But when a ninety-mile drive across the Staked Plain is to be done, all
this easy system is changed. In order to make the journey at all the
pace must be forced to the utmost, and the cattle kept on their legs
and moving as long as they can stand.

Therefore, when Loving and Goodnight reached the head of the Concho,
two full days' rest were taken to recuperate the "drags," or weaker
cattle. Then, late one afternoon, after the herd had been well grazed
and watered, the water barrels and kegs filled, the herd was thrown on
the trail and driven away into the west, without halt or rest,
throughout the night. Thus, driving in the cool of the night and of
the early morning and late evening, resting through the heat of midday
when travel would be most exhausting, the herd was pushed on westward
for three nights and four days.

On these dry drives the horses suffer most, for every rider is forced,
in his necessary daily work, to cover many times the distance travelled
by the herd, and therefore the horses, doing the heaviest work, are
refreshed by an occasional sip of the precious contents of the water
barrels--as long as it lasts. By night of the second day of this drive
every drop of water is consumed, and thereafter, with tongues parched
and swollen by the clouds of dust raised by the moving multitude, thin,
drawn, and famished for water, men, horses, and cattle push madly ahead.

Come at last within fifteen miles of the Pecos, even the leaders, the
strongest of the herd, are staggering along with dull eyes and drooping
heads, apparently ready to fall in their tracks. Suddenly the whole
appearance of the cattle changes; heads are eagerly raised, ears
pricked up, eyes brighten; the leaders step briskly forward and break
into a trot. Cow-hunters say they smell the water. Perhaps they do,
or perhaps it is the last desperate struggle for existence. Anyway,
the tide is resistless. Nothing can check them, and four men gallop in
the lead to control and handle them as much as possible when they reach
the stream. Behind, the weaker cattle follow at the best pace they
can. In this way over the last stage a single herd is strung out over
a length of four or five miles.

Great care is needed when the stream is reached to turn them in at easy
waterings, for in their maddened state they would bowl over one another
down a bluff of any height; and they often do so, for men and horses
are almost equally wild to reach the water,