and intrusted them with the
buying of horses and all details in making up outfits.

The trails leading out of southern Texas were purely local ones, the
only established trace running from San Antonio north, touching at
Fort Griffin, and crossing into the Nations at Red River Station in
Montague County. All our previous herds from the Uvalde regions had
turned eastward to intercept this main thoroughfare, though we had
been frequently advised to try a western outlet known as the Nueces
Canon route. The latter course would bring us out on high tablelands,
but before risking our herds through it, I decided to ride out the
country in advance. The canon proper was about forty miles long,
through which ran the source of the Nueces River, and if the way were
barely possible it looked like a feasible route. Taking a pack horse
and guide with me, I rode through and out on the mesa beyond. General
McKinzie had used this route during his Indian campaigns, and had even
built mounds of rock on the hills to guide the wayfarer, from the exit
of the canon across to the South Llano River. The trail was a rough
one, but there was grass sufficient to sustain the herds and ample
bed-grounds in the valleys, and I decided to try the western outlet
from Uvalde. An early, seasonable spring favored us with fine grass on
which to put up and start the herds, all five moving out within a week
of each other. I promised my foremen to accompany them through the
canon, knowing that the passage would be a trial to man and beast, and
asked the old bosses to loiter along, so that there would be but a few
hours' difference between the rear and lead herds.

I received sixteen thousand cattle, and the four days required in
passing through Nueces Canon and reaching water beyond were the
supreme physical test of my life. It was a wild section, wholly
unsettled, between low mountains, the river-bed constantly shifting
from one flank of the valley to the other, while cliffs from three to
five hundred feet high alternated from side to side. In traveling the
first twenty-five miles we crossed the bed of the river twenty-one
times; and besides the river there were a great number of creeks and
dry arroyos putting in from the surrounding hills, so that we were
constantly crossing rough ground. The beds of the streams were covered
with smooth, water-worn pebbles, white as marble, and then again we
encountered limestone in lava formation, honeycombed with millions o