My reputation as a good trader was my capital.  I had the necessary horses, and, straining my credit, the herd started thirty-one hundred strong.  The usual incidents of flood and storm, of begging Indians and caravans like ourselves, formed the chronicle of the trip.  Before arriving at the Kansas line we were met by solicitors of rival towns, each urging the advantages of their respective markets for our cattle.  The summer before a small business had sprung up at Newton, Kansas, it being then the terminal of the Santa Fe Railway.  And although Newton lasted as a trail town but a single summer, its reputation for bloodshed and riotous disorder stands notoriously alone among its rivals.  In the mean time the Santa Fe had been extended to Wichita on the Arkansas River, and its representatives were now bidding for our patronage.  Abilene was abandoned, yet a rival to Wichita had sprung up at Ellsworth, some sixty-five miles west of the former market, on the Kansas Pacific Railway.  The railroads were competing for the cattle traffic, each one advertising its superior advantages to drovers, shippers, and feeders.  I was impartial, but as Wichita was fully one hundred miles the nearest, my cattle were turned for that point.

Wichita was a frontier village of about two thousand inhabitants.  We found a convenient camp northwest of town, and went into permanent quarters to await the opening of the market.  Within a few weeks a light drive was assured, and prices opened firm.  Fully a quarter-million less cattle would reach the markets within the State that year, and buyers became active in securing their needed supply.  Early in July I sold the last of my herd and started my outfit home, remaining behind to await the arrival of my brother.  The trip was successful; the purchased cattle had afforded me a nice profit, while the steers from the two brands had more than paid for the mixed stuff left at home on the ranch.  Meanwhile I renewed old acquaintances among drovers and dealers, Major Mabry among the former.  In a confidential mood I confessed to him that I had bought, on the recent decline, one hundred certificates of land scrip, when he surprised me by saying that there had been a later decline to sixteen dollars a section.  I was unnerved for an instant, but Major Mabry agreed with me that to a man who wanted the land the price was certainly cheap enough,—­two and a half cents an acre.  I pondered over the matter, and as my nerve returned I sent my merchant friend at Austin a draft and authorized him to buy me two hundred sections more of land scrip.  I was actually nettled to think that my judgment was so short-sighted as to buy anything that would depreciate in value.