Early that winter wild geese came south by the hundreds. I used to hunt them down the Colorado River, ten or twelve miles below Austin. The birds would feed in the corn fields in the early morning, then flock to the sand bars in the river during the middle of the day. There was nothing silly about those geese, for they were smart enough to frequent only the big islands, three or four hundred yards from any cover. It was impossible to reach them with any kind of a shotgun. I used to slip up to them as close as I could and watch them for hours, trying to think of some plan to get within gun shot of them. I saw as many as a thousand geese on those bars at a single time. I have thought regretfully of those birds many times since, and have wished I could have shot into one of those flocks with a modern rifle—I could have killed a dozen geese at a shot.
In the spring of 1871 I had my first trip to the frontier of Texas. My father traded some of his Grimes County pine land for a bunch of cattle in Brown County, and took me with him when he went to receive the herd. This was the first time I had ever been twenty-five miles from Austin. I was delighted with the trip, the people, and the country. Those big, fine frontiersmen, each wearing a pair of sixshooters and most of them carrying a Winchester, fired my boyish imagination. Their accounts of frontier life and their Indian tales fascinated me. I wanted to stay right there with them and lost all interest in ever living in town again. During the same year my father drove several bunches of cattle to Austin and I helped him on those drives. Thus I began to be a cowboy,—my first step toward the life of the open, upon which I had set my heart.
In the summer of 1872 my mother's health began to fail and my father took her to Lampasas Springs. The water seemed to help her so much that he decided to make Lampasas our home. At that time Lampasas County was strictly a cattle country, but there was not much cow hunting during the winter in those days. The cattlemen and the cowboys spent a good deal of time in town just having a good time. During this period I became well acquainted with them. In the spring of 1873 my father made a trip back to Austin on some business. The frontier had been calling to me ever since my first visit there, and I now took advantage of my father's absence to slip out to Coleman County, at that time on the frontier of Texas.
Monroe Cooksey and Jack Clayton had bought a bunch of cattle in Coleman County and I saw the outfit when it left Lampasas. I was slightly acquainted with most of the men in this outfit, so I decided to follow it and try to get work. It was an Indian country every step of the way, and I was afraid to make the trip alone. In a day or two I met a man named Bob McCollum. He was hauling a load of flour to Camp Colorado and let me travel with him. I bade my mother and sisters good bye and did not see them again until the next December.
We reached old Camp Colorado without mishap in about five days. Clayton and Cooksey's outfit was there loading up supplies for the spring work. I stood around watching the cowboys making their preparations, but lacked the courage to ask them for work. Finally, the outfit started down on Jim Ned Creek to camp for dinner. I went with the men and at last got up spunk enough to ask Mr. Monroe Cooksey for a job. He looked at me for a minute and then asked, "What kind of work can a boy of your size do?"
I told him I was willing to do anything a boy of my age could do. He made no reply and we went on and camped for dinner. After dinner the men made ready to go over on Hoard's Creek to camp for the night. The boys made a rope corral and began to catch their mounts. I just stood there like an orphan watching them. Presently Mr. Cooksey dashed his rope on a heavy set bay horse. The animal showed the whites of his eyes, made a rattling noise in his nose and struggled so violently that it took three men on the rope to hold him. Mr. Cooksey then turned to me and said, "Here, boy, if you can ride this * * * (giving an unmentionable name to the horse) you have a job cinched."
I turned, grabbed my saddle, bridle and blanket and started to the animal. An elderly man in the outfit headed me off.
"Young man," he said, "this is an old spoiled horse, and unless you are a mighty good rider you had better not get on him."
I brushed him aside.
"Pshaw, I'm hunting work, and while I'm not a broncho buster, I will make a stab at riding him if he kills me."