The story of the loss of my Colorado herd is a ghastly one.  This fever is sometimes called splenic, and in the present case, where animals lingered a week or ten days, while yet alive, their skins frequently cracked along the spine until one could have laid two fingers in the opening.  The whole herd was stricken, less than half a dozen animals escaping attack, scores dying within three days, the majority lingering a week or more.  In spite of our every effort to save them, as many as one hundred died in a single day.  I stayed with them for six weeks, or until the fever had run through the herd, spent my last available dollar in an effort to save the dumb beasts, and, having my hopes frustrated, sold the remnant of twenty-six head for five dollars apiece.  I question if they were worth the money, as three fourths of them were fever-burnt and would barely survive a winter, the only animals of value being some half dozen which had escaped the general plague.  I gave each of my men two horses apiece, and divided my money with them, and they started back to Colorado, while I turned homeward a wiser but poorer man.  Whereas I had left Wichita three months before with over sixteen thousand dollars clear cash, I returned with eighteen saddle horses and not as many dollars in money.

My air-castles had fallen.  Troubles never come singly, and for the last two weeks, while working with the dying cattle, I had suffered with chills and fever.  The summer had been an unusually wet one, vegetation had grown up rankly in the valley of the Arkansas, and after the first few frosts the very atmosphere reeked with malaria.  I had been sleeping on the ground along the river for over a month, drinking impure water from the creeks, and I fell an easy victim to the prevailing miasma.  Nearly all the Texas drovers had gone home, but, luckily for me, Jim Daugherty had an outfit yet at Wichita and invited me to his wagon.  It might be a week or ten days before he would start homeward, as he was holding a herd of cows, sold to an Indian contractor, who was to receive the same within two weeks.  In the interim of waiting, still suffering from fever and ague, I visited around among the few other cow-camps scattered up and down the river.  At one of these I met a stranger, a quiet little man, who also had been under the weather from malaria, but was then recovering.  He took an interest in my case and gave me some medicine to break the chills, and we visited back and forth.  I soon learned that he had come down with some of his neighbors from Council Grove; that they expected to buy cattle, and that he was banker for the party.  He was much interested in everything pertaining to Texas; and when I had given him an idea of the cheapness of lands and live stock in my adopted State, he expressed himself as anxious to engage in trailing cattle north.  A great many Texas cattle had been matured in his home county, and he thoroughly understood the advantages of developing southern steers in a northern climate.  Many of his neighbors had made small fortunes in buying young stock at Abilene, holding them a year or two, and shipping them to market as fat cattle.