loyer on leaving Texas behind us, an
answer was found awaiting me at Red Fork. The latter was an Indian
trading-post, located on the mail route to Fort Reno, and only a few
miles north of the Chisholm Crossing. The letter was characteristic
of my employer. It contained but one imperative order,--that I should
touch, either with or without the herd, at Camp Supply. For some
unexplained reason he would make that post his headquarters until after
the Buford herds had passed that point. The letter concluded with the
injunction, in case we met any one, to conceal the ownership of the herd
and its destination.

The mystery was thickening. But having previously declined to borrow
trouble, I brushed this aside as unimportant, though I gave my outfit
instructions to report the herd to every one as belonging to Omaha men,
and on its way to Nebraska to be corn-fed. Fortunately I had ridden
ahead of the herd after crossing the Cimarron, and had posted the outfit
before they reached the trading-station. I did not allow one of my boys
near the store, and the herd passed by as in contempt of such a wayside
place. As the Dodge cut-off left the Chisholm Trail some ten miles above
the Indian trading-post, the next morning we waved good-bye to the old
cattle trace and turned on a northwest angle. Our route now lay up the
Cimarron, which we crossed and recrossed at our pleasure, for the sake
of grazing or to avoid several large alkali flats. There was evidence of
herds in our advance, and had we not hurried past Red Fork, I might have
learned something to our advantage. But disdaining all inquiry of the
cut-off, fearful lest our identity be discovered, we deliberately walked
into the first real danger of the trip.

At low water the Cimarron was a brackish stream. But numerous
tributaries put in from either side, and by keeping above the river's
ebb, an abundance of fresh water was daily secured from the river's
affluents. The fifth day out from Red Rock was an excessively sultry
one, and suffering would have resulted to the herd had we not been
following a divide where we caught an occasional breeze. The river
lay some ten miles to our right, while before us a tributary could be
distinctly outlined by the cottonwoods which grew along it. Since early
morning we had been paralleling the creek, having nooned within sight of
its confluence with the mother stream, and consequently I had considered
it unnecessary to ride ahead and look up the w