[The Passing of the Frontier by Emerson Hough]@TWC D-Link bookThe Passing of the Frontier CHAPTER III 15/16
Between this Government demand and that of the territorial stock ranges there was occupation for the men who made the saddle their home. The Long Trail, which had previously found the black corn lands of Illinois and Missouri, now crowded to the West, until it had reached Utah and Nevada, and penetrated every open park and mesa and valley of Colorado, and found all the high plains of Wyoming.
Cheyenne and Laramie became common words now, and drovers spoke as wisely of the dangers of the Platte as a year before they had mentioned those of the Red River or the Arkansas.
Nor did the Trail pause in its irresistible push to the north until it had found the last of the five great transcontinental lines, far in the British provinces.
Here in spite of a long season of ice and snow the uttermost edges of the great herd might survive, in a certain percentage at least, each year in an almost unassisted struggle for existence, under conditions different enough, it would seem, from those obtaining at the opposite extreme of the wild roadway over which they came. The Long Trail of the cattle-range was done! By magic the cattle industry had spread over the entire West.
Today many men think of that industry as belonging only to the Southwest, and many would consider that it was transferred to the North.
<<Back Index Next>> D-Link book Top TWC mobile books
|