The great country that has been described as adapted to no other purpose than stock-raising is necessarily almost exclusively populated with cow-men; and, without legal restraint, the prairie fairly trembles with their power. I am personally acquainted with many of the boys; and while I have many _warm friends_ among them, I also have some _deadly enemies_. I have studied their dispositions, and, by the instrument of warmest confidence, have drawn from their bosoms many dark and hidden secrets. When a person takes into consideration the _position_ and _surroundings_ of these boys, he is not astonished at the almost unexceptionably bold, bestial, and immoral character of these creatures of the broad western wilds. In _civilized_ and _Christianized_ regions, if a person be disposed to be rough and immoral--though he often meets those of like disposition and is _encouraged_,--he _must_ and _will_, from time to time, come in contact with those whom the faintest throbbings of natural manhood will move him to respect; for instance, the sweet smile or the soft, silver-toned word from the lips of a kind female or the address of a noble man. As he walks the streets by the dim light of the gas-lamp, profaning the Sabbath or planning dark vices, the sweet strains from the lips of the worshipers away up in the tabernacle will waft out of the open window upon the soft evening zephyrs and irresistibly appeal to his faint sensibilities. The voice of the good minister is heard; and though the heart be mailed with a coat of evil and the spark of celestial fire called conscience be almost smothered, these soft influences are felt and are fuel to the fire of man’s natural sensibilities. And back of all this is the strong hand of the law, backed by public sentiment, with which the latitude of man’s privileges is measured out. The checks are so many and so great that it is some time before the conscience of man can be overcome by the rolling waves of immoral and iniquitous temptations. But it is quite otherwise in the unsettled country where the musical strains do not reach nor the words of the gospel sound, and where the sweet influence of womanhood is not shed, and worst of all, where the _law_ is the _will_ and the might makes the right. There is nothing to stay the degeneration into which mankind is naturally so prone to drift; and in several years’ life with such surroundings the sensibilities of man become as callous as a stone. The very atmosphere is impregnated with profanity, and new-comers can seldom resist the epidemic. Many of these boys stay alone away out upon distant ranges for several months at a stretch without seeing a human being, with the howl of the wolf and the angry growl of the wild beasts constantly floating upon the prairie breeze, and the monotony broken now and then by the war-whoop of the treacherous red-man, who cruises upon the plain beneath his white plume, seeking the lives and scalps of the lone boys.