Author’s Note.—There is no Gregg, no Parkman, no Chittenden for the lost and forgotten cattle trail. Although almost as important as the east-and-west railroads in the early development of the trans-Missouri, it has no map, no monument, no history, almost no formulated condition. There is a comprehensive literature covering our westbound expansion, but of the great north-and-south pastoral road almost the contrary must be said, such is the paucity of titles.
The classic of the cattle trade of the West is a crude book, now rare, by Joseph G. McCoy, called Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the West and Southwest. It is upon this book that the author has rested most largely in endeavoring to restore the feel of the early cattle drives. It was printed in 1874.
Within the past two years Mr. George W. Saunders, of San Antonio, Texas, has printed a book, The Trail Drivers of Texas, containing brief life stories from the pens of more than a hundred men who trailed cattle before and after the railroad days. These sketches are human documents. The author wishes to acknowledge obligations to this work, which he has used almost literally in many passages for the sake of known accuracy.
The books of Andy Adams—The Log of a Cowboy; Wayne Anthony, Cow Man; Wells Brothers; A Texas Matchmaker; The Outlet—make the most authentic fiction or quasi fiction of the trail days. Mr. Adams made trips on northern drives, his experience beginning in 1882. His books are storehouses of later trail data. The author makes acknowledgment to that source of information. Records of army exploration also have been useful.
The quasi biography of Chas. A. Siringo, A Lone Star Cowboy, is still another, and very useful record of life in the early Southwest. It abounds in facts as well as in thrilling incidents. The author can personally testify to its accuracy in many details of the bloody history of New Mexico. Mr. Siringo’s boyhood dates back into the Texas that existed before the northern trails began.
The author himself went to the Southwest in 1881; has lived and traveled in the West all his life; and has followed or crossed the old cattle trail at perhaps fifty points between the Gulf and Northern boundary lines. The term of years thus indicated covers many changes. The future will bring yet swifter change. As to the great pastoral days of the West, it is high time for a fiction that may claim to be faithful and reverent.
Fiction cannot be exact, else it would be history and not fiction. That it should fairly reflect the spirit of its chosen day goes without saying. To lurid writers who never could have known the West, the author has found himself unable to contract any debt, but would make full acknowledgment to all who have aided from a wider information or experience.
CHAPTER VI
THE LONE HERD
“AND I’ll bet this is the sorriest herd of cows that ever was made on the soil of Texas!” There was grief in the tones of old Jim Nabours as he turned away from the dusty flat where the circling riders were holding the main body of the T. L. gathering. For many days the men had been riding mesquite thicket, timbered flat and open glade, sweeping in the cattle in a general rodeo for the making of the trail herd. This was the result.