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Updated: June 5, 2025
Sponsilier's beeves had firmly caught the fancy of the buyers, and the delay in closing the trade was only temporary. "I can close the deal any minute I want to," said Siringo to me, "but we mustn't appear too anxious. Old man Don's idea was to get about one hundred thousand dollars earnest-money in hand, but if I can get five or ten more, it might help tide us all over a hard winter.
Enough rain had fallen to settle the dust, and the signal of the approaching herds, seen the evening before, was no longer visible. The delay in their appearance, however, was only temporary. I rode down to Sponsilier's camp early that morning and reported the observations of my wrangler at sundown.
I held a circle of listeners for several hours, in recounting Sponsilier's and my own experiences in the quarantine camps, and our utter final failure, except that the opposition herds had been detained, which would force them to drive over twenty miles a day in order to reach Buford on time.
After passing The Rebel's wagon fully a half mile, we rounded in the herd, which soon lay down to rest on the bedground. In the gathering twilight, the camp-fires of nearly a dozen trail wagons were gleaming up and down the river, and while we speculated with Sponsilier's boys which one was ours, the guard arrived and took the bedded herd.
Lovell continued to monopolize the conversation, blowing on the cattle and ribbing up Forrest to see that the beeves thenceforth should never know tire, hunger, or thirst. The commissaries had run low; Sponsilier's cook had been borrowing beans from us for a week past, while Parent point-blank refused to share any more of our bacon.
The civilian attaches followed at a respectful distance, a number of us joining them as far as Sponsilier's camp. There we halted, when Sanders insisted on an explanation of the remarks which had passed between our employer and his. Being once more among his own, he felt no delicacy in asking for information which he would never think of doing with his superiors.
Giving him instructions to go into camp on a creek three miles south of headquarters, my wagon was the second one to get away. Some of the teams bolted at the start, and only for timely assistance Sponsilier's commissary would have been overturned in the sand. Two of the wagons headed west for Uvalde, while my brother Bob's started southeast for Bee County.
The morning were the quiet hours of the town, and when the buyers had received and gone over their large and accumulated mail, the partners came over to the Dodge House, looking for the fiscal agent, as I supposed, to close the trade on Sponsilier's cattle. Siringo was the acme of indifference, but listened to a different tale.
The loss of a night's sleep on my outfit was a good excuse for an after-dinner siesta. Untying our slickers, we strolled out of hearing of the camp, and for several hours obliterated time. About three o'clock Bob Quirk aroused and informed us that he had ordered our horses, and that the signal of Sponsilier's cattle had been seen south on the trail.
Runt Pickett, wearing a skirt made out of a blanket and belted with a hobble, won the admiration of all as the only living lady lion-tamer. Resuming comfortable positions on our side of the commissary, a lad named Waterwall, one of Sponsilier's boys, took up the broken thread where Forrest's wrangler had left off. "The greatest dog-man I ever knew," said he, "lived on the Guadalupe River.
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