第102章 KANGAROOED(8)

To that long winter on the Little Missouri a relentless memory turns in retrospect.We dressed and lived like Eskimos.The first blizzard struck us early in December, the thermometer dropped sixty degrees in twelve hours, but in the absence of wind and snow the cattle did not leave the breaks along the river.Three weeks later a second one came, and we could not catch the lead animals until near the railroad; but the storm drove them up the Little Missouri, and its sheltering banks helped us to check our worst winter drift.After the first month of wintry weather, the dread of the cold passed, and men and horses faced the work as though it was springtime in our own loved southland.The months rolled by scarcely noticed.During fine weather Sanders and some of his boys twice dropped down for a few days, but we never left camp except to send letters home.

An early spring favored us.I was able to report less than one per cent loss on the home range, with the possibility of but few cattle having escaped us during the winter.The latter part of May we sold four hundred saddle horses to some men from the upper Yellowstone.Early in June a wagon was rigged out, extra men employed, and an outfit sent two hundred miles up the Little Missouri to attend the round-ups.They were gone a month and caine in with less than five hundred beeves, which represented our winter drift.Don Lovell reached the ranch during the first week in July.One day's ride through the splendid cattle, and old man Don lost his voice, but the smile refused to come off.

Everything was coming his way.Field, Radcliff & Co.had sued him, and the jury awarded him one --hundred thousand dollars.His bankers had unlimited confidence in his business ability; he had four Indian herds on the trail and three others of younger steers, intended for the Little Missouri ranch.Cattle prices in Texas had depreciated nearly one half since the spring before--"a good time for every cowman to strain his credit and enlarge his holdings," my employer assured me.

Orders were left that I was to begin shipping out the beeves early in August.It was the intention to ship them in two and three train-load lots, and I was expecting to run a double outfit when a landslide came our way.The first train-load netted sixty dollars a head at Omaha--hut they were beeves; cods like an ox's heart and waddled as they walked.We had just returned from the railroad with the intention of shipping two train-loads more, when the quartermaster and Sanders from Fort Buford rode into the ranch under an escort.The government had lost forty per cent of the Field-Radcliff cattle during the winter just passed, and were in the market to buy the deficiency.

The quartermaster wanted a thousand beeves on the first day of September and October each, and wire.This made sixteen thousand steer cattle en route from the latter point for Lovell's new ranch in Dakota.

"Tom," said old man Don, enthusiastically, "this is the making of a fine cattle ranch, and we want to get in on the flood-tide.