again for more than twelve months, but when found was fat and
none the worse. Next day the trail outfit came along and so I hitched up
another team.

But the worst trouble I used to have was with a high-strung and almost
intractable pair of horses, Pintos, or painted, which means piebald, a
very handsome team indeed, whose former owner simply could not manage
them. Every time we came to a gate through which we had to pass I, being
alone, had to get down and throw the gate open. Then after taking the
team through I had of course to go back to shut the gate again. Then was
the opportunity apparently always watched for by these devils, and had I
not tied a long rope to the lines and trailed it behind the wagon they
would many times have succeeded in getting away.

Yet it is only such a team that one can really care to drive for
pleasure; a team that you "feel" all the time, one that will keep you
"interested" every minute, as these Pintos did. How often nowadays does
one ever see a carriage pair, or fours in the park or elsewhere that
really needs "driving"?

"Shipping" cattle means loading them into railroad cars and despatching
them to their destination. The cattle are first penned in a corral and
then run through chutes into the cars. One year I sold the Company's
steers, a train-load, to a Jew dealer in Kansas. They were loaded in the
Panhandle and I went through with them, having a man to help me to look
after them, our duty being to prod them up when any were found lying
down so they would not be trodden to death. At a certain point our
engine "played out" and was obliged to leave us to get coal and water.
While gone the snow (a furious blizzard was blowing) blew over the track
and blocked it so effectively that the engine could not get back. The
temperature was about zero and the cattle suffered terribly; but there
we remained stuck for nearly two days. When we finally got through, of
course the buyer refused to receive them, and I turned them over to the
railway company and brought suit for their value. The case was thrice
tried and we won each time; and oh, how some of these railroad men did
damn themselves by perjury! But it is bad business to "buck" against a
powerful railway corporation. This will serve to give an idea as to what
shipping cattle means. Many hundreds of thousands, or even millions, are
now shipped every year. Trail work is abandoned, being no longer
possible on account of fences, etc. Such gr