Christmas in the South is always a season of festivity, and the magnet of mother and home yearly drew us to the family hearthstone.  There we brothers met and exchanged stories of our experiences.  But one year both my brothers brought home a new experience.  They had been up the trail, and the wondrous stories they told about the northern country set my blood on fire.  Until then I thought I had had adventures, but mine paled into insignificance beside theirs.  The following summer, my eldest brother, Robert, himself was to boss a herd up the trail, and I pleaded with him to give me a berth, but he refused me, saying:  “No, Tommy; the trail is one place where a foreman can have no favorites.  Hardship and privation must be met, and the men must throw themselves equally into the collar.  I don’t doubt but you’re a good hand; still the fact that you’re my brother might cause other boys to think I would favor you.  A trail outfit has to work as a unit, and dissensions would be ruinous.”  I had seen favoritism shown on ranches, and understood his position to be right.  Still I felt that I must make that trip if it were possible.  Finally Robert, seeing that I was overanxious to go, came to me and said:  “I’ve been thinking that if I recommended you to Jim Flood, my old foreman, he might take you with him next year.  He is to have a herd that will take five months from start to delivery, and that will be the chance of your life.  I’ll see him next week and make a strong talk for you.”

True to his word, he bespoke me a job with Flood the next time he met him, and a week later a letter from Flood reached me, terse and pointed, engaging my services as a trail hand for the coming summer.  The outfit would pass near our home on its way to receive the cattle which were to make up the trail herd.  Time and place were appointed where I was to meet them in the middle of March, and I felt as if I were made.  I remember my mother and sisters twitted me about the swagger that came into my walk, after the receipt of Flood’s letter, and even asserted that I sat my horse as straight as a poker.  Possibly! but wasn’t I going up the trail with Jim Flood, the boss foreman of Don Lovell, the cowman and drover?

Our little ranch was near Cibollo Ford on the river, and as the outfit passed down the country, they crossed at that ford and picked me up.  Flood was not with them, which was a disappointment to me, “Quince” Forrest acting as segundo at the time.  They had four mules to the “chuck” wagon under Barney McCann as cook, while the remuda, under Billy Honeyman as horse wrangler, numbered a hundred and forty-two, ten horses to the man, with two extra for the foreman.  Then, for the first time, I learned that we were going down to the mouth of the Rio Grande to receive the herd from across the river in Old Mexico; and that they were contracted for delivery on the Blackfoot Indian Reservation in the northwest corner of Montana.  Lovell had several contracts with the Indian Department of the government that year, and had been granted the privilege of bringing in, free of duty, any cattle to be used in filling Indian contracts.