day. But across all the banners and the pomp and show and the very remarkable organization was invisibly written one word, “Trail,” and a big wide trail at that, stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to far Montana. The Texas cowman with a vast accumulation of cattle on his hands saw only one outlet for his products-northern pastures. He was being crowded by the steady increase in his herds and his market lay out of the state. To market he could not ship his young cattle. They were not suited for the feed yard or the rich pastures of the Central States. Cleveland had just been elected President, the first Democrat since the War. The South long out of power was feeling her strength and our friends, flushed with victory, flooded the southern metropolis. They shouted, they caucused, they drank generously, accepted every brewer's invitation with a shout of approval, and they, as well as all of us, had a grand time. Con Kohrs, as I remember, gave a supper at Faust's one evening. One of our Wyoming bunch became very hilarious and a kind hearted policeman had to eject him and show him the way to his hotel. Right after breakfast on the Monday morning after our arrival, the true state of affairs developed. It was the object of the Texas men to get a resolution put through favoring a trail. Many propositions came up, none of them very practical, so in a general way it resolved itself into a proposition. that would protect both the southern and northern cattlemen. The Chicago division never dreamed but that Mr. Smith, who had presided with great ability and dignity at Chicago, would be an admirable man at St. Louis. He was a central Illinois man of the best Kentucky blood, successful as a farmer and breeder, standing high in the councils of his state, but this proposal was brushed aside at once. The southerners wanted a Texas man and a fight at once developed. Old political hands who had attended conventions and similar meetings, scented the coming conflict and I think we caucused, argued, countered for a day and a night. It developed that Texas was not strong enough to out vote Colorado and the northern states, so John L. Routt, ex-Governor of Colorado, was elected presiding officer and he served the meeting splendidly. Then the fire eaters began. What a lot of combustion there was! When the trail business was settled, so far as it could be, the attendance was slim and the other subjects got very scant attention. The trail came to nothing. It was doomed at the very hour of the meeting. The Kansas granger, the Arkansas traveler, the Russian settler, had their eye on western Kansas, whence it had its course. Later there was a proposition to move it westward towards Colorado, but the settler was there also. Few if any of us thought about railroads, and yet scarcely six months after holding this gathering, so full of fight and ginger on the trail question, I was shipping young cattle from New Mexico to Julesburg, Colo., and starting them north from there, landing them in the Little Missouri country a month earlier than by driving and in much better condition. They held another meeting I think the following fall in St. Louis. It was as great a failure as the other was a sucThen it joined the Chicago organization under the name of the Consolidated Cattle Growers' Association. The officers of that Association were: cess. D. W. SMITH... President Secretary Treasurer They held a meeting in 1886 in Chicago and at Kansas City in 1887. Both of these meetings were slimly attended, but with a strong Executive Committee much work was done. Several deputations went to Washington and the result was the creation of the Bureau of Animal Industry which continues as our main support in the control of disease. The main work in getting this Bureau established, and much needed legislation, was carried through by D. W. Smith, Bates, Ill., Major W. A. Towers of Kansas City, Mo., Elmer Washburn of Chicago, Ill., Major E. Alvord, Massachusetts, Dr. Azel Ames of Montana, Alvin H. Sanders, Chicago, Ill., Thos. Sturgis, Cheyenne, Wyo., and the writer. Dr. Ames was the publicity man. He was a good talker, a ready writer, a poor business man, but he did good work for the association and he helped mightily to push matters forward. Many others helped incidentally. We made an effort to keep the association alive, but the winter of 1886-87 had cooked the cattleman's goose. We were too poor, too deje.ted to do more than look after our own business, and as far as I recollect we never held another meeting. But we left one monument (the Bureau of Animal Industry) to our credit and that suffices us who are left to tell the story. T CHAPTER XVII HERE was a large amount of rain all over the West during the spring and summer of 1884. As stated in a former chapter, it was a wonderful season in California. In Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, the Dakotas, the same conditions prevailed. There was an abundance of feed and consequently fat cattle. That summer I devoted a large amount of my time to the management of the Z ranch. When the ranch was purchased from John T. Stewart as stated before, Messrs. Williams & Haskell were in charge of the range. When Williams left, Haskell took charge. He was an eastern boy, active and intelligent, but his loyalty was doubtful so far as the above outfit was concerned. Anyway, he left and joined his old employer in the ranch business in Nebraska. So in the course of events, John T. Gatlin became foreman and ranch manager. He was a tall, well built Texan, naturally a good man, but his associates had in a measure corrupted him. He had not the moral courage to shake them off and he gathered round him, in addition to what were already working on the range, a lot of as worthless curs as ever threw a rope and even after we had got quit of them, he gathered another bunch equally worthless. The Sweetwater Valley in those days was a vast open country. Except for a few horse pastures, barbed wire was unknown. Below the Three Crossings, great cathedral rocks of granite rose and stood out in majestic grandeur. Neither Westminster Abbey or the Madeleine in Paris could make a greater impression on your mind. Southwards was Green Mountain on whose benches some settlers had lonely homes. West and North were great sagebrush plains, swelling and falling as streams intersected and drained vast spaces that seemed interminable as you rode across them. Its solitudes made you homesick. It was a rough, rather inhospitable country, for ranches were few and far between and most of them, except at places like Tom Sun's, were poorly equipped. Signor's gin-mill was the center of the valley commercially and socially. The spring round-up for the district met on the headwaters of the Powder River, working south and westwards from that point. Half a dozen or more outfits met there. The cowpunchers led by Jack Flagg, and men of his stripe, struck for higher wages. They had said nothing when engaged or on leaving for the meeting point. Few or any owners attended or rode with the round-ups. The foremen did the work and they, after some show of resistance, lay down and granted the demands of the boys. It was not the advance in wages that made so much difference. It was the way it was done. Gatlin, who on an occasion of this kind was like a piece of putty, threw up his hands at once. He lost control of his men and if you wish to be ridden over, stamped upon, get a cowboy to do it, and more especially the brand we employed in those days in the Sweetwater region. They were the real simonpure, devil-may-care, roystering, gambling, immoral, revolver-heeled, brazen, light-fingered lot and yet a dash of bravado among them that was attractive to the stranger. They had no respect for a man and little for a woman. Yet they were good workers. Many of them had individually good instincts. "In the herd” they were mean and to hesitate with them meant losing. If they bluffed you, goodby to any discipline. In range work you cannot segregate your men. They work in your own bunch or if they go from home to "rep" they join other outfits. It is a sort of moving village life on the plains with a fresh camp daily, even sometimes twice a day. The work moved along all summer without much trouble and the first shipments of beeves had met a good market, bringing from $4.50 to $4.75 per 100 lbs. in Chicago. Towards the end of September we had some rough weather. On the 26th of September we were camped north of Rongis, about twenty-five miles from the ranch, when a snowstorm struck us. A representative of an English agricultural |