A RANCHMAN'S RECOLLECTIONS 



tery," in which only men who died with their boots 

 on were buried. I wish I might pause to give more of 

 its history, gleaned from printed facts and word-of- 

 mouth stories told by old-timers. 



In 1882 Jack Potter took a herd to Little Big 

 Horn in Wyoming. R. D. Hunter in 1867 drove 

 1,200 head from Texas to Omaha, and sold the stock 

 to Government contractors at a good profit; he also 

 sold 2,500 head in Chicago in 1869 at a profit. In 

 1879 S. D. Houston took a herd to Ogallala, Neb., 

 as also did "Jeff." D. Harris in 1881, which, in a 

 way, defines the movement into the Dakotas through 

 Ogallala as a northern market. I could fill pages 

 with dates falling into my arbitrary epochs, but I 

 have only sought to show their individual variation. 



In 1873 the panic almost wiped trailmen to Kan- 

 sas off the map, but in 1874, while the drives were 

 lighter, the year was quite generally profitable. 1 87 1 

 was a bad year, while 1872 proved successful. Mc- 

 Coy says that 450,000 cattle entered Kansas in 1873, 

 besides 50,000 turned eastward at Coffeyville, Kans., 

 for a Missouri Pacific Railway connection. The 

 Kansas trail is confusing to some extent, as herds 

 went via Baxter Springs, Kans., thence into south- 

 ern Missouri in 1867 to 1869 to make a connection 

 with the Missouri Pacific. In the same years trail 

 herds went from southern Texas into New Orleans. 

 These were in the main small, and the great mass 

 went to Abilene, Kans., or to some other Union Pa- 



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