down." We saw he was dead and we did not cut the rope. We went on further to camp that night.

We reached the Arkansas River in a few days, where we had to lay four days on account of the river being up. Just before we crossed we found that the Indians had stolen a lot of blankets from our Mexicans. I made our bunch of Mexicans go up to their camp and steal some of the Indians' blankets and slickers, and the next day when we crossed the river the Indians were pointing at the Mexicans, noticing that they had stolen their blankets and slickers. They were talking Indian and our Mexicans did not know what they were talking about. We had no further trouble until we got to Baxter Springs, Kansas. The first night we were camped on the state line we had a big stampede. The Indians were there to count us up for grass fee, and we run them through so fast they could not count them and lost count. They accepted our count and, of course, we guessed them low enough to take care of ourselves.

We did very well, selling these out to people all over the United States, as there were traders there from everywhere.

In 1885 I drove cattle with Bill Jackman of San Marcos, the herd belonging to Hez Williams and Bill Goode of Kyle. This herd was put up at Rancho Grande, in Wharton County, by Bob Stafford of Columbus. When we got to old Texarkana we had a big stampede that night and whipped them in and ran them over one another trying to hold them until they looked like they had been in a wreck. They had "run" on the brain all the way until we got to Kyle. When we reached there every fellow was about on foot, as our horses had played out, so we put the herd in Desha Bunton's pasture and stayed there several days to get a new outfit of horses, and had them all shod up to go through the mountains and get a new outfit of men also, as the boys all quit except Fisher, Jackman and myself. We pulled out from there

with a new set of men and horses headed for Deer Trail, Colorado, south of Cheyenne. A few nights after we left Kyle we had a big rain and the cattle drifted pretty well all night, and Tom Fisher and myself came upon a man camped in a wagon and told him to get up, for it was daylight. When he got up we both crawled in with our wet clothes on and went to sleep and left him on the outside. When morning came we got up and began rounding up the herd and none of the bunch had missed us. We traveled along all right then until we reached Bell Plains one evening. There a Dutchman came out and told us to move on, and we told him to hunt a warmer climate, that we were going to camp there that night. About twelve o'clock that night he and the sheriff came to our camp hunting the boss and couldn't find him. They went away and next morning before breakfast they came back and wanted to know where the boss was, and we told him we didn't have any. He wanted to stop our herd of cattle, but we told him if they did they would have to give a $30,000 bond, as these cattle were mortgaged and could not be stopped, without somebody giving bond. The sheriff called us off and talked with us a while and told us he would see us about it, and this was the last we ever heard of the matter.

Everything went all right from here until we got up to Doan's Store, when one night the wagons caught fire and burned the wagon sheet. We got busy just at this time trying to save our coffee and a little meat we had picked up from the 3 D cattle.

From there we had to rustle a wagon sheet to keep everything dry when the rains came up. We got along all right from here until we got to Wolf Creek at old Camp Supply, where they quarantined us, and we had to go down to No Man's Land, a strip between the Panhandle and Kansas, now a part of Oklahoma. Crossing the plains it drizzled very nearly every night, just enough to make the cattle walk till about eleven o'clock at night.

When we got to Beaver, this side of the Arkansas River, in Colorado, we sold the cattle. After we turned them over Bill Jackman and myself came back over the trail and met Alex Magee and his cattle and stopped him for a few days to let his cattle rest up, as we knew the people that had contracted his cattle were waiting for him, and we wanted his bunch to look good when he got there. Wanted them to show up all right so there would be no kick. When we brought the cattle up to turn them over to the buyers they received them with the understanding that we had to brand them. We carried them up Beaver Creek for about 40 miles, where we branded them, and after we had done this they asked us to carry a bunch of about three hundred white-face Herefords, the first I ever saw, up in the Rocky Mountains and put them in winter quarters. When we got them there he fitted us up with fresh horses and everything and started us for West Los Angeles to ship us back home.

In 1886 I started to go up with Bill Jackman again, but when I got to the Hutcheson ranch near San Marcos, Jackman was there and told me he had sold the cattle to John Blocker, who would be there directly with his outfit to receive them. When they came he recommended me to the man who was in charge of the cattle-a man by the name of Murchison, who was also in charge of the horses and outfit. Next day we rounded up the pasture, but they didn't take the cattle, and we went from there on to Kyle to the Vaughn pasture. Arch Odem in a few days bought about 1,500 head of cattle down on the Guadalupe River and brought them up to where we were and turned them over to us. We went on up in a few days to the Hez Williams ranch and got about 800 more steers. In a few days we got about 700 head more from places near there, then pulled out for the trail, being the first herd of the Blocker cattle for that year. When we got between Runnels and Abilene we laid in wait there until ten more herds of the Blocker cattle caught up with

us. Then we shaped up ten herds to go on to Colorado, and I and my bunch cut cattle all the way until we got to Red River. At Red River we took the lead cattle out of two herds and put them together in one herd and left the drags together in another herd.

When we reached the Wichita Mountains, in Indian Territory, the Indians met us there and wanted beef. I had a big black range steer I had picked up in Texas, and when I got up in the roughest part of the mountains I cut this steer out and told them to go after him. The steer outran them and got away and directly I saw them coming back, one after another, like they travel, but without any beef. The next day the trail cutters looked us up and did not find anything. Then we went on until we got to Camp Supply, where we had to go across the plains again, and it was very dry. The first evening we struck the plains we drove right square until night and I held up the lead cattle and the wagon was not in sight at this time. We camped there that night and there came the hardest rain I ever saw fall, and it was so cold we nearly shook ourselves to death. It rained all the time from there on to Hugo, Colorado, where Blocker turned these cattle loose and where they were rebranded and turned loose again.

From Hugo I helped take about 1,000 head of saddle horses and put them in winter quarters, and when that was done I came back home.

THE MEN WHO MADE THE TRAIL

By Luther A. Lawhon, San Antonio, Texas

We can scarcely estimate the debt which we owe to the men who made the Trail. Lest we forget-those pioneer settlers and ranchmen were not only empire builders, but were also the "mudsillers" upon which has been erected that superb structure of productive wealth

-the American live stock industry as it exists today west of the Mississippi. It is indeed a far stretch from the domesticated, gentle thoroughbred to the wild, untamable "longhorn." But is it not well that at times we take a

LUTHER A. LAWHON

retrospective view, and contrast the present with the past? By so doing we may the better determine the extent to which this all important industry has progressed with our geographical development, and also incidentally keep alive the memories and the traditions of a bygone age.

By a degree of good fortune it fell to me to be reared from infancy to manhood in Southwest Texas in the midst of that favored section when it was one vast breeding ground for cattle and horses, and from which was afterward to be driven those herds that, moving across the prairies of Texas and through the Indian Territory, from 1869 to 1886, poured into the wild and unsettled area from Kansas to the British Dominions. In the days and in the section of which I treat the railroad, the telegraph and the telephone were unknown. A greater part of the land still belonged to the State and was prized in the main for the grasses which grew upon it; fencing wire had not been invented, and in consequence the entire country, except where dotted with ranches, was unfenced and uncontrolled-a common pasture in which thousands of horses and cattle roamed at will.