ntil one could have laid two fingers in the
opening. The whole herd was stricken, less than half a dozen animals
escaping attack, scores dying within three days, the majority
lingering a week or more. In spite of our every effort to save them,
as many as one hundred died in a single day. I stayed with them for
six weeks, or until the fever had run through the herd, spent my last
available dollar in an effort to save the dumb beasts, and, having my
hopes frustrated, sold the remnant of twenty-six head for five dollars
apiece. I question if they were worth the money, as three fourths of
them were fever-burnt and would barely survive a winter, the only
animals of value being some half dozen which had escaped the general
plague. I gave each of my men two horses apiece, and divided my money
with them, and they started back to Colorado, while I turned homeward
a wiser but poorer man. Whereas I had left Wichita three months
before with over sixteen thousand dollars clear cash, I returned with
eighteen saddle horses and not as many dollars in money.

My air-castles had fallen. Troubles never come singly, and for the
last two weeks, while working with the dying cattle, I had suffered
with chills and fever. The summer had been an unusually wet one,
vegetation had grown up rankly in the valley of the Arkansas, and
after the first few frosts the very atmosphere reeked with malaria.
I had been sleeping on the ground along the river for over a month,
drinking impure water from the creeks, and I fell an easy victim to
the prevailing miasma. Nearly all the Texas drovers had gone home,
but, luckily for me, Jim Daugherty had an outfit yet at Wichita and
invited me to his wagon. It might be a week or ten days before he
would start homeward, as he was holding a herd of cows, sold to an
Indian contractor, who was to receive the same within two weeks. In
the interim of waiting, still suffering from fever and ague, I visited
around among the few other cow-camps scattered up and down the river.
At one of these I met a stranger, a quiet little man, who also had
been under the weather from malaria, but was then recovering. He took
an interest in my case and gave me some medicine to break the chills,
and we visited back and forth. I soon learned that he had come down
with some of his neighbors from Council Grove; that they expected
to buy cattle, and that he was banker for the party. He was much
interested in everything pertaining to Texas; and w