A KANSAS CYCLONE
From the only Successful Photograph ever
taken
When a violent storm, accompanied by thunder and lightning, stampedes the cattle, they will probably get mixed up with two or three other herds, and much labor and confusion results, and a considerable amount of tall swearing and fighting takes place before they can be separated and each herd gotten to itself. Every animal, besides the regular brand of the owner, has his tail bobbed and a “road-mark” put upon him during the drive, and in a mixed herd the rider goes in and “cuts out” all the cattle that bear his brand and runs them into a separate flock.
When cattle are sleeping it requires very little to stampede them. A loud breath, the clank of a chain tied to the leg of a wagon-mule, or the galloping of a horse will sometimes cause them to be up and gone in the twinkling of an eye. They will run over whatever is in their path, and the only way to stop them is to get them to “milling,” or travelling in a circle, when they will wind themselves up like a ball and stop. It is instinctive with them to run when anything else is running, and away they go at the slightest noise, with the cow-boys in wild pursuit after them.
Living on Stinking Creek, in the Indian Territory, just off the great trail, is an Irishman named Fitzpatrick, who came to this country not many years ago, a common specimen of the bog-trotting Tipperary Paddy. Floating on the tide of emigration westward, he finally went into the Indian Nation, and, building a cabin in the timber where the trail crossed Stinking Creek, he proceeded to gather up the cattle that dropped from the great herds going through or were lost in some big stampede. His business throve, and in time he married a Choctaw wife and went to housekeeping, and to day he is the owner of many thousand beeves, and is regarded as a rising stock-man. He still collects the stampeded cattle in the creek timber,—a striking example of the strange ways in which men become rich. More than one big stock-man in Texas began his career by branding the mavericks, or wild unbranded and unclaimed heifers, found in the river timber. As an instance of the manner in which they worked up a herd, it is related of a successful stock-man that he started with a solitary steer, which he turned loose on the prairie, and the first year he branded forty calves!...
It was with a feeling of sincere regret that the writer of these lines, meeting with a severe accident, prepared to return to where his home nestled in the Alleghanies, after a sojourn of eighteen months with these wild riders of the plains. Lest the impression be conveyed that these are irreligious and godless men, let the reader fancy a group of men, belted and spurred, seated in a rude arbor, listening reverently to a tall cow-boy who has been selected by unanimous choice to read the Scriptures, and he can form an idea of the last Sunday I spent with the cow-boys. With slow and deliberate utterance, Phil Claiborne read out the words of the golden rule, “As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.” Then he proceeded: “These, my hearers, were the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, who spoke as no man ever spoke; and I pledge you my word, gentlemen, the Bible is a good egg.” Profound attention greeted the speaker, and continuing, he said, “Whatsoever is earthly can be soon replaced, but that which is on yon side of the grave is eternal. If you lose your property, you may acquire more; if you lose your wife, you may marry again; if you lose your children, you may have more; but if you lose your immortal soul, then up the spout you go.”