Even as the iron horse gave birth to the long drive, just so surely did it eventually destroy the big cattle business itself. Homesteaders came with the advance in transportation. There was a gradual, but irresistible, invasion of the open range. The "nesters" enclosed public domains. Thus, as the Indian gave way before the soldier and the hunter, so the cowboy yielded to the farmer. Ranches soon absorbed the eight million acres formerly overrun by bison and cattle.
There were still several regions ideally suited for stock raising--Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. Toward these remote areas men looking for new, free grassland, timber, and water headed their cattle. The quest led them into the several great valley approaches to the Yellowstone Plateau. On both slopes of the great divide plants and grass grow steadily during summer, and the dry atmosphere cures and ripens them as they mature. This type of feed is highly nutritious and conducive to the development or perfection of form and strength of bone and muscle.
Among the pioneer ranchmen of the Rockies was Nelson Story. He netted more than ten thousand dollars in the placer mines of Alder Gulch. This sum he invested in a thousand Texas longhorns in 1866. With twenty-seven trail-hardened cowboys he brought the cattle to Montana. It was a tremendous undertaking to get them through a veritable gauntlet of hostile Indians and desperate white thieves. Three of his men were killed before they reached the end of Bozeman Trail.[178] Gold dust in exchange for beef proved more profitable than taking it from the placers themselves. Even the poorest ox would bring a hundred dollars, and so the traffic increased.
At this time the able Sioux chief, Red Cloud, served notice upon the government that he would kill every white man who traveled along that trail. It was not an idle boast; the record shows nearly two hundred casualties in the last six months of 1866. In fact, the Bozeman Trail became one long battleground, scene of such Sioux victories as the Fetterman and Wagon Box massacres. However, the military persisted, and with constant operations stemming from Forts Kearney and Smith the trail was kept open.[179]
In 1870 more than 40,000 Texas cattle reached Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. Six years later the mountain Indians were largely liquidated. The removal of Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull opened the way for new cattle commonwealths. By 1880 the federal census reported 428,279 head in Montana and 521,213, in Wyoming. Soon the stockmen evolved a considerable network of mountain trails. The main artery went up the Yellowstone to Fort Custer and thence into Wyoming via Forts McKinney, Reno, and Fetterman to Cheyenne for shipping.