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48
to swing to his tail, and thus ferried him across. The
negro thanked me and said that horse's tail was just like the "hand of Providence." We delivered the cattle on the Platte River and I returned to the Tigre ranch, where I worked for seven years. While on this ranch one day Gus Withers, the boss, picked out a fine bay horse and told me that if I could ride him I could use him for a saddle horse. I managed to mount him, but after I got up there I had to "choke the horn and claw leather," but to no avail, for he dumped me off in the middle of a big prickly pear bush. When the boys pulled me out of that bush they found that my jacket was nailed to my back as securely as if the job had been done with six-penny nails.
I went up the trail twice, and drove the drag both times, did all the hard work, got all the "cussin'," but had the good luck never to get "fired."
I was born in Palmyra, Marion County, Missouri, October 20th, 1831. In the spring of 1852 a bunch of us were stricken with the gold fever. We rigged up three ox wagons, five yoke to a wagon, and started on the 13th day of April, 1852, for the California gold mines. We