dropped down for a few days, but we never left camp except to send
letters home.

An early spring favored us. I was able to report less than one per cent.
loss on the home range, with the possibility of but few cattle having
escaped us during the winter. The latter part of May we sold four
hundred saddle horses to some men from the upper Yellowstone. Early in
June a wagon was rigged out, extra men employed, and an outfit sent two
hundred miles up the Little Missouri to attend the round-ups. They
were gone a month and came in with less than five hundred beeves, which
represented our winter drift. Don Lovell reached the ranch during the
first week in July. One day's ride through the splendid cattle, and old
man Don lost his voice, but the smile refused to come off. Everything
was coming his way. Field, Radcliff & Co. had sued him, and the jury
awarded him one-hundred thousand dollars. His bankers had unlimited
confidence in his business ability; he had four Indian herds on the
trail and three others of younger steers, intended for the Little
Missouri ranch. Cattle prices in Texas had depreciated nearly one half
since the spring before--"a good time for every cowman to strain his
credit and enlarge his holdings," my employer assured me.

Orders were left that I was to begin shipping out the beeves early in
August. It was the intention to ship them in two and three train-load
lots, and I was expecting to run a double outfit, when a landslide came
our way. The first train-load netted sixty dollars a head at Omaha--but
they were beeves; cods like an ox's heart and waddled as they walked. We
had just returned from the railroad with the intention of shipping two
train-loads more, when the quartermaster and Sanders from Fort Buford
rode into the ranch under an escort. The government had lost forty per
cent. of the Field-Radcliff cattle during the winter just passed, and
were in the market to buy the deficiency. The quartermaster wanted a
thousand beeves on the first day of September and October each, and
double that number for the next month. Did we care to sell that amount?
A United States marshal, armed with a search-warrant, could not have
found Don Lovell in a month, but they were promptly assured that
our beef steers were for sale. It is easy to show prime cattle. The
quartermaster, Sanders, and myself rode down the river, crossed over
and came up beyond our camp, forded back and came down the Beaver, and
I knew the sale w