On reaching the Nueces, feverish in anger, he drank sparingly, kneeling against the soft river’s bank, cutting it with his horns, and matting his forehead with red mud.  It was a momentous day in his life.  He distinctly remembered the physical pain he had suffered once in a branding-pen, but that was nothing compared to this.  Surely his years had been few and full of trouble.  He hardly knew which way to turn.  Finally he concluded to lie down on a knoll and rest until nightfall, when he would start on his journey to the Frio.  Just how he was to reach that country troubled him.  He was a cautious fellow; he knew he must have water on the way, and the rains had not yet fallen.

Near the middle of the afternoon an incident occurred which changed the whole course of his after-life.  From his position on the knoll he witnessed the approach of four horsemen who apparently were bent on driving all the cattle in that vicinity out of their way.  To get a better view he arose, for it was evident they had no intention of disturbing him.  When they had drifted away all the cattle for a mile on both sides of the river, one of the horsemen rode back and signaled to some one in the distance.  Then the line-back steer saw something new, for coming over the brow of the hill was a great column of cattle.  He had never witnessed such a procession of his kind before.  When the leaders had reached the river, the rear was just coming over the brow of the hill, for the column was fully a mile in length.  The line-back steer classed them as strangers, probably bound for the Frio, for that was the remotest country in his knowledge.  As he slowly approached the herd, which was then crowding into the river, he noticed that they were nearly all two-year-olds like himself.  Why not accompany them?  His resolution to leave the Nueces valley was still uppermost in his mind.  But when he attempted to join in, a dark-skinned man on a horse chased him away, cursing him in Spanish as he ran.  Then he thought they must be exclusive, and wondered where they came from.

But when the line-back steer once resolved to do anything, the determination became a consuming desire.  He threw the very intensity of his existence into his resolution of the morning.  He would leave the Nueces valley with those cattle—­or alone, it mattered not.  So after they had watered and grazed out from the river, he followed at a respectful distance.  Once again he tried to enter the herd, but an outrider cut him off.  The man was well mounted, and running his horse up to him he took up his tail, wrapped the brush around the pommel of his saddle, and by a dexterous turn of his horse threw him until he spun like a top.  The horseman laughed.  The ground was sandy, and while the throwing frightened him, never for an instant did it shake his determination.