boy and girl named Anderson who escaped and came to old Fort Wallace the next day. Their parents and other members of the family were murdered, and the little boy's throat was cut and gashed with lances. Another family was killed and their home burned. The Indians also killed a little boy named Guinn, cut his arms off and stuck his body on a pole. Near the same place later on the Box family were captured, the father being killed before their eyes and the mother, two grown daughters and an infant being carried away into a captivity worse than death. Up near Fort Sill one of the daughters, a beautiful girl in her teens, was treated in a most shocking manner by the savages. These tragedies occurred when I was but a child, but I remember many of them vividly.

During the four years of the Civil War the people of the Red River country, Montague, Cooke, Wise and Denton Counties, had a severe struggle to get along. Everything was of primitive style, and we had to get along the best we could. Most of our houses were built of logs, some of them roughly hewn and with the bark on, and the cracks "chinked" with sticks and mud, with dirt floors and a big, wide chimney. Sometimes a family would get "tony" and hew logs on one side and make a puncheon floor for their home and thus get into the "upper class." In the summer we would move out and live in these log houses, but in the fall and winter the Indians kept us in the forts. We had plenty to eat, although we had to take our grain fifty miles to a mill to have it ground. We had no money, but did not need much, for we could not buy such things as coffee, sugar, soap, matches, pins or anything to wear, and we were compelled to spin and weave all of the cloth that made our clothing. Rye, corn, wheat, okra seed and roasted acrons were used as a substitute for coffee.

In 1868 my brother, about eighteen years old, was waylaid and killed by Indians between Gainesville and

Fort Wallace while on a trip to the fort. Thus the savages had killed two of our family, in each instance our chief support and protector. That same year we moved to Atascosa County, where we had relatives, and as I was about fifteen years old, I was considered large enough to be of help in working with cattle, on the roundups and roping and branding on the range. In those days every waddy had two crooked irons attached to his saddle and a pocketful of matches, and the maverick that got away was sure enough a speeder. In the fall of 1870 I worked on the Redus ranch on the Hondo, working cattle with George, John and Bill Redus and Tally Burnett. Later I worked for V. A. Johnson, but mostly for Lytle & McDaniel. I learned all I know about handling cattle from V. A. Johnson and Tom McDaniel. If a boy working under them did not make a good hand in the brush or on the trail there was simply nothing to him. There is Uncle Bob Ragsdale, Will Lytle and Captain John Lytle, with whom I worked, who were all good men and true. All have reached the end of the trail and gone over the great divide, except Uncle Bob Ragsdale.

I made my first trip up the trail in 1872 with a herd for Lytle & McDaniel with 1,800 head of cattle from yearlings up to grown beeves and cows. We routed them across Mustang Prairie to the Medina, then up the Louse and over to the Lucas to the old John Adams ranch, on to San Antonio, skirting the northwestern part of the town, and passed on to the Salado. After we passed San Antonio we had quite a rainstorm and our cattle split up in small bunches and scattered everywhere. We lost about thirty head in this stampede which we did not get back. Tom McDaniel was selected as boss of the outfit, which consisted of sixteen men. Four men had interest in this herd, viz.: Tom McDaniel, Jim Speed, Uncle Ben Duncan and Newt Woofter. Gus Black, Tom Smith and myself were the only white hands with the outfit, the other hands being Mexicans, except old Jack Burckley,

the cook. Jim and Dock Watts, who lived at the Man Crossing on the Medina, came to us further up the trail. Woofter went with us, but did not come back. Jim Speed was killed in Moore several years ago; Tom McDaniel died in 1887; Uncle Ben Duncan died in 1919, and the old cook also went the way we must all go sooner or later. Gus Black of Eagle Pass is the only one of my old comrades on this drive who is still living.

