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1023
We crossed the Red River about the 20th of May at Red River Station. It was up swimming and there were at least 20 herds balled up there waiting for the river to run down. It was a bad place to hold cattle, so many herds close together, so the boss, Mr. Drake, held a council with us all ; some wanted to drive back a few miles and wait.
We crossed the Wichita the next day. From the time we crossed Red River we never saw a house till we got to Wichita. We soon began to have a little trouble with the Indians. They would come and want a beef or two, but we would send them on to the next fellow, so we did not have to give them any at all, but they would stampede the cattle at night. We got into the buffalo country, and they gave us a little trouble. Once just as we were getting our herd on the trail, a little after sunrise, a man from the herd just ahead of us loped back and told us that the buffaloes were coming, so we held our herd up. I went to the top of a little hill and I saw a black string. It looked as though it was coming straight to our herd. I went back and we rounded our cattle up so we could hold them if the buffaloes did strike them but they passed just ahead of us. Our cattle got a little nervous, but we held them all right. It took the buffaloes two hours to pass us. Sometimes they would be one behind the other, and then they would come in bunches of 300 or 400. I don't know how many to guess there was, but I think there must have been at least ,fifty thousand. Another time a bunch of about 300 ran through our herd while they were grazing.
We had some bad storms while we were on that long stretch across the plains. We crossed the Arkansas River at Fort Wichita about the 15th of June. About the 20th of June we stopped on a little creek called Beaver Creek. There Mr. Mayfield met us, and the hands all went back but myself and a Mr. Mimms, Charley Angermiller and the cook, Bill Payne. We stayed in that