This completed the main details for moving the herds.  There was an increase in prices over the preceding spring throughout the State, amounting on a general average to fully one dollar a head.  We had anticipated the advance in making our contracts, there was an abundance of water everywhere, and everything promised well for an auspicious start.  Only a single incident occurred to mar the otherwise pleasant relations with our ranchmen friends.  In contracting for the straight threes from Uvalde County, I had stipulated that every animal tendered must be full-aged at the date of receiving; we were paying an extra price and the cattle must come up to specifications.  Major Hunter had moved his herds out in time to join me in receiving the last one of the younger cattle, and I had pressed him into use as a tally clerk while receiving.  Every one had been invited to turn in stock in making up the herd, but at the last moment we fell short of threes, when I offered to fill out with twos at the customary difference in price.  The sellers were satisfied.  We called them by ages as they were cut out, when a row threatened over a white steer.  The foreman who was assisting me cut the animal in question for a two-year-old, Major Hunter repeated the age in tallying the steer, when the owner of the brand, a small ranchman, galloped up and contended that the steer was a three-year-old, though he lacked fully two months of that age.  The owner swore the steer had been raised a milk calf; that he knew his age to a day; but Major Hunter firmly yet kindly told the man that he must observe the letter of the contract and that the steer must go as a two-year-old or not at all.  In reply a six-shooter was thrown in the major’s face, when a number of us rushed in on our horses and the pistol was struck from the man’s hand.  An explanation was demanded, but the only intelligent reply that could be elicited from the owner of the white steer was, “No G——­ d——­ Yankee can classify my cattle.”  One of the ranchmen with whom we were contracting took the insult off my hands and gave the man his choice,—­to fight or apologize.  The seller cooled down, apologies followed, and the unfortunate incident passed and was forgotten with the day’s work.

A week later the herds on the Colorado River moved out.  Major Hunter and I looked them over before they got away, after which he continued on north to buy in the deficiency of three thousand wintered beeves, while I returned home to start my individual cattle.  The ranch outfit had been at work for ten days previous to my arrival gathering the three-year-old steers and all dry and barren cows.  On my return they had about eight thousand head of mixed stock under herd and two trail outfits were in readiness, so cutting them separate and culling them down, we started them, the cows for Dodge and the steers for Ogalalla, each thirty-five hundred strong.  Two outfits had left for the Double Mountain range ten days before, and