Bill McDonald took no such view of the situation. With Pat Wolforth he immediately visited the scene of the stampede, and began looking for cattle with the "Diamond-tail" brand, such being the symbol of the Lazarus herd. It was a ticklish undertaking. Some of the cattle had been butchered, and these of course were lost. Others had been absorbed by the herds of men who though not regularly engaged in cow stealing were in nowise particular as to whose cows they got and welcomed anything that browsed unguarded on the range. Still others had been collected in "pockets"—small gullies or canyons—where they were retired from general circulation, guarded, as a rule, by one or two ostensible cowboys.
McDonald began by prevailing upon the honest ranchmen in that section to join at once in a general round-up by which means a great number of cattle could be collected and distributed to their rightful owners. The result was fairly satisfactory and a good many of Lazarus's cattle were recovered, though not always without disputes and a display of fire-arms, especially where the brands had been grown over by the long winter-coat of hair. Such cases were settled first and tried afterward. In other words, McDonald and Wolforth possessed themselves of the cattle and then at their leisure "picked the brand," which is the range idiom for picking the hair from around the brand with a pocket-knife, so the brand may be seen. If the brand proved to be other than that of the Lazarus herd, the cattle were turned over to their true owners. When the round-up was over the cow-hunters took up the search in other directions.
It mattered little to McDonald and Wolforth where they found the Diamond-tail brand—they took the cattle, peaceably if possible, forcibly if necessary. They conducted the campaign with an enthusiasm and vigor which did not invite argument. Large herds they searched without ceremony and if any cattle of their brand were found, they were "cut out" with few formalities and with scant courtesy. When they came upon bunches of the Diamond-tail brand in secluded places, they did not pause to present any credentials except their Winchesters which they carried always ready for instant action, and set out at once with the cattle; also, sometimes, with the astonished cowboys as well. It was a sudden and energetic procedure and resulted in the recovery of the greater number of the lost drove of Lazarus.
It resulted further in a definite plan by Bill McDonald for the discouragement of cattle stealing in the Territory, and for the capture of the most actively engaged in that industry. As set down in a foregoing chapter, the outlaws in the Cherokee Strip were not likely to be congregated in a single rendezvous, as had been the case in No-man's Land, but were scattered as individual squatters through neighborhoods more or less friendly to their business, or at least not bold enough openly to oppose it. Indeed, the back country was very sparsely settled, and the Indians and half-breed whites and negroes were not especially interested in law and order, even where they were not directly concerned in opposing these things. Along the rivers—the Cimmaron, the Canadian, the Washita and the North Fork of the Red River, the country was rugged, and the hiding places for plunder were good. The prairies were nice and level with fine land and plentiful grass. White men had no legal right of residence there, except where they were intermarried with the Indians, and those who acquired citizenship in this manner were not likely to be any more desirable than those others whose occupation was itself an infringement on the law.
"Did they raise anything there, Bill?" McDonald was asked in discussing the conditions, long afterward.
"Just raised hell!" the old Ranger answered drily.
Nearly all, however, made a pretense of agricultural employments; for after all, the country, unlike No-man's Land, was really under a regular form of government; legitimate settlement was considerable, and there was a semblance, at least, of law and order. Also, there were towns of considerable size, and railroads—the latter affording liberal returns now and then when some train was waited upon in a lonely place and the express messengers, mail agents and passengers were invited at the point of six-shooters to contribute to a highway development fund. The writer of these chapters was himself a resident of Kansas during this earlier period, and he recalls now what an uninteresting month it was when an M.K. & T. or Santa Fe or Rock Island train did not come up out of the Territory with passengers telegraphing home for money and the express and mail cars full of bullet holes.
Bill McDonald decided to break up this sort of thing, and set about it in a way suggested by his own peculiar genius. It was necessary first to identify the men who were really concerned in these various employments, for in a country where all were "settlers," even if unofficial ones, it was not worth while working at hap-hazard and bothering men whose only offense might be that of squatting. Investigation must be conducted openly and yet in a way to avoid suspicion. His gentle manner and seemingly inoffensive personality suited him for just such an undertaking, and he prepared and "made up" carefully for the part.
Returning to Quanah and Wanderer's Creek, he bought a "paint horse" (a spotted pony); an old tenderfoot saddle, such as a plainsman would never use, and a book with pretty pictures of fruit in it—a regular nurseryman's plate-book—the kind of a book fruit-tree salesmen always carry. Then dressed as unlike an officer, or a cow-man, or a Texan as possible, with these properties he set out—to all appearances a genial, garrulous, easy-going tree-man, inviting orders and confidences—willing to sit around all day and whittle and swap knives and yarns, and to express any kind of interest or sympathy necessary to encourage a man to tell his business ventures and those of his neighbors.
It was a pleasant excursion, enough. No fruit-tree man had been through that section before—none ever had dared, or perhaps thought it worth while, to go. McDonald's excursion proved that profit awaited the seller of trees who should first make that wilderness his territory. He had expected not much in the way of sales, for he did not imagine that men engaged in driving off and slaughtering other men's cattle, and in waylaying trains and robbing banks would have any special taste for horticulture. This was an error of judgment. Most of these bad men had been fairly good boys at home at some time in the past, and the sight of those luminous plates presenting fruit of extravagant size and coloring, made their mouths fairly water at the thought of its cultivation by the doorway of their own dug-outs or sod houses or log cabins. They turned the pages lovingly, and lingered over the wonderful plums and pears and peaches, and as they turned they talked and somehow almost without realizing it they told a great many things about themselves and neighbors which no well-trained and properly constructed outlaw should tell, even to a sympathetic and simple-hearted fruit-tree man who wrote down the orders and listened and chuckled at some of the yarns, while he encouraged further confidences.