ple room to our cattle were established, which were to be ridden
both evening and morning in any and all weather. Two Texans, both
experts as trailers, were detailed to trail down any cattle which left
the boundaries of the range. The weather continued fine, and with the
camps well provisioned, the major and I returned to the railroad and
took train for Council Grove. I was impatient to go home, and took the
most direct route then available. Railroads were just beginning to
enter the West, and one had recently been completed across the eastern
portion of the Indian Territory, its destination being south of Red
River. With nothing but the clothes on my back and a saddle, I
started home, and within twenty-four hours arrived at Denison, Texas.
Connecting stages carried me to Fort Worth, where I bought a saddle
horse, and the next evening I was playing with the babies at the home
ranch. It had been an active summer with me, but success had amply
rewarded my labors, while every cloud had disappeared and the future
was rich in promise.

CHAPTER XI

A PROSPEROUS YEAR

An open winter favored the cattle on the Medicine River. My partners
in Kansas wrote me encouragingly, and plans were outlined for
increasing our business for the coming summer. There was no activity
in live stock during the winter in Texas, and there would be no
trouble in putting up herds at prevailing prices of the spring before.
I spent an inactive winter, riding back and forth to my ranch, hunting
with hounds, and killing an occasional deer. While visiting at Council
Grove the fall before, Major Hunter explained to our silent partner
the cheapness of Texas lands. Neither one of my associates cared to
scatter their interests beyond the boundaries of their own State, yet
both urged me to acquire every acre of cheap land that my means would
permit. They both recited the history and growth in value of the lands
surrounding The Grove, telling me how cheaply they could have bought
the same ten years before,--at the government price of a dollar and a
quarter an acre,--and that already there had been an advance of four
to five hundred per cent. They urged me to buy scrip and locate land,
assuring me that it was only a question of time until the people
of Texas would arise in their might and throw off the yoke of
Reconstruction.

At home general opinion was just the reverse. No one cared for more
land than a homestead or for immediate use. No locations h