to be our outfit returning.  As they came nearer and their numbers could be made out, it was evident that our foreman was not with them, and our hopes rose.  On coming up, they informed us that we were to have a half holiday, while they would take the herd over to the North River during the afternoon.  Then emergency orders rang out to Honeyman and McCann, and as soon as a change of mounts could be secured, our dinners bolted, and the herders relieved, we were ready to go.  Two of the six who returned had shed their rags and swaggered about in new, cheap suits; the rest, although they had money, simply had not had the time to buy clothes in a place with so many attractions.

When the herders came in deft hands transferred their saddles to waiting mounts while they swallowed a hasty dinner, and we set out for Ogalalla, happy as city urchins in an orchard.  We were less than five miles from the burg, and struck a free gait in riding in, where we found several hundred of our craft holding high jinks.  A number of herds had paid off their outfits and were sending them home, while from the herds for sale, holding along the river, every man not on day herd was paying his respects to the town.  We had not been there five minutes when a horse race was run through the main street, Nat Straw and Jim Flood acting as judges on the outcome.  The officers of Ogalalla were a different crowd from what we had encountered at Dodge, and everything went.  The place suited us.  Straw had entirely forgotten our “cow” of the night before, and when The Rebel handed him his share of the winnings, he tucked it away in the watch pocket of his trousers without counting.  But he had arranged a fiddling match between a darky cook of one of the returning outfits and a locoed white man, a mendicant of the place, and invited us to be present.  Straw knew the foreman of the outfit to which the darky belonged, and the two had fixed it up to pit the two in a contest, under the pretense that a large wager had been made on which was the better fiddler.  The contest was to take place at once in the corral of the Lone Star livery stable, and promised to be humorous if nothing more.  So after the race was over, the next number on the programme was the fiddling match, and we followed the crowd.  The Rebel had given us the slip during the race, though none of us cared, as we knew he was hungering for a monte game.  It was a motley crowd which had gathered in the corral, and all seemed to know of the farce to be enacted, though the Texas outfit to which the darky belonged were flashing their money on their dusky cook, “as the best fiddler that ever crossed Red River with a cow herd.”

“Oh, I don’t know that your man is such an Ole Bull as all that,” said Nat Straw.  “I just got a hundred posted which says he can’t even play a decent second to my man.  And if we can get a competent set of judges to decide the contest, I’ll wager a little more on the white against the black, though I know your man is a cracker-jack.”