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160
up and deliver steers to Mr. Vance, this being my first work along this line. Bladen Mitchell, a pioneer of
Bandera County, was engaged by Mr. Vance as trail boss. All of the cattle were received by Mr. Mitchell and driven to Bandera County, to a point about two miles north of the Mormon Camp, where Mr. Mitchell had his herding pens, and what was known as the Mitchell Crossing. This property was purchased during the early eighties by the firm of Schorp & Spettel, but at the present time it is entirely covered by the Medina Lake, a vast body of water impounded by a great concrete dam. After delivering my bunch of steers I went over to Elm Creek, a tributary to the Medina River, where I found a crowd rounding up cattle for Perryman & Lytle, among whom were the Spettel, Habys and Wurzbachs. The following day five men out of this crowd, including myself, were going to Bandera to see the Vance cattle inspected and road branded, As we were getting ready to start the steers became frightened and stampeded. I was the only one horseback, and one of the men yelled to me to "turn the leaders toward the bluff and mill them." I did not understand the meaning of this, for I had never seen a stampede before. I knew how to turn the crank of a coffee-mill, but when it was necessary to "mill" a bunch of outlaw steers I did not know where to look for the crank. I turned the lead cattle from running into camp and crowded them against the bluff, but they did not mill, and when I looked back I saw that most of the cattle had turned behind me. By this time all of the men in camp