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890
of Herbert Peck, a coachman for H. L. Newman of Leavenworth, and he secured me a position with Mr. Newman's brother-in-law, a Mr. Moorehead. I served Mr. Moorehead from 1868 until 1870, receiving $30 per month and board, and was treated well by the family. While working there I met George Lang, who had a butcher shop in Leavenworth, and he invited me to go with him to Texas after a bunch of cattle, so on March 1, 1870, we left Kansas for Texas, when the ground was covered with snow and the weather was as cold as blue blazes. We were on the road one week when we reached Red River in a storm. Next morning we crossed the river into Texas and went to a ranch on Beaver Creek, owned by a man named Terell, of Fort Worth. Mr. Lang and I left the outfit at the ranch and rode over to Fort Worth, which was then only a very small town with one bank, a blacksmith shop and a store. We made a trade with Mr. Terrell for 700 beeves, to be gathered as soon as possible, and by the fifteenth of April we were ready to start back to Kansas with them. That was the largest herd of cattle I had ever seen, and it was all new to me. I shall never forget our first night out, when we had a stampede. I flew right in and tried to keep up with the herd, but my horse fell with me and when we got up and together again the cattle were out of sight. I could hear a big bell on something that was running so I decided to follow it, but soon lost the direction of the bell, and concluded to go back to camp. The old horse I was riding kept trying to go in the opposite direction from the way I thought the camp was. I rode and rode and got so tired I climbed 'up in a tree to take a nap out of reach of the coyotes that were howling all around, and when I dozed off to sleep I tumbled out of the tree, waking up in time to catch onto a lower limb. Then I again decided to try and go to camp, and told the old horse if he knew more about its location than I did to go ahead. And right there I learned that