He runs vast herds -- probably more than 10,000 cattle and 1000 horses. In the big storm of March, 1913, fifteen hundred cattle were lost by their drifting into Swan lake.

The Avery ranches are also large. Charles has a ranch covering two townships, and well stocked. Sam also has a fine ranch. Fine hay meadows, and a hunting lodge on one of the Avery lakes, built for the accommodation of friends and visitors, is the way Avery Brothers do things.

Boyd and Rice own Crescent ranch which

covers about three townships, and is well stock-

' d George Richardson has more than a towni E Ballinger twenty thousand acres.

R. M. Hampton's ten thousand acre ranch in the northern part of Morrill county, has

been merged into the thirty-five thousand acre ranch of Hall and Graham. This ranch cuts thousands of tons of hay annually, and suffered a great hay loss by fire in 1920. They have from three thousand to four thousand cattle.

All these ranches are under the new order, as the old free range has passed away. The big roundups are no more, except perhaps in remote regions of Argentine, or on the Amazon, in South America.

Neither do we have the stampedes that used to wither the grass as the trampling feet of wild-eyed cattle passed. Those were days when "The Phantom Steer" led herds to perdition. To quote from verse written in the running style of the running cattle:

"For at my side with a flaming nose, And eyes that glowed as foxfire glows, With a body of quivering, pulsing mist My rope cut through as it, whirling, hissed. Was a Thing that sped with the speed of deer : I was neck and neck with "The Phantom