Chapter XXV.
LOST ON THE STAKED PLAINS.
About a week after my return to White Oaks, I received a letter from Mr. Moore stating that I need not go to Arizona to look after the Slaughter herd as he had hired a United States Deputy Marshal by the name of John W. Poe, now Sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico, to go around by rail and tend to the matter. But when Poe arrived there the herd had been sold and driven to Old Mexico, so that we never knew whether there were any Panhandle cattle in it or not, except what I learned from the mexican, which appeared to me very good evidence, that there were.
On the tenth day of March, while taking it easy waiting for the first of April to arrive so that we could round up the Cohglin range according to agreement, I received a confidential letter from Mr. Geo. Nesbeth of the Cohglin ranch, giving me a broad hint that Mr. Cohglin was getting rid of our cattle as fast as possible, before the first of April should arrive.
The letter arrived in the evening and next morning I took "Big foot" along and struck out for "Stanton"—after giving Chambers and Emory orders to load up the wagon with grub and corn, and follow.
"Big-foot" and I arrived in the Post about three o'clock in the afternoon and went through the Cohglin slaughter pens, finding several freshly butchered "L. X." hides, which went to show that I had been duped, and that the hint from Nesbeth was true. We then rode down the "Bonetta" River nine miles to Lincoln, to go through the hides there and to look for a herd we expected the old fellow had hidden out somewhere along the river.
We stopped in "Stanton" that night and next morning struck out on the White Oaks road to meet the wagon and turn it towards Three Rivers.
We met the outfit at the mouth of Nogal canyon and camped for dinner.
It was sixty miles around by the road to Cohglin's ranch, the route the wagon would have to go and about twenty-five or thirty on a straight line over the White Mountains.