“Did ary one of you-all ever hear how far it is to Aberlene?” asked Nabours of his new man, Dalhart, whom he had put on point in view of his obvious education as a cowman.
“Must be e’en around about a plumb thousand miles,” replied the latter. “Hope hit’s thisaway all the ways—plenty of grass and the rivers full enough fer water right along. We ain’t had to hunt water yet. You’d orto see the Llano! We’ve driv two days, out yan, with their tongues hangin’ out.
“Water! When we hit the Colorado I thought we got plenty water. She’ll swim a horse in a dry year, and she swum us for more’n a hundred fifty yards! I was mighty glad to ferry them carts.
“Uh-huh. Ner that ain’t all—the Brazos’ll do the same, and only luck’ll save us from swimmin’ a quarter mile, maybe, on the Red. Then beyond that’s the Washita, narrer but deep. I never talked with no man that ever was north of the Chickasaws. We’ll wet our saddles plenty, shore. What cows we don’t drownd and the Injuns don’t steal, or that don’t get lost in night runs—why, that’s what we’ll have to sell. Four thousand’s a big herd to han’le—too big—but I’ve gethered cows long enough to know a feller better git plenty when the chancet comes.”
North of the first unbridged river—the Colorado—the advance was over a country practically new, although now subdivided into organized counties. The main thrust of the early population was from the south and lower east, so that now the farther north they got the sparser grew the infrequent settlements. All North and Northwest Texas remained terra incognita even for Texans, and no map of it ever had been made, let alone of the wild Indian Territory that lay north of it. The thousands of longhorns, the first herd ever to go north from a point so far south in Texas, plodded along, never turning a backward foot, but hourly finding a new land. Austin was a county-seat town rather than a capitol city. Such communities as Temple, Waco, Cleburne, Fort Worth—all close to the ninety-eighth meridian, along which lay the general course of the first of the cattle drives before the trails moved west—were cities in embryo; Fort Worth, through which bodily the trail ran, had then not over one hundred inhabitants; enough for a metropolis in a state that had not a hundred miles of rails and no trace of a lasting market for the one great commodity—cows.
Across a half dozen counties, a dozen lesser streams, the singular procession passed onward, epochal, in an abysmal ignorance and a childlike self-confidence. Its course was due north; and since now the grass was good and water courses full, it needed to make no digressions. The herd left a trail a hundred yards wide, two hundred, half a mile; but the main road remained written plainly for any who might follow.
Nabours was cowman enough not to crowd his cattle on a march of such indefinite duration, but continually he fretted over the necessary slowness of the journey.
“It’s good country,” he admitted to Del Williams; “can’t complain; grass all right; high enough, but not washed out; and a good creek every forty rod almost. But I never did know Texas was so big. Here we are into May, and when we make the Brazos we’ll be only maybe a hunderd and fifty mile north of where we started at. It’ll be anyways a hunderd years afore we make Aberlene, ef there is any such place, which I doubt, me. Not one of us knows nothing, and nary one has ever been even up here afore. We’ll just about hit the Red when she’s up full.”
“We ain’t there yit,” rejoined his new point man cheerfully. “We may all git drownded in the Brazos; an’ ef we do we won’t need worry none about the Red.”
They had not yet lost all touch with the settlements; indeed, continually crossed the great pastures of men who under range custom held their own river fronts and range. Now and again a sort of trace led them north—the compass finger of fate always pointed north and not west for the state of the Lone Star. But of actual road there was none, fences were undreamed and bridges never yet had been held needful for traveling man. When, therefore, they struck the great Brazos, coming down as did all these upper rivers from the east rim of the mysterious Llano Estacado, it was relief to Nabours to find a pair of rough boats which he fancied he could lash together into ferriage for his troublesome carts and their timid passengers. For the herd a swimming crossing once more was necessary, and demand was made once more on the native generalship of the foreman.