rious loss among all range cattle.
The result was financial ruin to many drovers, and even augured a
lighter drive north the coming spring. Early in the winter I bought
two brands of cattle in Erath County, paying half cash and getting six
months' time on the remainder. Both brands occupied the same range,
and when we gathered them in the early spring, they counted out a
few over six thousand animals. These two contingents were extra good
cattle, costing me five dollars a head, counting yearlings up, and
from them I selected two thousand steer cattle for the trail. The
mixed stuff was again sent to my Clear Fork ranch, and the steers went
into a neighborhood herd intended for the Kansas market. But when the
latter was all ready to start, such discouraging reports came down
from the north that my friends weakened, and I bought their cattle
outright.

My reputation as a good trader was my capital. I had the necessary
horses, and, straining my credit, the herd started thirty-one hundred
strong. The usual incidents of flood and storm, of begging Indians
and caravans like ourselves, formed the chronicle of the trip. Before
arriving at the Kansas line we were met by solicitors of rival towns,
each urging the advantages of their respective markets for our cattle.
The summer before a small business had sprung up at Newton, Kansas, it
being then the terminal of the Santa Fe Railway. And although Newton
lasted as a trail town but a single summer, its reputation for
bloodshed and riotous disorder stands notoriously alone among its
rivals. In the mean time the Santa Fe had been extended to Wichita on
the Arkansas River, and its representatives were now bidding for our
patronage. Abilene was abandoned, yet a rival to Wichita had sprung up
at Ellsworth, some sixty-five miles west of the former market, on the
Kansas Pacific Railway. The railroads were competing for the cattle
traffic, each one advertising its superior advantages to drovers,
shippers, and feeders. I was impartial, but as Wichita was fully one
hundred miles the nearest, my cattle were turned for that point.

Wichita was a frontier village of about two thousand inhabitants. We
found a convenient camp northwest of town, and went into permanent
quarters to await the opening of the market. Within a few weeks
a light drive was assured, and prices opened firm. Fully a
quarter-million less cattle would reach the markets within the State
that year, and buyers became active in