with me.  It looked red and muddy and rolled just a trifle, but I ordered one of the boys to hit it on his horse, to see what it was like.  Well, he never wet the seat of his saddle going or coming, though his horse was in swimming water good sixty yards.  All the other bosses rode up, and each one examined his peg to see if the rise was falling.  One fellow named Bob Brown, boss-man for John Blocker, asked me what I thought about the crossing.  I said to him, ’If this ferryman can cross our wagon for me, and you fellows will open out a little and let me in, I’ll show you all a crossing, and it’ll be no miracle either.’

“Well, the ferryman said he’d set the wagon over, so the men went back to bring up the herd.  They were delayed some little time, changing to their swimming horses.  It was nearly an hour before the herd came up, the others opening out, so as to give us a clear field, in case of a mill or balk.  I never had to give an order; my boys knew just what to do.  Why, there’s men in this outfit right now that couldn’t have greased my wagon that year.

“Well, the men on the points brought the herd to the water with a good head on, and before the leaders knew it, they were halfway across the channel, swimming like fish.  The swing-men fed them in, free and plenty.  Most of my outfit took to the water, and kept the cattle from drifting downstream.  The boys from the other herds—­good men, too—­kept shooting them into the water, and inside fifteen minutes’ time we were in the big Injun Territory.  After crossing the saddle stock and the wagon, I swam my horse back to the Texas side.  I wanted to eat dinner with Blocker’s man, just to see how they fed.  Might want to work for him some time, you see.  I pretended that I’d help him over if he wanted to cross, but he said his dogies could never breast that water.  I remarked to him at dinner, ’You’re feeding a mite better this year, ain’t you?’ ‘Not that I can notice,’ he replied, as the cook handed him a tin plate heaping with navy beans, ’and I’m eating rather regular with the wagon, too.’  I killed time around for a while, and then we rode down to the river together.  The cattle had tramped out his peg, so after setting a new one, and pow-wowing around, I told him good-by and said to him, ’Bob, old man, when I hit Dodge, I’ll take a drink and think of you back here on the trail, and regret that you are not with me, so as to make it two-handed.’  We said our ‘so-longs’ to each other, and I gave the gray his head and he took the water like a duck.  He could outswim any horse I ever saw, but I drowned him in the Washita two weeks later.  Yes, tangled his feet in some vines in a sunken treetop, and the poor fellow’s light went out.  My own candle came near being snuffed.  I never felt so bad over a little thing since I burned my new red topboots when I was a kid, as in drownding that horse.