With a hungry look in the direction of our wagon, I obeyed, and on meeting Durham and Borrowstone, learned that the outside bunch on the right, which had got into the regular trail, had not been checked until daybreak.  All they knew about their location was that the up stage from Oakville had seen two men with Circle Dot cattle about five miles below, and had sent up word by the driver that they had something like four hundred head.  With this meagre information, I rode away in the direction where one would naturally expect to find our absent men, and after scouring the country for an hour, sighted a single horseman on an elevation, whom from the gray mount I knew for Quince Forrest.  He was evidently on the lookout for some one to pilot them in.  They had been drifting like lost sheep ever since dawn, but we soon had their cattle pointed in the right direction, and Forrest taking the lead, Quarternight and I put the necessary push behind them.  Both of them cursed me roundly for not bringing them a canteen of water, though they were well aware that in an emergency like the present, our foreman would never give a thought to anything but the recovery of the herd.  Our comfort was nothing; men were cheap, but cattle cost money.

We reached the camp about two o’clock, and found the outfit cutting out range cattle which had been absorbed into the herd during the run.  Throwing in our contingent, we joined in the work, and though Forrest and Quarternight were as good as afoot, there were no orders for a change of mounts, to say nothing of food and drink.  Several hundred mixed cattle were in the herd, and after they had been cut out, we lined our cattle out for a count.  In the absence of Priest, Flood and John Officer did the counting, and as the hour of the day made the cattle sluggish, they lined through between the counters as though they had never done anything but walk in their lives.  The count showed sixteen short of twenty-eight hundred, which left us yet over three hundred out.  But good men were on their trail, and leaving two men on herd, the rest of us obeyed the most welcome orders of the day when Flood intimated that we would “eat a bite and go after the rest.”

As we had been in our saddles since one or two o’clock the morning before, it is needless to add that our appetites were equal to the spread which our cook had waiting for us.  Our foreman, as though fearful of the loss of a moment’s time, sent Honeyman to rustle in the horses before we had finished our dinners.  Once the remuda was corralled, under the rush of a tireless foreman, dinner was quickly over, and fresh horses became the order of the moment.  The Atascosa, our nearest water, lay beyond the regular trail to the west, and leaving orders for the outfit to drift the herd into it and water, Flood and myself started in search of our absent men, not forgetting to take along two extra horses as a remount for Blades and Priest.  The leading of these extra horses fell to me, but with the loose end of a rope in Jim Flood’s hand as he followed, it took fast riding to keep clear of them.