On such ranches there are comfortable beds excellent cooks, safe but lively saddle horses, specially trained staffs, attractive buildings and even tennis courts, swimming pools, trap-shooting layouts. The guest who divides his time in fishing, shooting, hiking and loafing as well as riding will get far more out of his Western vacation than the one who tries to spend his every waking hour in the saddle.
Those who get the most out of their dude ranch vacations do not expect metropolitan hotel luxury. The charm is in simplicity of living.
Fortunate is the "dude" who finds himself in the care of a real top-ud at dude wrangling. That wrangler may be a cow-woddie of the old school who combines experience and native horse sense in the entertainment of visitors. Or he may be a college graduate—a young man born and bred to the country, yet educated io speak and think the language of New York or Boston.
The University of Wyoming, at Laramie, now has a course in dude wrangling which goes into the whole complex game of entertaining ranch visitors for profit in a thóroughly businesslike way.
The idea that life in the cow country is one long horseback ride is at best a half-truth, Out West riding is a means to an end, not an end in itself. In this land of steep trails. broad valleys and enormous distances, wheels are out of the question save on the main highways. A few feet of the pavement and you are in virgin wilderness as primeval as it was when Carson, Frémont, Custer and Cody knew it. Only the horse can curry a cowman into a brush-choked mountain ravine after a handful of strays. Only horses can carry a pany of fishermen up winding trails, along ridges, through dense timber to high lakes and streams far off the beaten track, where trout abound and other anglers seldom venture.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.