r, in the hope of
catching seepage water. Accordingly the next morning, I was sent with
a commissary wagon and seven men to the mouth of the Ganso, with
instructions to begin sinking wells about two miles apart. Taking
with us such tools as we needed, we commenced our first well at the
confluence of the Ganso with the Nueces, and a second one above. From
timber along the river we cut the necessary temporary curbing, and put
it in place as the wells were sunk. On the third day both wells became
so wet as to impede our work, and on our foreman riding by, he ordered
them curbed to the bottom and a tripod set up over them on which to rig
a rope and pulley. The next morning troughs and rigging, with a _remuda_
of horses and a watering crew of four strange vaqueros, arrived. The
wells were only about twenty feet deep; but by drawing the water as fast
as the seepage accumulated, each was capable of watering several hundred
head of cattle daily. By this time Deweese had secured ample help, and
started a second crew of well diggers opposite the ranch, who worked
down the river while my crew followed some fifteen miles above. By
the end of the month of May, we had some twenty temporary wells in
operation, and these, in addition to what water the pools afforded,
relieved the situation to some extent, though the ravages of death by
thirst went on apace among the weaker cattle.

With the beginning of June, we were operating nearly thirty wells. In
some cases two vaqueros could hoist all the water that accumulated in
three wells. We had a string of camps along the river, and at every
windmill on the mesas men were stationed night and day. Among the
cattle, the death rate was increasing all over the range. Frequently we
took over a hundred skins in a single day, while at every camp cords of
fallen flint hides were accumulating. The heat of summer was upon us,
the wind arose daily, sand storms and dust clouds swept across the
country, until our once prosperous range looked like a desert, withered
and accursed. Young cows forsook their offspring in the hour of their
birth. Motherless calves wandered about the range, hollow-eyed, their
piteous appeals unheeded, until some lurking wolf sucked their blood and
spread a feast to the vultures, constantly wheeling in great flights
overhead. The prickly pear, an extremely arid plant, affording both food
and drink to herds during drouths, had turned white, blistered by
the torrid sun until it ha