When all was ready to start, Slaughter made a suggestion.  “Let’s go out,” he said, “and bring them up slowly in a solid body, and when we get them opposite the bridge, round them in gradually as if we were going to bed them down.  I’ll take a long lariat to my white wheeler, and when they have quieted down perfectly, I’ll lead old Blanco through them and across the bridge, and possibly they’ll follow.  There’s no use crowding them, for that only excites them, and if you ever start them milling, the jig’s up.  They’re nice, gentle cattle, but they’ve been balked once and they haven’t forgotten it.”

What we needed right then was a leader, for we were all ready to catch at a straw, and Slaughter’s suggestion was welcome, for he had established himself in our good graces until we preferred him to either of the other foremen as a leader.  Riding out to the herd, which were lying down, we roused and started them back towards Boggy.  While drifting them back, we covered a front a quarter of a mile in width, and as we neared the bridge we gave them perfect freedom.  Slaughter had caught out his white ox, and we gradually worked them into a body, covering perhaps ten acres, in front of the bridge.  Several small bunches attempted to mill, but some of us rode in and split them up, and after about half an hour’s wait, they quieted down.  Then Slaughter rode in whistling and leading his white ox at the end of a thirty-five foot lariat, and as he rode through them they were so logy that he had to quirt them out of the way.  When he came to the bridge, he stopped the white wheeler until everything had quieted down; then he led old Blanco on again, but giving him all the time he needed and stopping every few feet.  We held our breath, as one or two of the herd started to follow him, but they shied and turned back, and our hopes of the moment were crushed.  Slaughter detained the ox on the bridge for several minutes, but seeing it was useless, he dismounted and drove him back into the herd.  Again and again he tried the same ruse, but it was of no avail.  Then we threw the herd back about half a mile, and on Flood’s suggestion cut off possibly two hundred head, a bunch which with our numbers we ought to handle readily in spite of their will, and by putting their remuda of over a hundred saddle horses in the immediate lead, made the experiment of forcing them.  We took the saddle horses down and crossed and recrossed the bridge several times with them, and as the cattle came up turned the horses into the lead and headed for the bridge.  With a cordon of twenty riders around them, no animal could turn back, and the horses crossed the bridge on a trot, but the cattle turned tail and positively refused to have anything to do with it.  We held them like a block in a vise, so compactly that they could not even mill, but they would not cross the bridge.