to jail.  We both regretted that the good old days in the State were gone, but I sent around another case of bitters and a box of cigars, and sat down patiently to await results.  With no action taken by the middle of the afternoon, I sent around a third installment of refreshments, and an hour later called in person at the door of the convention.  The doorkeeper refused to admit me, but I caught his eye, which was glassy, and received a leery wink, while a bottle of bitters nestled cosily in the open bosom of his shirt.  Hopeful that the signs were favorable, I apologized and withdrew, but was shortly afterwards sent for and informed that an exception had been made in my favor, and that I might cross the river at my will and pleasure.  In the interim of waiting, in case I was successful, I had studied up a little speech of thanks, and as I arose to express my appreciation, a chorus of interruptions greeted me:  “G’ on, Reed!  G’ on, you d——­d old cow-thief!  Git out of town or we’ll hang you!”

With the trail a thing of the past, I settled down to the peaceful pursuits of a ranchman.  The fencing of ranges soon became necessary, the Clear Fork tract being first inclosed, and a few years later owners of pastures adjoining the Double Mountain ranch wished to fence, and I fell in with the prevailing custom.  On the latter range I hold title to a little over one million acres, while there are two hundred sections of school land included in my western pasture, on which I pay a nominal rental for its use.  All my cattle are now graded, and while no effort is made to mature them, the advent of cotton-seed oil mills and other sources of demand have always afforded me an outlet for my increase.  I have branded as many as twenty-five thousand calves in a year, and to this source of income alone I attribute the foundation of my present fortune.  As a source of wealth the progeny of the cow in my State has proven a perennial harvest, with little or no effort on the part of the husbandman.  Reversing the military rule of moving against the lines of least resistance, experience has taught me to follow those where Nature lends its greatest aid.  Mine being strictly a grazing country, by preserving the native grasses and breeding only the best quality of cattle, I have always achieved success.  I have brought up my boys to observe these economics of nature, and no plow shall ever mar the surface where my cows have grazed, generation after generation, to the profit and satisfaction of their owner.  Where once I was a buyer in carload lots of the best strains of blood in the country, now I am a seller by hundreds and thousands of head, acclimated and native to the soil.  One man to his trade and another to his merchandise, and the mistakes of my life justly rebuke me for dallying in paths remote from my legitimate calling.