We delivered to the Dorsey ranch at Sumner 4,500 heifer yearlings and 500 to another ranchman in that section. The balance were taken to the Read & Broaden ranch on the other side of the Rio Grande. Our business was then done and another hike was in order for Texas where we landed in October after one of the hardest trips in the way of real hardships that we ever had. This was owing to dry weather conditions and the lack of grass, and navigating the mountains that abound in that section with a herd of 5,000 yearlings. The next year in March found me again in the saddle and with Steve Bennett, Phil Ryan, John Humphries, better known as "General Twiggs," Will Griffin, Mose Morris, Dan McCarty, three negroes and the boss, Chas. Humphreys. We left for the West ranch again in Live Oak county. On this trip we were to go to Colorado and in the early part of March we got a good get-away with 2,500 yearlings. We selected the old western cattle trail which went through Coleman, Ft. Griffin, and up the Panhandle country, to Dalhart, where the outfit was delivered to the XIT Ranch.

From this time on I worked in several capacities on various ranches, and in the service of D. R. Fant on his Santa Rosa ranch where I was employed as a cowboy until some weeks afterwards, when I joined Charley Humphreys and his outfit which was ready to hit the trail. We left early in March with 2,500 head of mixed cattle and believe me, we had some hard trip. There was no grass in the Spofford section and when we reached Spofford the cattle and horses both had fallen off so that it was impossible to make the passage through the Nueces Canyon. Mr. Fant was sent for and he decided to take the best and strongest from the two herds that were of about equal number and push on to where there was grass. So we left Spofford some days later with 2,600 tolerably fat and hit the Canyon and made its passage without difficulty. When we reached old Ft. McKavitt

in Menard county we were afoot and both horses and cattle were as poor as Job's turkey. Good grass and plenty of fine water was found after this. We kept at the job and in about a week wonderful changes had taken place and we were able to ride our horses and the cattle were able to take up their journey to Colorado. This trip carried us through the Panhandle of Texas and the western part of Kansas and we enjoyed it very much. The herd was delivered to the Holly Ranch at Colorado Springs. We rode the horses back and landed in old Lavaca county none the worse for wear and tear to our systems.

Soon after this I went to work at my old job of riding the range for George W. West in Live Oak county. In the following spring I went to Alice to get a bunch of 3,000 young cows and shipped them by rail to Purcell, Oklahoma, and from that place we drove them to El Reno and turned them over to John Johnson and then went to Quanah and took up 2,000 beef cattle and drove them to the North Canadian and left them with Mack Stewart, who afterwards created quite a lot of excitement in this section by being thrown in a Mexican prison for an alleged shooting that occurred on the other side of the Rio Grande. From El Reno we drove the cattle to Kingfisher where we took on 1,000 beef cattle and with the bunch of about 4,000 beef cattle we went to Anadarko where we delivered the herd in good shape to the Indian agent, and then back to Live Oak county where I worked until the fall of 1893, I went to work for Ed Lassiter on the San Diego ranch and was in his employ until the latter part of the fall, when I went back to Oakville. In May the following year I was married and quit cowpunching and took up railroad work and have been in that line of work for many years with the S. A. & P. Ry. and reside in Yoakum.

The cowboy life that I have led is one of the pleasant memories of my career, and money could not buy the

delightful recollections of it. No boy can really get a thrill from any other sport than to be member of a bunch of real cowboys on the trail and in charge of thousands of head of cattle. The cowboy was one of the gay and festive characters of the early day history of Texas and he has not been overdrawn. He worked hard and played hard and to him there was no task too difficult or dangerous and the life of one head of stock in his charge was as precious as the entire herd.

A LONG, HARD TRIP

E. R. (Nute) Rachal, Falfurrias, Texas

My first trip over the trail to Kansas was in 1871, when we drove 1,200 steers, from six to sixteen years old, which we gathered and branded at the old Coleman ranch, known as the Chiltipin ranch. John R. Pulliam bought them from T. M. Coleman, Sr., for $10 per head. My brother, D. C. Rachal, was in charge of the herd, and I was second boss. Our hands were A. P. Rachal, William Allen, William Lewis, Ebb Douglas, Dick Bean, Bill Unit, one Mexican called "Big Dirty," and a German cook. We started from the Chiltipin about March 20, 1871, and the second night out, near Sand Mounds on the Arkansas Creek, it rained all night, and our herd became scattered. When he reached Fort Worth we laid in supplies, and went on, and the next night had a stampede and our herd got mixed up with a herd Buck Gravis was driving. From there we just drove the two herds together to a point near Abilene. When we reached Bluff Creek at the Kansas line the first house of Caldwell was being put up. It was a log house. Here we found an old friend, Milam Fitzgerald, with a tent full of trail supplies, so we stocked up. We stopped at Cottonwood Creek, about twenty miles from Abilene, and separated our cattle from the Gravis herd, and drove them across to Ellsworth and from there on to the Smoky River, near Wilson

Station, where Dick Bean, myself and two other Texas boys stayed all summer. All went well until October, when the buffaloes began to come in vast herds, stampeding our horses and causing much annoyance. Cap

tain Pulliam could not find a sale for the cattle, so he had us to move them up near Ellsworth and shipped to Chicago to be slaughtered. He sold his horses to a rancher about 75 miles up on the Saline River, and sent Tom Pulliam and myself to deliver them. A severe snow

storm came up shortly after we started and when we reached Wilson Station we turned the horses loose and took refuge in a box car which had a stove and some coal in it. We spent two days there, and when the storm was over we found all of the loose horses and took them on for delivery. The ranch owner started us back to the railroad station in a one-horse wagon driven by one of his ranch hands. The distance was twenty-five miles, over a hilly country, and the road was wet and sloppy from melting snow. About three miles from the ranch the old horse gave out, and Tom and I had to walk to the station, reaching there about dark. We went to Ellsworth, settled up, and started for home November 20, traveling by rail and stopping off at Kansas City, St. Louis and New Orleans. From New Orleans I came home by water. I helped to gather those cattle, was with them eight months, and during that time was away from the herd only two nights. It was a long, hard trip, but on the whole we enjoyed it. We went from the mouth of the Nueces River to Ellsworth, Kansas, without going through a gate. I am now (1921) seventy-two years old, and still able to ride horseback and work with cattle.

A. P. RACHAL

A. P. Rachal made his first trip up the trail to Kansas in 1871, going as a hand. Thereafter he drove for several years, but in the herds driven after this one he was partner. He was well known to many of the trail drivers, and was highly esteemed by all as by many ether friends and acquaintances. In later years he handled cattle extensively in the Indian Territory. One year he, in partnership with J. M. Chittim, grazed thirty thousand cattle in Creek Nation. Of these twenty thousand head were cows, all of which were shipped into the Creek Nation in the spring, and all of them with all of their