CHAPTER I 



THE EARLY DAYS 



IT IS a far cry from the S. M. S. Ranch in 1920 

 to the five-board fence on my father's little farm, 

 near Leavenworth, Kans., where I sat fifty years 

 ago (in 1870) watching the first herd of Texas cattle 

 that I had ever seen. They were driven into an 

 adjoining pasture, and as I look back through the 

 vista of men, methods and events that have filled that 

 gap in the evolution of the cattle industry I am 

 reminded that The Breeder's Gazette in asking me 

 to review that period from a personal standpoint 

 may not have realized how full of it I am, or how 

 much space would be required to tell the story, which 

 must necessarily be rambling. I shall not attempt 

 to write history in chronological order. As Henry 

 Watterson, in some wonderful stories of men and 

 events, in his "Looking Backward" series, wrote of 

 characters and events of interest rather than orderly 

 history, so I wish I might use the general title of his 

 recollections, because my own will be simply the 

 memories of "looking backward," and yet I shall try 

 to reach the time when the past steps upon the 

 threshold of the present. 



Harking back to the boy of 10 years on the 

 board fence, I recall that the cattle were from the 



