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566
overflowed. When we came to the Smoky River, Jack Kyle pointing the herd, I was riding a little mule, and when I started in to swim the driver, a man whom we did not know, who was riding a bob-tailed horse, said if my little mule could swim the river "old Bob" could swim it. His horse sank with him and the man was drowned. I threw a rope to him but he failed to catch it. His body was recovered three days later. From Abilene myself and S. M. Eeds shipped our horses and mules to Junction City where we bought wagons, loaded up and started back to Texas, reaching home in November.
In 1870, 1871 and 1872 I and my brother, W. B. Conley, freighted to Port Lavaca, and in 1873 we built a home for our parents where Fentress is now located. On November 19, 1874, I was married to Miss Amanda Eastwood, and the following year we moved to the place where my wife was born, two miles above Fentress, where we have lived all these years. We had three children, one of whom died five years ago. The other two, boys, live at Fentress. I served as county commissioner from 1909 until 1916.
I came to Texas with my father and his family in 1855 when I was a small boy. We settled about two miles north of Gonzales, which at that time was a very small place, with just a few stores and a handful of people. The country was all open, mostly prairie, with an abundance of cattle, horses and hogs. And we used to go hog hunting like people hunt deer today, and kill wagonloads of them, some of the finest you ever saw.
I believe the cattle business to be the greatest enterprise the world has ever seen, even greater than the manufacture of automobiles is today, considering the time and the conditions. In the early days the cattle