CHAPTER VIII.
ODDS AND ENDS The "Staked Plains"-- High Winds--Lobo Wolves--Branding--Cows--Black Jack--Lightning and Hail--Classing Cattle--Conventions--"Cutting" versus Polo--Bull-Fight--Prize-Fights--River and Sea Fishing--Sharks.
More odds and ends! and more apologies for the disconnected character of this chapter.

It must be remembered that these notes are only jotted down as they have occurred to me.

Of their irrelativeness one to another I am quite conscious, but the art of bringing them together in more proper order is beyond my capacity.

Possibly it might not be advisable anyway.
In my pasture of some 100,000 acres there was not a tree, a bush, or a shrub, or object of any nature bigger than a jack-rabbit; yet no sight was so gladsome to the eyes, no scenery (save the mark!) so beautiful as the range when clothed in green, the grass heading out, the lakes filled with water and the cattle fat, sleek and contented.

Yet in after years, when passing through this same country by the newly-built railway in winter-time, it came as a wonder to me how one could have possibly passed so many years of his life in such a dreary, desolate, uninteresting-looking region.