good sixty yards. All the other bosses rode up, and
each one examined his peg to see if the rise was falling. One fellow
named Bob Brown, boss-man for John Blocker, asked me what I thought
about the crossing. I said to him, 'If this ferryman can cross our
wagon for me, and you fellows will open out a little and let me in,
I'll show you all a crossing, and it'll be no miracle either.'

"Well, the ferryman said he'd set the wagon over, so the men went back
to bring up the herd. They were delayed some little time, changing to
their swimming horses. It was nearly an hour before the herd came up,
the others opening out, so as to give us a clear field, in case of a
mill or balk. I never had to give an order; my boys knew just what
to do. Why, there's men in this outfit right now that couldn't have
greased my wagon that year.

"Well, the men on the points brought the herd to the water with a good
head on, and before the leaders knew it, they were halfway across
the channel, swimming like fish. The swing-men fed them in, free and
plenty. Most of my outfit took to the water, and kept the cattle
from drifting downstream. The boys from the other herds--good men,
too--kept shooting them into the water, and inside fifteen minutes'
time we were in the big Injun Territory. After crossing the saddle
stock and the wagon, I swam my horse back to the Texas side. I wanted
to eat dinner with Blocker's man, just to see how they fed. Might want
to work for him some time, you see. I pretended that I'd help him over
if he wanted to cross, but he said his dogies could never breast that
water. I remarked to him at dinner, 'You're feeding a mite better this
year, ain't you?' 'Not that I can notice,' he replied, as the cook
handed him a tin plate heaping with navy beans, 'and I'm eating rather
regular with the wagon, too.' I killed time around for a while, and
then we rode down to the river together. The cattle had tramped out
his peg, so after setting a new one, and pow-wowing around, I told him
good-by and said to him, 'Bob, old man, when I hit Dodge, I'll take a
drink and think of you back here on the trail, and regret that you are
not with me, so as to make it two-handed.' We said our 'so-longs' to
each other, and I gave the gray his head and he took the water like a
duck. He could outswim any horse I ever saw, but I drowned him in
the Washita two weeks later. Yes, tangled his feet in some vines in
a sunken treetop, and the poor fellow's light