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169
In the month of July, 1881, we left the IS ranch for Wyoming with about 3,000 head of Southern steer yearlings. I was second boss— the horse rustler. We started from the Monument Hills, about 15 miles north of Red River Station on the old Chisholm Trail, which was known
at that time as the Eastern Trail. About the third night out the Indians stampeded our herd at the head of Wild Horse Creek, which delayed us for a few days. Leaving this point, we had fine weather and moved along rapidly until we left the Eastern Trail at Red Fork Ranch, on the Cimarron River, to intersect the Western Trail. Here we had some trouble, but nothing serious. When we arrived within eight or ten miles of Dodge City, Kansas, a beautiful city, situated on the north bank of the Arkansas River and about one month's drive from Red River, we could see about fifty different trail herds grazing up and down the valley of the Arkansas River. That night we had a terrible storm. Talk about thunder and lightning I There is where you could see phosphorescence (fox fire) on our horse's ears and smell sulphur. We saw the storm approaching and every man, including the rustler, was out on duty. About 10 o'clock at night we were greeted with a terribly loud clap of thunder and a flash of lightning which killed one of our lead steers just behind me. That started the ball rolling. Between the rumbling, roaring and rattling of hoofs, horns, thunder and lightning, it made an old cow-puncher long for headquarters or to be in his line camp in some dug-out on the banks of some little stream. After the first break we