In 1874 I made a trip up the old Chisholm trail with 1,000 beeves which had been selected and put in the Shiner pasture below Pearsall. We went to work gathering them about the 20th of February and it took us until the 5th of March to get them out of the thickets, inspected and road-branded. These cattle were in good shape and as fine beeves as you ever saw, no she stuff, and mostly threes and up. There were a few twos, but they were all fours when we got through and ready for the market. On the morning of March 5th we pointed those old moss-headed beeves up the trail and made it to the Davis ranch that night. Uncle Bob said we could pen them there and perhaps get a little sleep, but a norther and a dry thunderstorm blew up and everybody had to get around that old pen and sing to them while they were milling around like a grindstone. We pulled out from there at sunrise the next morning and drove to the old John Adams ranch on the Castroville road, where we penned the beeves again and had another bad night. Nobody got any sleep, but we kept them in the pen. When the herd reached New Braunfels Uncle Bob, who was acting boss, turned the herd over to Bill Perryman and turned back. Our regular boss was V. A. Johnson, who had been detained in San Antonio on account of sickness in his family.

We crossed the Guadalupe River in a rain, and just after nightfall we had a severe storm with lots of thunder, lightning and cold. It was so dark most of the hands left us and went to the chuck wagon except W. T. Hen

son, myself and old Chief, a negro. We had to let them drift, and it took us two or three days to get them back together. We were about thirty head short when we counted and pulled out from there. When we reached the vicinity where Kyle is now located we had another big storm and a general mixup with some other herds that were near us. We had quite a time cutting our cattle out and getting them all back, especially some strays that were in the herd.

We had storms and stampedes all the way up to Red River, which we reached about the 16th of April. We never did succeed in holding all of them at any time. We had a few old trouble-makers in the herd, which, if they had been shot when we first started, would have saved us a lot of worry. They ran so much they became regular old scalawags. But, strange to say, we never had a single stampede while passing through the Indian Territory. The Indians did not give us as much trouble on this trip as they did in 1872.

Ed Chambers was killed at Pond Creek, while in charge of a herd for Tucker & Duncan. We had some exciting times getting our herd across Red River, which was on a big rise, and nearly a mile wide, with all kinds of large trees floating down on big foam-capped waves that looked larger than a wagon sheet, but we had to put our herd over to the other side. Henson and I were selected to go across and hold the cattle when they reached the opposite side. We were mounted on small paint ponies, and the one I was riding got into some quicksand just under the water and stuck there. I dismounted in water about knee deep, rolled him over and took off my saddle, bridle and leggins, then undressed myself and called some of the boys to come in and get my things, while I headed my horse for the north bank with just a rope around his neck. I figured that if my little pony could not make it across I would use one of those moss-headed steers for a ferry boat, but the little

fellow took me safely over. He swam all of the way with his nose just out of the water. Three herds crossed the river that day and one man was drowned, besides several cattle. Hub Hunt of Gonzales got away from his pony in some way and we had to fish him out, and a fellow named Barkley was knocked off and pawed in the face by his horse, and we got him out too. We had one horse, which I had intended to ride, which would not attempt to swim at all, and we had to take him across on the ferry boat. We tried to get him to swim the river, but he would only turn up on his side, curl his tail, and float back to the bank. He was a fine looking red roan, was raised on the Noonan ranch near Castroville and branded circle dot on left shoulder. He fell on me one night during a stampede at Wichita, and seemed to be a Jonah all around.

It took about four weeks to move our herd across the Territory, during which time we had some fun killing and roping buffalo. Some of our outfit returned by way of the old Coffeyville trail, as the Indians were on the warpath on the Chisholm trail because some buffalo hunters had killed some of their bucks and they wanted revenge.

PARENTS WERE AMONG EARLY COLONISTS

By Henry Fest, 1708 South Flores Street, San Antonio, Texas My father, Simon Fest, and mother, Mary Fest, were married in Alsace, France, in the fall of 1845, and immediately started for the United States, a journey which lasted three months and fifteen days, landing at Indianola, Texas. From there they came with the Castro colony, locating at Castroville the 11th day of February, 1846, where they first stopped for about two months, and then came to San Antonio, where my father took up his trade as stonemason, which yielded the handsome return of fifty cents per day, while my mother followed the occu