lls of dough round a stick and planting the stick in the ground,
inclined over a bed of live coals. Often the frying-pan was left
behind, and the meat roasted on a stick over the fire; and no meat in
the world was ever so delicious as a good fat side of ribs so roasted.

The wild, unbranded cattle were everywhere--in the cross-timbers of the
Palo Pinto, in the hills and among the post oaks of the Concho and the
Llano, on the broad savannas of the Lower Guadalupe and the Brazos, in
the plains and mesquite thickets of the Nueces and the Frio. And
through these wild regions, on the outer fringe of settlement, ranged
the cow-hunters, as merry and happy a lot as ever courted adventure,
careless of their lives.

Of adventure and hazard the cow-hunters had quite enough to keep the
blood tingling. They had to deal with wild men as well as wild cattle.
Comanches and Kiowas, the old lords of the manor, were bitterly
disputing every forward movement of the settler along the whole
frontier. No community, from Griffin to San Antonio, escaped their
attacks and depredations. Indeed, these incursions were regular
monthly visitations, made always "in the light of the moon." A war
party of naked bucks on naked horses, the lightest and most dexterous
cavalry in the world, would slip softly near some isolated ranch or
lonely camp by night. The cleverest and cunningest would dismount and
steal swiftly in upon their quarry. Slender, sinewy, bronze figures
creeping and crouching like panthers, crafty as foxes, fierce and
merciless as maddened bulls, their presence was rarely known until the
blow fell. Sometimes they were content to steal the settlers' horses,
and by daylight be many miles away to the west or north. Sometimes
they fired buildings and shot down the inmates as they ran out.
Sometimes they crept silently into camps, knifed or tomahawked one or
more of the sleepers, and stole away, all so noiselessly that others
sleeping near were undisturbed. Sometimes they lay in ambush about a
camp till dawn, and then with mad war-whoops charged among the sleepers
with their deadly arrows and tomahawks.

Against these wily marauders the cow-hunters could never abate their
guard. And it was these same cow-hunters the Indians most dreaded, for
they were tireless on a trail and utterly reckless in attack. It was
not often the Indians got the best of them, and then only by ambush, or
overwhelming numbers. Better armed, of stouter he