to come recommended by the ranchmen with whom we were dealing.  We expected to make up five herds, and the cattle were to be ready for delivery to us between the 15th and 30th of March.  I hastened home and out to the ranch, gathered our saddle stock, outfitted wagons, and engaged all my old foremen and twenty trusty men, and we started with a remuda of five hundred horses to begin the operations of the coming summer.  Receiving cattle with me was an old story by this time, and frequently matters came to a standstill between the sellers and ourselves.  We paid no attention to former customs of the country; all cattle had to come up full-aged or go into the younger class, while inferior or knotty stags were turned back as not wanted.  Scarcely a day passed but there was more or less dispute; but we proposed paying for them, and insisted that all cattle tendered must come up to the specifications of the contract.  We stood firm, and after the first two herds were received, all trouble on that score passed, and in making up the last three herds there was actually a surplus of cattle tendered.  We used a road brand that year on all steers purchased, and the herds moved out from two to three days apart, the last two being made up in Coryell, the adjoining county north.

George Edwards had charge of the rear herd.  There were fourteen days between the first and the last starts, a fortnight of hard work, and we frequently received from ten to thirty miles distant from the branding pens.  I rode almost night and day, and Edwards likewise, while Major Hunter kept all the accounts and settled with the sellers.  As fast as one herd was ready, it moved out under a foreman and fourteen men, one hundred saddle horses, and a well-stocked commissary.  We did our banking at Belton, the county seat, and after the last herd started we returned to town and received quite an ovation from the business men of the village.  We had invested a little over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cattle in that community, and a banquet was even suggested in our honor by some of the leading citizens.  Most of the contracts were made with merchants, many of whom did not own a hoof of cattle, but depended on their customers to deliver the steers.  The business interests of the town were anxious to have us return next year.  We declined the proposed dinner, as neither Major Hunter nor myself would have made a presentable guest.  A month or more had passed since I had left the ranch on the Clear Fork, the only clothes I had were on my back, and they were torn in a dozen places from running cattle in the brush.  My partner had been living in cow-camps for the past three weeks, and preferred to be excused from receiving any social attentions.  So we thanked our friends and started for the railroad.