f
sharp, up-turned cells. Some of the descents were nearly impossible
for wagons, but we locked both hind wheels and just let them slide
down and bounce over the boulders at the bottom. Half-way through the
canon the water failed us, with the south fork of the Llano forty
miles distant in our front. We were compelled to allow the cattle to
pick their way over the rocky trail, the herds not over a mile apart,
and scarcely maintaining a snail's pace. I rode from rear to front
and back again a dozen times in clearing the defile, and noted that
splotches of blood from tender-footed cattle marked the white pebbles
at every crossing of the river-bed. On the evening of the third day,
the rear herd passed the exit of the canon, the others having turned
aside to camp for the night. Two whole days had now elapsed without
water for the cattle.

I had not slept a wink the two previous nights. The south fork of the
Llano lay over twenty miles distant, and although it had ample water
two weeks before, one of the foremen and I rode through to it that
night to satisfy ourselves. The supply was found sufficient, and
before daybreak we were back in camp, arousing the outfits and
starting the herds. In the spring of 1878 the old military trail, with
its rocky sentinels, was still dimly defined from Nueces Canon north
to the McKinzie water-hole on the South Llano. The herds moved out
with the dawn. Thousands of the cattle were travel-sore, while a few
hundred were actually tender-footed. The evening before, as we came
out into the open country, we had seen quite a local shower of rain in
our front, which had apparently crossed our course nearly ten miles
distant, though it had not been noticeable during our night's ride.
The herds fell in behind one another that morning like columns of
cavalry, and after a few miles their stiffness passed and they led out
as if they had knowledge of the water ahead. Within two hours after
starting we crossed a swell of the mesa, when the lead herd caught a
breeze from off the damp hills to the left where the shower had fallen
the evening before. As they struck this rise, the feverish cattle
raised their heads and pulled out as if that vagrant breeze had
brought them a message that succor and rest lay just beyond. The point
men had orders to let them go, and as fast as the rear herds came up
and struck this imaginary line or air current, a single moan would
surge back through the herd until it died out at