cowhide boots, that must have weighed five pounds each. He had no sooner fell down than he was up again and running like hell, he didn’t look back or say a word, but with those big boots and his weight, it sounded like a bunch of horses running away. I saw him about a month afterward, he didn’t say anything, but smiled. I guess he thought it was a good joke too. After Christmas left I got on my horse, and started for camp, of course there were no roads so I started out across the prairie, and it was very dark and I got lost. I finally landed in some heavy sage brush, I got off my horse and tied him to some brush, by that time I had got awful thirsty and couldn’t find any water. I felt something in my chaps pocket, and found it was a bottle of tomato catsup (where or how I got it I never knew). I couldn’t get the cork out so I broke the head off of it with a rock, and drank nearly all of it. I layed down and went to sleep but woke up in a short time with a terrible pain in my stomach, the first thing I thought was that I had swallowed some of the glass from that ketchup bottle and I was sure scared. It was getting daylight about that time and I knew where I was, and I got on my horse and started for the old DHS horse ranch. There was no one home as the boys were all on the roundup. I heated a tub of water and got into it and had a big sweat, after that I felt much better, I cooked something to eat and went to bed and stayed there until the next morning. As I knew about where the roundup would be, I found camp that day, nobody said much to me about my absence, as it was a legitimate excuse those days for a cowboy getting drunk to be late on the job. CHAPTER XIV OPEN RANGE DAYS In the days of open range, everybody had great freedom. A cowboy could change countries every spring if he wanted to and they were always drifting from one range to another—not only to different ranges but to different states. For instance, maybe he would be in New Mexico one year and on the Canadian border the next. Every cowboy had a private horse of his own, pack horse and his own bed, which consisted of a tarpaulin and some blankets. And according to the custom of them days he could stop at any cow camp or ranch and was not under obligations to anyone, and if he wanted to stay a week and rest his horses that was O.K. too. If there was no one home, he always found grub and helped himself, so he was quite independent—and it did not take much money to travel. Nature provided him with new scenery every day, such as unclaimed land, rivers and creeks, and in my day plenty of wild game of all kinds. I don’t believe the tourist of today with his automobile has anything compared to what we had.