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Beeves are now being driven on the hoof to the front; and the commissary, Colonel Beckwith, seems fully alive to the importance of the whole matter. Our weakest point will be from the direction of Decatur, and I will be forced to risk something from that quarter, depending on the fact that the enemy has no force available with which to threaten our communications from that direction.
That probably meant a big herd of cattle crossing to the Pecos Valley on the Chisum Trail that led to Fort Stanton. The riders were likely just throwing the beeves from the bed-ground to the trail. The boy waited to make sure of their line of travel. Presently he spoke aloud, after the fashion of the plainsman who spends much time alone in the saddle.
Jago de la Vega, which he ransomed for 200 beeves, 10,000 lbs. of cassava bread and 7000 pieces of eight. Many of the English were so captivated by the beauty and fertility of the island that twenty-three deserted in one night to the Spaniards.
Certainly I was an ass to suspect your masters of subsisting, save at honest men's expense." "And as for the rumps of beeves," continued Tomkins, with the same solemnity, "there is a rump at Westminster, which will stand us of the army much hacking and hewing yet, ere it is discussed to our mind."
When the round-up outfits came in for the summer, the beef shipping began. In the first two contingents of cattle purchased in securing the good will of the original range, we now had five thousand double wintered beeves. It was my intention to ship out the best of the single wintered ones, and five separate outfits were ordered into the saddle for that purpose.
On the round-up below the Ganso, we had over three thousand cattle in one rodeo, finding less than five hundred calves belonging to Las Palomas, the bulk on this particular occasion being steer cattle. There had been little demand for steers for several seasons and they had accumulated until many of them were fine beeves, five and six years old.
"Why, you silly boy," said Joel, with contempt; "there wasn't a shot fired, their horses were never out of a walk, never wet a hair, and they changed to fresh ones at noon. The only difference I could see, they wore their hats at dinner. And they were surely cowboys, because they had over three thousand big beeves, and had come all the way from Texas."
"We all have decided that ten of us will go back, Joe," he announced serenely. "That leaves enough to loose-herd the beeves whilst we're away." Yankie grew purple with rage. "If you go you'll walk. I'll show you who's foreman here." "No use raisin' a rookus, Joe," replied the old Confederate mildly. "We're goin'. Yore authority doesn't stretch far enough to hold us here."
The demand had fallen off, and a dull close of the season was predicted, but I shaded prices and closed up my personal holdings before returning. Several of the firm's steer herds were unsold at Dodge, but on the approach of the shipping season I returned to my task, and we began to move out our beeves with seven outfits in the saddle.
An air of joyous expectancy lightened every face, for now the long months of waiting and of anxiety were past; the outriders of Doom had returned from the Southland with goodly store of corn and wine and of fat beeves for future feasting. It was, indeed, chilled and aged blood that did not run the faster on this day of days.
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