After leaving Tulerosa our route lay across a young desert, called the "White Sands," a distance of sixty miles. That night Sam and I camped at a lonely spot called "White Water," where there wasn't a stick of wood in sight. We had to make a fire out of a bush called the "oil weed" to keep warm by.
The next night we put up with an old man by the name of Shedd, who kept a ranch on the east side of Osscuro mountains, near San Augustine Pass.
On arriving in the Pass next morning, on our way to Las Cruces, we could see the whole Rio Grande valley, dotted with green fields, for at least a hundred miles up and down. And by looking over our shoulder, in the direction we had come, we could see the white looking plain or desert, which extends for two hundred miles north and south. It was indeed a beautiful sight, to one who had just come from a snowy country, and we were loath to leave the spot.
Arriving in Las Cruces, (City of the Crosses) on the Rio Grande, twenty-five miles from Shedd's where we had left that morning, I went to making inquiries about Mr. Pat Cohglin's whereabouts. I found out by the Postmaster, Cunnifee, who was an intimate friend of his that he was in El Paso, Texas, fifty miles below, and would be up to "Cruces" the next day.
That night Sam and I proceeded to take in the town, which was booming, on account of the A. T. and S. F. R. R. being only forty miles above, and on its way down the river to El Paso.
The next morning Sam bid me adieu and struck out on his journey for Willcox, Arizona, about two hundred miles distant.
That evening Mr. Cohglin, whom I found to be a large, portly looking half-breed Irishman, drove up to Mr. Cunnifee's store in a buggy drawn by a fine pair of black horses.
I introduced myself as having been sent from the Panhandle after the cattle he had purchased from the "Kid." He at first said I couldn't have them, but finally changed his tone, when I told him that I had a crowd at White Oaks, and that my instructions were to take them by force if I couldn't secure them in any other way.
He then began giving me "taffy," as I learned afterwards. He promised faithfully that, as he didn't like to have his whole herd, which was scattered through the whole White Mountain district, disturbed at that season of the year, if I would wait until the first of April, at which time the new grass would be up, he would help me round-up every hoof of Panhandle cattle on his range. I agreed to do so providing he would promise not to have any more of them butchered at "Stanton."
The old fellow was worried considerably about the three hundred head of cattle Cooper had stolen from him. He told me about having followed him with a crowd of mexicans into the Black Range, near the Arizona line, where he succeeded in getting back a few of the broken-down ones.