Meanwhile there had sprung up a small trade in cattle with the North.  Baxter Springs and Abilene, both in Kansas, were beginning to be mentioned as possible markets, light drives having gone to those points during the present and previous summers.  The elder Edwards had been investigating the new outlet, and on the return of George and myself was rather enthusiastic over the prospects of a market.  No Indian trouble had been experienced on the northern route, and although demand generally was unsatisfactory, the faith of drovers in the future was unshaken.  A railroad had recently reached Abilene, stockyards had been built for the accommodation of shippers during the summer of 1861, while a firm of shrewd, far-seeing Yankees made great pretensions of having established a market and meeting-point for buyers and sellers of Texas cattle.  The promoters of the scheme had a contract with the railroad, whereby they were to receive a bonus on all cattle shipped from that point, and the Texas drovers were offered every inducement to make Abilene their destination in the future.  The unfriendliness of other States against Texas cattle, caused by the ravages of fever imparted by southern to domestic animals, had resulted in quarantine being enforced against all stock from the South.  Matters were in an unsettled condition, and less than one per cent of the State’s holdings of cattle had found an outside market during the year 1867, though ranchmen in general were hopeful.

I spent the remainder of the month of October at the Edwards ranch.  We had returned in time for the fall branding, and George and I both made acceptable hands at the work.  I had mastered the art of handling a rope, and while we usually corralled everything, scarcely a day passed but occasion occurred to rope wild cattle out of the brush.  Anxiety to learn soon made me an expert, and before the month ended I had caught and branded for myself over one hundred mavericks.  Cattle were so worthless that no one went to the trouble to brand completely; the crumbs were acceptable to me, and, since no one else cared for them and I did, the flotsam and jetsam of the range fell to my brand.  Had I been ambitious, double that number could have been easily secured, but we never went off the home range in gathering calves to brand.  All the hands on the Edwards ranch, darkies and Mexicans, were constantly throwing into the corrals and pointing out unclaimed cattle, while I threw and indelibly ran the figures “44” on their sides.  I was partial to heifers, and when one was sighted there was no brush so thick or animal so wild that it was not “fish” to my rope.  In many instances a cow of unknown brand was still followed by her two-year-old, yearling, and present calf.  Under the customs of the country, any unbranded animal, one year old or over, was a maverick, and the property of any one who cared to brand the unclaimed stray.  Thousands of cattle thus lived to old age, multiplied and increased, died and became food for worms, unowned.