Williston graphic. (Williston, Williams County, N.D.) 1895-1919, 1900-04-12

TWAS not pretty story; it was more.
It was fraught with that print
tive ruggedness one gets an impress
sion of along with cutting prairie
winds, bucking broncos, the crack of
q revolver, the whiz of a bullet.
The fellows name was Thompson,
and he could handle bunch of steers
with the best of them, but there was
an air of metropolitanism about him
that assorted i'll with his surroundings.
And although he drank harder, swore
better, and went rougher than any man
of them, he had never been able to live
down his nickname of "East-Side'
Thompson. Under the influence of roll
ing prairies, the boundless sweep Of
cloud and sky, an intimacy with the
elements, and reliance upon nothing
but his own wit and courage, a man
grows to be strong, sagacious, vital
creature, SO different from our cir
cumscribed ideas of a man that, for
want of better term, we call him a
sscow-puncher."
The Three-X outfit of cow-punchers
had been on the trail more than n
month, and, according to all precedent
and reason, the rains should have set
in weeks before, but they had not, The
grass that had sprung up with the first
early showers had scared and died be-
fore the next rain came to keep it
alive. The shallow, sluggish little
streams of brackish water that crawled
along the bottom of their beds, which
the year before had been swollen be-
yond their banks, finally gave out ut
terly. In every direction the white
alkali plains glistened away to the
meeting line of the sky in an infinitude
of isolation. The oldest inhabitant in
all the country round could not recall
winter that equaled this in dry
ness.
Howbeit Nevada was then new state
and the population migratory. Will
son, the boss of the outfit, had hoped
to get out of the sagebrush country
and strike the California line some
where above Bodie by the end of the
first month out, but there was no rain.
no water, and the plains lay in open
cracks. Day after day the sun arose,
smiled down upon the parched little
bunch Of men and cattle IA long hours
as he sailed across cloudless sky, Sc
renely unconscious of the maledictions
hurled against him, while the bare,
burning prairie stared back in I'M
blinking defiance. There were gor-
geous sunsets every evening moments
when the great fiery ball seemed almost
to stand still to give long backward
glance before dropping out of sight,
and with a Midas touch turn all the
world to molten gold. But to the
played-out cow-puncher sunset means
nothing but bedtime-bedtime after u
hard, parched, hopeless day. There
were clear, chaste moonlight nights
of wondrous radiance, too, but the
moon was seen only in the early morn
ing, when they rose to another day,
more hard, more parched, more hope
less. The cattle = mere anatomical
charts by this time-went staggering
about in crazy circles, too weak to
need watching, the three Ks on their
TANKS reduced to half the original size
by the shriveling of the hide, or fell
heavily to the earth to rise again, after
many seasons of sun and shower, as
prairie flowers and salt grass. Their
believing was reduced to moan al
most human in it's misery, for the one
voice common to all created things,
animal or human, is the voice of suffer-
ing.
The Missourian, great, hulking
young fellow, was first of the men to
show signs of weakening. That is the
most terrible moment in all like expert
ences, when the men who have held on
grimly and endured together see one
of their number losing his grip. This
had been an ill-assorted outfit when
they started out with the cattle across
the plains, but standing together,
shoulder to shoulder, defying death
against fearful odds knits man deep
ly into the life of his fellow. Among
these men there was no spoken SYM
patty, no overt act of kindness, but
in their very sullenness was that grim
NEST of all sacrifices, each man en-
during in stole silence in order that he
might not intrude his own sufferings
upon his already overcrowded neigh