the offer, went back and bought the herd of Captain Burleson.  Then, throwing the two contingents together, and boldly announcing their determination of driving to Colorado, they started the herd out past Fort Sumner with every field-glass in the post leveled on us.  The military requirements of Sumner, for its own and Indian use, were well known to the drovers, and a scarcity of beef was certain to occur at that post before other cattle could be bargained for and arrive.  My employers had evidently figured out the situation to a nicety, for during the forenoon of the second day out from the fort we were overtaken by the contractors.  Of course they threw on the government inspector all the blame for the few cattle received, and offered to buy five or six hundred more out of the herd.  But the shoe was on the other foot now, the drovers acting as independently as the proverbial hog on ice.  The herd never halted, the contractors followed up, and when we went into camp that evening a trade was closed on one thousand steers at two dollars a head advance over those which were received but a few days before.  The oxen were even reserved, and after delivering the beeves at Sumner we continued on northward with the remnant, nearly all of which were the Burleson cattle.

The latter part of April we arrived at the Colorado line.  There we were halted by the authorities of that territory, under some act of quarantine against Texas cattle.  We went into camp on the nearest water, expecting to prove that our little herd had wintered at Fort Sumner, and were therefore immune from quarantine, when buyers arrived from Trinidad, Colorado.  The steers were a mixed lot, running from a yearling to big, rough four and five year olds, and when Goodnight returned from Sumner with a certificate, attested to by every officer of that post, showing that the cattle had wintered north of latitude 34, a trade was closed at once, even the oxen going in at the phenomenal figures of one hundred and fifty dollars a yoke.  We delivered the herd near Trinidad, going into that town to outfit before returning.  The necessary alterations were made to the wagon, mules were harnessed in, and we started home in gala spirits.  In a little over thirty days my employers had more than doubled their money on the Burleson cattle and were naturally jubilant.

The proceeds of the Trinidad sale were carried in the wagon returning, though we had not as yet collected for the second delivery at Sumner.  The songs of the birds mixed with our own as we traveled homeward, and the freshness of early summer on the primitive land, as it rolled away in dips and swells, made the trip a delightful outing.  Fort Sumner was reached within a week, where we halted a day and then started on, having in the wagon a trifle over fifty thousand dollars in gold and silver.  At Sumner two men made application to accompany us back to Texas, and as they were well armed and mounted, and numbers were