field, had traded extensively in saddle stock ever since my arrival at Abilene.  Gentle horses were in good demand among shippers and ranchmen, and during my brief stay I must have handled a thousand head, buying whole remudas and retailing in quantities to suit, not failing to keep the choice ones for my own use.  Within two weeks after George Edwards started home, I closed up my business, fell in with a returning outfit, and started back with one hundred and ten picked saddle horses.  After crossing Red River, I hired a boy to assist me in driving the remuda, and I reached home only ten days behind the others.

I was now the proud possessor of over two hundred saddle horses which had actually cost me nothing.  To use a borrowed term, they were the “velvet” of my trading operations.  I hardly feel able to convey an idea of the important role that the horses play in the operations of a cowman.  Whether on the trail or on the ranch, there is a complete helplessness when the men are not properly mounted and able to cope with any emergency that may arise.  On the contrary, and especially in trail work, when men are well mounted, there is no excuse for not riding in the lead of any stampede, drifting with the herd on the stormiest night, or trailing lost cattle until overtaken.  Owing to the nature of the occupation, a man may be frequently wet, cold, and hungry, and entitled to little sympathy; but once he feels that he is no longer mounted, his grievance becomes a real one.  The cow-horse subsisted on the range, and if ever used to exhaustion was worthless for weeks afterward.  Hence the value of a good mount in numbers, and the importance of frequent changes when the duties were arduous.  The importance of good horses was first impressed on me during my trips to Fort Sumner, and I then resolved that if fortune ever favored me to reach the prominence of a cowman, the saddle stock would have my first consideration.

On my return it was too early for the fall branding.  I made a trip out to the new ranch, taking along ample winter supplies, two extra lads, and the old remuda of sixty horses.  The men had located the new cattle fairly well, the calf crop was abundant, and after spending a week I returned home.  I had previously settled my indebtedness in Comanche County by remittances from Abilene, and early in the fall I made up an outfit to go down and gather the remnant of “Lazy L” cattle.  Taking along the entire new remuda, we dropped down in advance of the branding season, visited among the neighboring ranches, and offered a dollar a head for solitary animals that had drifted any great distance from the range of the brand.  A camp was established at some corrals on the original range, extra men were employed with the opening of the branding season, and after twenty days’ constant riding we started home with a few over nine hundred head, not counting two hundred and odd calves.  Little wonder the trustee threatened to sue me; but then it was his own proposition.