wanted them delivered. I then took the train for my home in Helena, Karnes county, Texas, and this wound up my trail driving.

FIFTY YEARS AGO

J. J. (Joe) Roberts, Del Rio, Texas

I was born in Caldwell county, Texas, in the year of 1851, and made that county my home for twenty years. It was in the spring of 1871 that I took my first trip up the trail. I drove for Joe Bunton and our destination was Abilene, Kansas, but owing to the rapid settlement of that surrounding country,

there was but little room to hold a herd of cattle so we stopped this side near Newton, Kansas, which was the terminus of the Santa Fé Railroad. I drove the next year for Col. Jack Meyers who will be remembered by many old-time drivers. Those were in the days of Dick Head, Billy Campbell and Noah Ellis.

My later drives were for Billie and Charley Slaughter of Frio county, who sent cattle as far north as Wyoming and Montana and I continued with them up to 1876, when I went into the ranch business for myself. I settled in Kinney county and remained there for about five years, but now I am in Val Verde county, a part of old Kinney county, where I lived for forty-five years. The hardships and privations of the trail life have been duly set forth by those who have preceded me and in a passing way I will say that we all fared about the same.

It has been my pleasure of late years to visit some of

the towns and stations in Oklahoma, Kansas and Colorado where the old Trail passed through in those early days, and the change that meets your eyes is but little short of marvelous. Where saloons and dance halls stood are now substantial school buildings and magnificent churches and the merry prattle of happy children is heard on every corner. And it was a deep feeling of pride that came to me, to know that I had had an humble part in bringing about this wonderful change, which in a measure helped to settle the great Northwest, which has proven so valuable an asset to our country. Memory fails me in recalling the names of the old boys who were associated with me in those early days. Milton Taylor and Joe Loxton of Frio county were with me on my last trip and I have been in touch with them ever since. Doubtless many of them have passed away and those who still remain are, like myself, aged and gray. And it will not be long before we will have taken our last drink out of the old canteen of life that has refreshed us so often in days gone by.

May the blessings of our Heavenly Father attend us in our last days and when we come into His presence may we hear that welcome plaudit-"Well done, my good and faithful servants, enter into thy rest."

P. E. SLAUGHTER

Peter Eldridge Slaughter was born September 11, 1846, in Sabine county, Texas, the third son of George Webb and Sallie Slaughter. His father moved from Sabine county to Palo Pinto county in 1857, when he was eleven years of age. He joined the Confederate Army in 1864, belonging to Capt. Jack Cureton's Rangers, Cureton being under Col. Sull Ross, who afterwards was governor of Texas. He would not attend school at the little school

in Palo Pinto county. His father gathered twenty head of cattle and sent him to McKenzie College, conducted by a leading Methodist preacher, who had established a boarding school for young men eight miles southwest of Clarksville, Texas.

A younger brother, W. B. Slaughter, assisted him in driving these cattle to this school from Palo Pinto a distance of 250 miles. The younger brother returning with the saddle ponies and pack horse, as soon as he arrived and delivered the cattle to the

school.

He remained eight

months in the school and came home. In 1868 he went to Abilene, and two years later to Coffeyville, Kansas.

P. E. SLAUGHTER

The representative of the Fort Worth Live Stock Stockyards, W. J., (Billie) Carter went with him up the trail in 1871. That year he was married to Miss Mollie Chick, of Palo Pinto, and from this union six children were born -five sons and one daughter, namely: Monte, Arthur, Paschall, Joel, and John, and Callie. His youngest son went to France as a soldier and now sleeps on Flanders' Field. He drove two herds of cattle to Cypress Hills on the line of Canada and Northern Montana, and three herds to California. He and his father under the style name of G. W. and P. E. Slaughter, were extensive cattle traders in North Texas, during the years 1876, 1877 and 1878.

W. E. Crowley, former secretary of the Texas Cattle Raisers' Association, and at present a leading Attorney of Fort Worth, says that in 1877 P. E. Slaughter delivered a small herd of steers to him, and he had no check book nor blank paper, and it was at one of the old ranches

whose roof was made of cypress shingles. He pulled out a shingle from the roof and wrote a check for the amount due him on it. He was doing business at this time with J. R. Couts & Co., of Weatherford, Texas, and Crowley presented the shingle check and it was paid. He and his father dissolved partnership in 1878, and he moved his herd of stock cattle to Crosby county, West Texas, and the town of Dockum now stands on his ranch ground.

In 1882, he moved his cattle from Crosby county, to the head of Black River, the main tributary of the Gila River, in Arizona, and he ranched there until he died. He was buried at St. Johns, Arizona, Nov. 6th, 1911. He left a large herd of cattle to his children, now valued at $500,000.00. His death was caused by a cancer at the root of his tongue, claimed by physicians as caused by the amount of tobacco he used.

SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF CAPTAIN J. J. (JACK) CURETON

W. E. Cureton, Meridian, Texas

My father, Capt. Jack Cureton, enlisted in Company H of Col. Yell's regiment of Arkansas as a volunteer soldier under General Taylor, bound for the war in Mexico. Col. Yell was killed in the battle of Buena Vista. Father's company was commanded by Capt. William Preston, afterwards a famous frontier captain in the Indian wars of Texas. He was discharged at San Antonio, Texas, in 1846, in his nineteenth year. He went back to Arkansas, married, and four boys were born in that State as the fruit of this marriage. In 1852 he joined the gold rush for California, and carried a bunch of cattle to the gold fields of that state from Ozark, Arkansas. On return he shipped from San Francisco "around the Horn" to New Orleans, and thence by boat up the Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers home. In the

winter of 1854 he moved to Texas, crossing the Red River at Old Preston, famous in the history of the settlement of northern Texas, and began raising cattle on the wide prairies he had traversed while chasing the Mexicans during the Mexican War and on his strip to California in the wake of the forty-niners. He had settled first on Keechi Creek, near the Brazos River, in the territory afterwards, in 1857, organized into what is Palo Pinto county. At that time the Comanches, Caddos, and other tribes of Indians were partly on two reservations, one under Captain Shaply Ross, father of General Sul Ross, one of the most knightly and famous soldiers ever produced by Texas, who afterwards became its Governor; the other under Capt. John R. Baylor, afterwards General Baylor. Captain Ross and Captain Baylor were agents for the Indians under the government on the reservations in Young county territory, one being stationed near where the town of Graham is now located. These reservations, though designed by the public authorities for a good purpose, in effect only furnished supply stations for others of the Indian tribes who claimed to be wild Indians, and depredated on the few settlers all along the border from the Red River on the north to the Rio Grande. They came regularly to the reservations to replenish their supplies of arms, ammunition, beads, etc., trading the horses and mules and other plunder they had looted the whites of to the friendly "buds" on the reservation.

Matters grew from bad to worse until the settlers arose in their wrath about 1858. On Salt Creek, below Belknap, quite a battle was fought, all Indians looking alike to the Texans. Several were killed on both sides, Captain Cureton being in command of his neighbors. It may be said that these old frontiersmen sometimes had more courage than discretion in these conflicts, and in this instance Captain Cureton had to be on guard to keep William McAdams and others of the company from ex