exception of long hours and night-herding, the days passed in
seeming indolence as we swept northward, crossing rivers without
a halt which in previous years had defied the moving herds. On
arriving at the Cimarron River, in reply to a letter written to
my employer on leaving Texas behind us, an answer was found
awaiting me at Red Fork. The latter was an Indian trading-post,
located on the mail route to Fort Reno, and only a few miles
north of the Chisholm Crossing. The letter was characteristic of
my employer. It contained but one imperative order,--that I
should touch, either with or without the herd, at Camp Supply.
For some unexplained reason he would make that post his
headquarters until after the Buford herds had passed that point.
The letter concluded with the injunction, in case we met any one,
to conceal the ownership of the herd and its destination.

The mystery was thickening. But having previously declined to
borrow trouble, I brushed this aside as unimportant, though I
gave my outfit instructions to report the herd to every one as
belonging to Omaha men, and on its way to Nebraska to be
corn-fed. Fortunately I had ridden ahead of the herd after
crossing the Cimarron, and had posted the outfit before they
reached the trading-station. I did not allow one of my boys near
the store, and the herd passed by as in contempt of such a
wayside place. As the Dodge cut-off left the Chisholm Trail some
ten miles above the Indian trading-post, the next morning we
waved good-bye to the old cattle trace and turned on a northwest
angle. Our route now lay up the Cimarron, which we crossed and
recrossed at our pleasure, for the sake of grazing or to avoid
several large alkali flats. There was evidence of herds in our
advance, and had we not hurried past Red Fork, I might have