All the cities of the Yellowstone have character and individuality, and none more than Miles City. Not so beautifully located as Livingston, not quite so metropolitan as Billings, there is something in the fine, broad streets of Miles that suggests the frank, bluff, open-heartedness of a cowboy straight from the ranges. The town looks you squarely between the eyes and says "Put it there"! in a deep, mellow voice that goes straight to the heart. That voice and that look embody the quintessence of reassurance. You know in an instant that you are face to face with the kind of a town that couldn't play a mean trick on a man if it tried--that there isn't going to be any need of slinking around with one hand on your wallet and the other on your hip-pocket. Even though you may have been warned that various sorts of rough stuff have been pulled in Miles, you are certain that outsiders will have been found at the bottom of it if all the facts were known. (My over-night stop in Miles was hardly sufficient to prove out the truth of all this. Just the same, that's the way I felt about the town, and that's the way I still feel.) [Illustration: _By Haynes, St. Paul_ STOCKYARDS, MILES CITY] [Illustration: © _L. A. Huffman_ "FREIGHTIN'"] Miles City owed its early importance to sheep and cattle, and still has the distinction of being the principle horse market of America. Agriculture has played an increasingly important part in its later growth. The splendid valleys of the Powder and the Tongue are both tributary territory, while the irrigation of the rich lands of the Yellowstone is bringing year by year an augmented flow of wealth to the city's gates. (Darn it! I wonder if I have cribbed that last sentence from Chamber of Commerce literature. In any event, it is quite true in this case.)