t that the water would hold them.

Horsehead Crossing was named by General Pope. There is a difference of
opinion as to the origin of the name, some contending that it was due
to the meanderings of the river, forming a horse's head, and others
that the surveying party was surprised by Indians and lost their
stock. None of us had slept for three nights, and the feeling of
relief on reaching the Pecos, shared alike by man and beast, is
indescribable. Unless one has endured such a trial, only a faint idea
of its hardships can be fully imagined--the long hours of patient
travel at a snail's pace, enveloped by clouds of dust by day, and at
night watching every shadow for a lurking savage. I have since slept
many a time in the saddle, but in crossing that arid belt the one
consuming desire to reach the water ahead benumbed every sense save
watchfulness.

All the cattle reached the river before the middle of the afternoon,
covering a front of five or six miles. The banks of the Pecos were
abrupt, there being fully one hundred and twenty-five feet of deep
water in the channel at the stage crossing. Entrance to the ford
consisted of a wagon-way, cut through the banks, and the cattle
crowded into the river above and below, there being but one exit
on either side. Some miles above, the beeves had found several
passageways down to the water, but in drifting up and down stream
they missed these entrances on returning. A rally was made late that
afternoon to rout the cattle out of the river-bed, one half the outfit
going above, the remainder working around Horsehead, where the bulk of
the herd had watered. I had gone upstream with Goodnight, but before
we reached the upper end of the cattle fresh Indian sign was noticed.
There was enough broken country along the river to shelter the
redskins, but we kept in the open and cautiously examined every brake
within gunshot of an entrance to the river. We succeeded in getting
all the animals out of the water before dark, with the exception of
one bunch, where the exit would require the use of a mattock before
the cattle could climb it, and a few head that had bogged in the
quicksand below Horsehead Crossing. There was little danger of a rise
in the river, the loose contingent had a dry sand-bar on which to
rest, and as the Indians had no use for them there was little danger
of their being molested before morning.

We fell back about a mile from the river and camped for the night.
Althoug