after
their arrival at the home corrals. The ranch help herded them by day
and penned them at night, but on the arrival of the independent outfit
with another contingent of fifteen hundred the first were freed and
the second put under herd. Counting both bunches, the strays numbered
nearly a thousand head, and cattle bearing no tally-mark fully as
many more, while the remainder were mavericks and would have paid the
expenses of the outfit for the past four months. I now had over thirty
thousand cattle on the Clear Fork, holding them in eleven brands, but
decided thereafter to run all the increase in the original "44." This
rule had gone into effect the fall previous, and I now proposed to run
it on all calves branded. Never before had I felt the necessity of
increasing my holdings in land, but with the number of cattle on hand
it behooved me to possess a larger acreage of the Clear Fork valley.
A surveyor was accordingly sent for, and while the double outfit was
branding the home calf crop, I located on the west end of my range a
strip of land ten miles long by five wide. At the east end of my ranch
another tract was located, five by ten miles, running north and taking
in all that country around the junction of the Clear Fork with the
mother Brazos. This gave me one hundred and fifty sections of land,
lying in the form of an immense Lazy L, and I felt that the expense
was justified in securing an ample range for my stock cattle.

My calf crop that fall ran a few over seven thousand head. They were
good northern Texas calves, and it would cost but a trifle to run them
until they were two-year-olds; and if demand continued in the upper
country, some day a trail herd of steers could easily be made up from
their numbers. I was beginning to feel rather proud of my land and
cattle; the former had cost me but a small outlay, while the latter
were clear velvet, as I had sold thirty-five hundred from their
increase during the past two years. Once the surveying and branding
was over, I returned to the Edwards ranch for the winter. The general
outlook in Texas was for the better; quite a mileage of railroad
had been built within the State during the past year, and new and
prosperous towns had sprung up along their lines. The political
situation had quieted down, and it was generally admitted that a
Reconstruction government could never again rear its head on Texas
soil. The result was that confidence was slowly being restored amo