Early in August the herd was completed.  I accepted seven hundred and twenty steers, investing every cent of spare money, reserving only sufficient to pay my expenses en route.  It was my intention to drive the cattle through to Missouri, the distance being a trifle less than six hundred miles or a matter of six weeks’ travel.  Four men were secured, a horse was packed with provisions and blankets, and we started down the Arkansas River.  For the first few days I did very little but build air castles.  I pictured myself driving herds from Texas in the spring, reinvesting the proceeds in better grades of cattle and feeding them corn in the older States, selling in time to again buy and come up the trail.  I even planned to send for my wife and baby, and looked forward to a happy reunion with my parents during the coming winter, with not a cloud in my roseate sky.  But there were breakers ahead.

An old military trail ran southeast from Fort Larned to other posts in the Indian Territory.  Over this government road had come a number of herds of Texas cattle, all of them under contract, which, in reaching their destination, had avoided the markets of Wichita and Ellsworth.  I crossed their trail with my Colorado natives,—­the through cattle having passed a month or more before,—­never dreaming of any danger.  Ten days afterward I noticed a number of my steers were ailing; their ears drooped, they refused to eat, and fell to the rear as we grazed forward.  The next morning there were forty head unable to leave the bed-ground, and by noon a number of them had died.  I had heard of Texas fever, but always treated it as more or less a myth, and now it held my little herd of natives in its toils.  By this time we had reached some settlement on the Cottonwood, and the pioneer settlers in Kansas arose in arms and quarantined me.  No one knew what the trouble was, yet the cattle began dying like sheep; I was perfectly helpless, not knowing which way to turn or what to do.  Quarantine was unnecessary, as within a few days half the cattle were sick, and it was all we could do to move away from the stench of the dead ones.

A veterinary was sent for, who pronounced it Texas fever.  I had previously cut open a number of dead animals, and found the contents of their stomachs and manifolds so dry that they would flash and burn like powder.  The fever had dried up their very internals.  In the hope of administering a purgative, I bought whole fields of green corn, and turned the sick and dying cattle into them.  I bought oils by the barrel, my men and myself worked night and day, inwardly drenching affected animals, yet we were unable to stay the ravages of death.  Once the cause of the trouble was located,—­crossing ground over which Texas cattle had passed,—­the neighbors became friendly, and sympathized with me.  I gave them permission to take the fallen hides, and in return received many kindnesses where a few days before I had been confronted by shotguns.  This was my first experience with Texas fever, and the lessons that I learned then and afterward make me skeptical of all theories regarding the transmission of the germ.