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73
I lined up my men, drifted over toward Roswell, and did fine the first night. We passed around town the next morning, and camped that night on Salt Creek. I picked the wrong place to bed the herd, so about nine pin they broke, and we didn't get them stopped until four o'clock in the morning. I told the boys we had lost half of the herd. Just as soon as daylight came I had everything in the saddle to move the herd off the bed ground. I counted them and I was out six hundred and thirty-five head of steers. I left four men with the herd and cut for sign. I found where they had struck the Pecos River and went down that stream. We struck a gallop and found the entire bunch, six miles down the river. They showed they had been in a stampede for they were as green as the grass itself.
When I got back to camp I found the cause of the stampede. I had failed to go over the bed ground the evening before and I found I had bedded the herd on high ground and on the worst gopher holes I could have found in that country. I was out only four or five head and they were close to the range.
I had a boy with me by the name of Gus Votaw. He was about twenty years old, and was the son of Billie Votaw, who all the old-timers knew in San Antonio. Gus made a good hand.
That day while drifting along up the Pecos River I went ahead to hunt a watering place and when I rode up on a gyp hill overlooking the herd I saw six or seven men in a bunch. I went down to the herd to know the cause and hand out a few orders. When I got to them I found the four men I had secured at Seven Rivers were gunmen and had been playing pranks on Gus Votaw. I told them they would have to cut that out and they didn't say yes or no, so I kept my eyes open from there on. In a few days I caught one of them at the same thing and I read the law to him and when I got them all in camp I told them that I was going to run the outfit and such