t future opened before me on every hand.

When the round-up outfits came in for the summer, the beef shipping
began. In the first two contingents of cattle purchased in securing
the good will of the original range, we now had five thousand double
wintered beeves. It was my intention to ship out the best of the
single wintered ones, and five separate outfits were ordered into
the saddle for that purpose. With the exception of line and fence
riders,--for two hundred and forty miles were ridden daily, rain or
shine, summer or winter,--every man on the ranch took up his abode
with the wagons. Caldwell and Hunnewell, on the Kansas state line
were the nearest shipping points, requiring fifteen days' travel with
beeves, and if there was no delay in cars, an outfit could easily
gather the cattle and make a round trip in less than a month. Three
or four trainloads, numbering from one thousand and fifty to fourteen
hundred head, were cut out at a time and handled by a single outfit.
I covered the country between the ranch and shipping points, riding
night and day ahead in ordering cars, and dropping back to the ranch
to superintend the cutting out of the next consignment of cattle. Each
outfit made three trips, shipping out fifteen thousand beeves that
fall, leaving sixty thousand cattle to winter on the range.

Several times that fall, when shipping beeves from Caldwell, we met up
with the firm's outfits from the Eagle Chief in the Cherokee Outlet.
Naturally the different shipping crews looked over each other's
cattle, and an intense rivalry sprang up between the different foremen
and men. The cattle of the new company outshone those of the old firm,
and were outselling them in the markets, while the former's remudas
were in a class by themselves, all of which was salt to open wounds
and magnified the jealousy between our own outfits. The rivalry
amused me, and until petty personalities were freely indulged in, I
encouraged and widened the breach between the rival crews. The outfits
under my direction had accumulated a large supply of saddle and
sleeping blankets procured from the Indians, gaudy in color,
manufactured in sizes for papoose, squaw, and buck. These goods were
of the finest quality, but during the annual festivals of the tribe
Lo's hunger for gambling induced him to part, for a mere song, with
the blanket that the paternal government intended should shelter him
during the storms of winter. Every man in my outfits o