The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-05-12

| will get over it all right, but of course, l if he has lain there for day or two he \ will be chilled and starved and the { chances are he will die even if he has | the strength to walk out from the hole | to the bank. In order to save as many l cattle as possible from this sort of loss l every COW outfit puts as many men as 1 can be spared from other work along the river for the purpose of keeping the cattle out of the bogs and pulling them 1 out after they get in. The first work of | these bog riders is to learn where the | ''bog holes or particularly treacherous 1 places in their part of the river are { to be found and then fence them. This having been done their only work is to | patrol the river keeping a sharp lookout l for anything that is mired and when
 discovered to help 1t out This is gen erally accomplished by throwing a rope l over the animals head and dragging it out by the saddle horn until it is on solid
 ground. where, gaining it's feet, it will | be willing enough to be driven back to | the valley, When the brute is stuck | deep the only thing to be done is to get | down off the horse and shovel the sand
 away from the imprisoned legs until /, they are free and then when that is done put the rope on and pull as before. There are generally about six miles | of the river assigned to each man, and it frequently happens that that is about
 four times as many as he can attend to
 with anything like thoroughness; so that he often goes to camp at night
 knowing that there are all the way from a dozen to hundred head mired fast, and that by morning there will
 be as many more. But he has worked hard all day, the chances are, without dinner, too, and he has to have sleep. Then, of course, if "norther' comes up in the night there will be lot of dead cattle in the river next morning and a lot more as good as dead, for, poor and
 weak as they always are here after go-
 ing through the winter, they cannot
 stand anything at all compared with
 an animal that has not been starved for
 six months. But whether there is a
 storm or not the bog rider will be back
 to his work in the morning, and he will
 be there every morning until the grass
 has got good enough to give the cattle
 strength and until the "heel fly" has
 S'cPPSo PueSih6 thSiii iiitp tiiC NetAtl
 But throughout all the year, even when
 the cattle are strong, there are always
 a few of them getting into the bogs and
 dying, so that the losses at the end of
 the year foot up to good big per cent.
 The treacherous character of the
 qutcksands is, of course, well known to
 every newcomer, and it is rare thing
 for the hardened old cow-punchers to whom he comes for advice to let him go away without firm conviction that there are a thousand chances to one that he will never get across. But they never fail to tell him all he needs to know-horrifying him by way of pay ing themselves for the information which is that he must follow the trail over the sand and never stop for an in stant until he is on the other side. If he does this, no matter how big a load he has on his wagon, he will make it all right, but if he stops the wheels will go down to the axes and then he will have to unload and dig out the best way he can.
 Bridging would of course, be very ex- pensive. It is absolutely impossible to put permanent bridge across the stream without resorting to the suspen- sion idea, for the quicksands have no bottom. and piling driven into them is very unstable and always getting out of place Nevertheless, the two rail- road bridges spanning it are supported by billings boxed at the bottom and braced between, so as to give them as much surface as possible and the whole structure risidness.
 With all these dangers and disadvan- tages, however, the Canadian furnishes practically the only living water in the northwestern part of the Pan Handle, and without it there are millions of acres of fine grazing lands which would have to be abandoned simply on account of lack of water for the cattle.-From the Chicago Record.