Then, toward the edge,
out into the evening, he would ride on. The dust of his riding
would mingle with the dusk of night. We could not see which was
the one or the other. We could only hear the hoofbeats passing,
boldly and steadily still, but growing fainter, fainter, and more
faint.*
* For permission to use in this chapter material from the
author's "The Story of the Cowboy," acknowledgment is made to D.
Appleton & Co.
Chapter V. The Mines
If the influence of the cattle industry was paramount in the
development of the frontier region found by the first railways,
it should not be concluded that this upthrust of the southern
cattle constituted the only contribution to the West of that day.
There were indeed earlier influences, the chief of which was the
advent of the wild population of the placer mines. The riches of
the gold-fields hastened the building of the first
transcontinental railroads and the men of the mines set their
mark also indelibly upon the range.
It is no part of our business here to follow the great
discoveries of 1849 in California.* Neither shall we chronicle
the once-famous rushes from California north into the Fraser
River Valley of British Columbia; neither is it necessary to
mention in much detail the great camps of Nevada; nor yet the
short-lived stampede of 1859 to the Pike's Peak country in
Colorado.
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