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The Outlet by Andy Adams
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The Outlet

by Andy Adams



PREFACE

At the close of the civil war the need for a market for the
surplus cattle of Texas was as urgent as it was general. There
had been numerous experiments in seeking an outlet, and there is
authority for the statement that in 1857 Texas cattle were driven
to Illinois. Eleven years later forty thousand head were sent to
the mouth of Red River in Louisiana, shipped by boat to Cairo,
Illinois, and thence inland by rail. Fever resulted, and the
experiment was never repeated. To the west of Texas stretched a
forbidding desert, while on the other hand, nearly every drive to
Louisiana resulted in financial disaster to the drover. The
republic of Mexico, on the south, afforded no relief, as it was
likewise overrun with a surplus of its own breeding. Immediately
before and just after the war, a slight trade had sprung up in
cattle between eastern points on Red River and Baxter Springs, in
the southeast corner of Kansas. The route was perfectly feasible,
being short and entirely within the reservations of the Choctaws
and Cherokees, civilized Indians. This was the only route to the
north; for farther to the westward was the home of the buffalo
and the unconquered, nomadic tribes. A writer on that day, Mr.
Emerson Hough, an acceptable authority, says: "The civil war
stopped almost all plans to market the range cattle, and the
close of that war found the vast grazing lands of Texas fairly
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