Salt Fork. The rain ceased about ten o'clock, when the cattle bedded
down easily, and the second guard took them for their watch. Wood was
too scarce to afford a fire, and while our slickers had partially
protected us from the rain, many of us went to bed in wet clothing
that night. After another half day's drive to the west, we turned
northward and traveled in that direction through a nice country, more
or less broken with small hills, but well watered. On the morning of
the first day after turning north, Honeyman reported a number of our
saddle horses had strayed from camp. This gave Flood some little
uneasiness, and a number of us got on our night horses without loss of
time and turned out to look up the missing saddle stock. The Rebel and
I set out together to the southward, while others of the outfit set
off to the other points of the compass.

I was always a good trailer, was in fact acknowledged to be one of the
best, with the exception of my brother Zack, on the San Antonio River,
where we grew up as boys. In circling about that morning, I struck the
trail of about twenty horses--the missing number--and at once signaled
to Priest, who was about a mile distant, to join me. The ground was
fortunately fresh from the recent rain and left an easy trail. We
galloped along it easily for some little distance, when the trail
suddenly turned and we could see that the horses had been running,
having evidently received a sudden scare. On following up the trail
nearly a mile, we noticed where they had quieted down and had
evidently grazed for several hours, but in looking up the trail by
which they had left these parts, Priest made the discovery of signs of
cattle. We located the trail of the horses soon, and were again
surprised to find that they had been running as before, though the
trail was much fresher, having possibly been made about dawn. We ran
the trail out until it passed over a slight divide, when there before