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Durango and gathered a herd of mixed cattle, drove them to Rocky Ford, shipped the beeves to Kansas City, drove the stock cattle to Brush Station on the South Platte, cut out the dry stock and put 4,000 cows with their calves and 2,500 yearlings in one herd and drove them down the river twenty-four miles to Bush's Ranch and delivered them, then returned to the station and drove dry stock to Cheyenne and sold then to Richie Brothers. I delivered them on Powder River near the Montana line and came back and spent the winter in Denver.
In 1883 I went to the Black Hills in South Dakota and worked on the range there and in Northern Wyoming and Montana for a few years, and then started a cow ranch of my own. I got married in 1891 to one of the finest little seventeen-year-old girls in that country, and we held down the ranch for a few years, but you know the old saying about the big fish eating up the little fish, so I sold out what I had left and came to Loveland, Colorado, and have been running a shoe shop here ever since. I have a few cattle up on the Thompson River near Loveland, and am at present raising milk goats here. Also I have a ranch in Texas, with my nephew as partner and manager.
I see in the first volume of the Trail Drivers' book a sketch wherein one of the ,old boys stated that he would like to make the drives again. I would not care to do so, for I would not again take some of the chances I took then for all the money in these United States. I had enough of three to seven months' work, night and day, in hailstorms, stampedes, blizzards, and the like. And then when the cattle were delivered and we would go to town to find lead whizzing around too close to be comfortable, and see poor fellows falling to rise no more. I do not want any more of the old life.
I see some of the old trail drivers are living on Rough Row, and my sympathies go out to them. My little wife and I are living on Easy Street, and would be pleased to