ON A CATTLE RANCH—AN UNRULY STEER.
With the work of a cow ranch or horse ranch there comes more excitement. Every man on such a ranch has a string of eight or ten horses for his own riding, and there is a great deal of exciting galloping and hot riding across the plains; and the work in a stampede at night, or in line-riding during the winter, or in breaking the fierce little horses to the saddle, is as exciting as it is hard and dangerous. The wilder phases of the life, however, are steadily passing away. Almost everywhere great wire fences are being put up, and no small part of the cowboy's duty nowadays is to ride along the line of a fence and repair it wherever broken. Moreover, at present the business of cattle or horse raising on the plains does not pay well, and, except in peculiar cases, can hardly be recommended to a boy ambitious for his future.
So much for the unattractive reality of ranch life. It would be unfair not to point out that it has a very attractive side also. If the boy is fond of open-air exercise, and willing to risk tumbles that may break an occasional bone, and to endure at need heat and cold, hunger and thirst, he will find much that is pleasant in the early mornings on the great plains, and on the rare days when he is able to take a few hours' holiday to go with his shot-gun after prairie-chickens or ducks, or, perchance, to ride out with a Winchester rifle to a locality where on one of his working days he has seen a small band of antelope standing in the open, or caught a glimpse of a deer bounding through the brush. There is little temptation to spend money, unless he is addicted to the coarsest kind of dissipation, and after a few years the young fellow ought to have some hundreds of dollars put up. By this time he should know all about the business and the locality, and should be able to gauge just what he can accomplish.
For a year or two perhaps he can try to run a little outfit of his own in connection with his work on a big ranch. Then he will abandon the latter and start out entirely on his own account. Disaster may overtake him, as it may overtake any business man; but if he wins success, even though of a moderate kind, he has a pleasant life before him, riding about over the prairie among his own horses or cattle or sheep, occasionally taking a day off to go after game, and, while working hard, not having to face the mere drudgery which he had to face as a tyro. The chances are very small that he will ever gain great wealth; and when he marries and has children of his own there are many uncomfortable problems to face, the chief being that of schools; but for a young man in good health and of adventurous temper the life is certainly pleasanter than that of one cooped up in the counting-room, and while it is not one to be sought save by the very few who have a natural liking for it and a natural capacity to enjoy it and profit by it, still for these few people it remains one of the most attractive forms of existence in America.
[BIOGRAPHY OF A STARBOARD ANCHOR.]
BY H. PERCY ASHLEY.
The big Anchor rested on the smooth green lawn in front of the house, all glistening in the sunshine with its new coat of white paint, and there was nothing about it to show how it had once taken a very important part in the lives of the youngsters who were even then playing around on the grass not far away. But the old Bo's'n came along one day, and he knew the story, and as near as I can remember it, this is what he said the Anchor told him:
I came out of the ground a great many years ago, and my appearance at the time was somewhat crude. I was put on a train and taken to a place where they gave me a bath, and afterwards I was melted, hammered, and pounded until it seemed as if my last days had come. I had a chance to cool off after this ordeal, however, and a new suit of galvanized clothing was given to me. I felt very proud a few days later as I lay in state at the door of a large ship-chandler's shop on South Street in New York city. Frequently men who passed by in the crowd would stop to look at me, and some of them would remark upon my beauty and my strength, which made me expand with pride and give them one of my brightest looks. Those were the days, you must remember, when I was new and foolish, for up to that time I had never seen the ocean, except for the occasional glimpses I caught over the corner of the dock and through the tangle of shipping.