|
|
Libraries Home | Mobile | My Account | Renew Items | Sitemap | Help |
|
Select a method to view the page:
|
929
Before we reached Dodge City Mr. Gipson received a message that Stephens & Worsham had 1,500 steers on the trail and to wait until they arrived, as they wanted to put both herds together. When one herd was made out of the two, making 3,350 head, all of the scrub employees were turned off and all of the stout, able-bodied men were selected to go on with the herd. Mr. Gipson returned to Texas and Frank Watson took charge of the outfit, and we proceeded on our way. An old trail driver told me that after a herd crossed the Arkansas River they would never stampede again. I was only pleased to find that his statement was true, for they did not stampede again. Solve this mystery if you can.
After we crossed the Kansas and Nebraska line we had a lovely range and plenty of water through Nebraska. When we crossed the plains of, that state, for a distance of 75 miles we did not see a stick of timber as large as a hoe handle and there was not a single house on this immense domain, not a creek or a river. Luckily for us heavy rains had fallen over the entire plains, and we had water. Old cowmen claim that on this stretch of plains the mercury often drops to thirty degrees below zero, and it is snow-bound for several weeks at a time. During severe winters it is impossible for anything to live there in the open.
After leaving the Nebraska line we crossed over into Colorado, and there had the pleasure of feasting our eyes on the most beautiful range that was ever beheld by a cowboy. The gramma grass was half a knee high, and was mixed with nutritious white grass that was waist high, waiving in the breeze like a wheat field. We drove up the Arickaree, a distance of about 100 miles, and had a picnic along this bubbling stream every day. The Arickaree was a tributary of the Platte River. We delivered our cattle near Deer Trail, Colorado, fifty miles southeast of Denver, and sixty-five miles east of the foot of the Rocky Mountains, on September 25th, 1883, to a