Returning with the outfit, I continued on west to the new ranch, while the men began the fall branding at home.  On arriving on the Double Mountain range, I found the outfit in the saddle, ironing up a big calf crop, while the improved herd was the joy and pride of my foreman.  An altitude of about four thousand feet above sea-level had proved congenial to the thoroughbreds, who had acclimated nicely, the only loss being one from lightning.  Two men were easily holding the isolated herd in their canon home, the sheltering bluffs affording them ample protection from wintry weather, and there was nothing henceforth to fear in regard to the experiment.  I spent a week with the outfit; my ranch foreman assured me that the brand could turn out a trail herd of three-year-old steers the following spring and a second one of twos, if it was my wish to send them to market.  But it was too soon to anticipate the coming summer; and then it seemed a shame to move young steers to a northern climate to be matured, yet it was an economic necessity.  Ranch headquarters looked like a trapper’s cave with wolf-skins and buffalo-robes taken the winter before, and it was with reluctance that I took my leave of the cosy dugouts on the Double Mountain Fork.

On returning home I found a statement for the year and a pressing invitation awaiting me to come on to the national capital at once.  The profits of the summer had exceeded the previous one, but some bills for demurrage remained to be adjusted with the War and Interior departments, and my active partner and George Edwards had already started for Washington.  It was urged on me that the firm should make themselves known at the different departments, and the invitation was supplemented by a special request from our silent partner, the Senator, to spend at least a month at the capital.  For years I had been promising my wife to take her on a visit to Virginia, and now when the opportunity offered, womanlike, she pleaded her nakedness in the midst of plenty.  I never had but one suit at a time in my life, and often I had seen my wife dressed in the best the frontier of Texas afforded, which was all that ought to be expected.  A day’s notice was given her, the eldest children were sent to their grandparents, and taking the two youngest with us, we started for Fort Worth.  I was anxious that my wife should make a favorable impression on my people, and in turn she was fretting about my general appearance.  Out of a saddle a cowman never looks well, and every effort to improve his personal appearance only makes him the more ridiculous.  Thus with each trying to make the other presentable, we started.  We stopped a week at my brother’s in Missouri, and finally reached the Shenandoah Valley during the last week in November.  Leaving my wife to speak for herself and the remainder of the family, I hurried on to Washington and found the others quartered at a prominent hotel.  A less pretentious one would have suited me, but then a United States senator