it made a half circle in our
front, both inviting and defying us. Turning the herd due south, we
traveled until darkness fell, going into camp on a high, flat mesa of
several thousand acres. But those evening breezes wafted an invitation
to come and drink, and our thirsty herd refused to bed down. To add to
our predicament, a storm thickened in the west. Realizing that we were
confronting the most dangerous night in all my cattle experience, I
ordered every man into the saddle. The remuda and team were taken in
charge by the wrangler and cook, and going from man to man, I warned
them what the consequences would be if we lost the herd during the
night, and the cattle reached the creek.

The cattle surged and drifted almost at will, for we were compelled to
hold them loose to avoid milling. Before ten o'clock the lightning was
flickering overhead and around us, revealing acres of big beeves, which
in an instant might take fright, and then, God help us. But in that
night of trial a mercy was extended to the dumb brutes in charge. A warm
rain began falling, first in a drizzle, increasing after the first hour,
and by midnight we could hear the water slushing under our horses' feet.
By the almost constant flashes of lightning we could see the cattle
standing as if asleep, in grateful enjoyment of the sheeting downpour.
As the night wore on, our fears of a stampede abated, for the buffalo
wallows on the mesa filled, and water was on every hand. The rain ceased
before dawn, but owing to the saturated condition underfoot, not a hoof
lay down during the night, and when the gray of morning streaked the
east, what a sense of relief it brought us. The danger had passed.

Near noon that day, and within a few miles of the North Fork, we rounded
an alkaline plain in which this deadly creek had its source. Under the
influence of the season, alkali had oozed up out of the soil until it
looked like an immense lake under snow. The presence of range cattle
in close proximity to this creek, for we were in the Cherokee Strip,
baffled my reasoning; but the next day we met a range-rider who
explained that the present condition of the stream was unheard of
before, and that native cattle had instinct enough to avoid it. He
accounted for its condition as due to the dry season, there being no
general rains sufficient to flood the alkaline plain and thoroughly
flush the creek. In reply to an inquiry as to the ownership of the
unfortunate herds, he