those clouds and mountains back to human companions and something to eat But after I had thrown the little pile of musty hay over the fence to the cows I sat there on the top far-awa- |
