The trail of the beeves was taken at dawn.  This made the fifth stampede of the herd since we started, a very unfortunate thing, for stampeding easily becomes a mania with range cattle.  The steers had left the bed-ground in an easterly direction, but finding that they were not pursued, the men had gradually turned them to the right, and at daybreak the herd was near Elm Creek, where it was checked.  We rode the circle in a free gallop, the prairie being cut into dust and the trail as easy to follow as a highway.  As the herd happened to land on our course, after the usual count the commissary was sent for, and it and the remuda were brought up.  With the exception of wearing hobbles, the oxen were always given their freedom at night.  This morning one of them was found in a dying condition from an arrow in his stomach.  A humane shot had relieved the poor beast, and his mate trailed up to the herd, tied behind the wagon with a rope.  There were several odd oxen among the cattle and the vacancy was easily filled.  If I am lacking in compassion for my red brother, the lack has been heightened by his fiendish atrocities to dumb animals.  I have been witness to the ruin of several wagon trains captured by Indians, have seen their ashes and irons, and even charred human remains, and was scarce moved to pity because of the completeness of the hellish work.  Death is merciful and humane when compared to the hamstringing of oxen, gouging out their eyes, severing their ears, cutting deep slashes from shoulder to hip, and leaving the innocent victim to a lingering death.  And when dumb animals are thus mutilated in every conceivable form of torment, as if for the amusement of the imps of the evil one, my compassion for poor Lo ceases.

It was impossible to send the wounded boy back to the settlements, so a comfortable bunk was made for him in the wagon.  Late in the evening we resumed our journey, expecting to drive all night, as it was good starlight.  Fair progress was made, but towards morning a rainstorm struck us, and the cattle again stampeded.  In all my outdoor experience I never saw such pitchy darkness as accompanied that storm; although galloping across a prairie in a blustering rainfall, it required no strain of the imagination to see hills and mountains and forests on every hand.  Fourteen men were with the herd, yet it was impossible to work in unison, and when day broke we had less than half the cattle.  The lead had been maintained, but in drifting at random with the storm several contingents of beeves had cut off from the main body, supposedly from the rear.  When the sun rose, men were dispatched in pairs and trios, the trail of the missing steers was picked up, and by ten o’clock every hoof was in hand or accounted for.  I came in with the last contingent and found the camp in an uproar over the supposed desertion of one of the hands.  Yankee Bill, a sixteen-year-old boy, and another man were left in charge of the herd when the rest of us