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Another thing that interested me was the catching of mustang horses in No Man's Land. One day I ran across a party of men in camp who were making the capturing of these mustangs a business. They had several head tethered nearby which they had just captured, and showed me a large bunch standing about a mile away which they informed me they had been running for several days. These men worked in relays, or reliefs, and kept the mustangs on the go, without permitting them to rest or get to watering places. In the seven days three colts died from exhaustion. The men told me they kept just in sight of them to keep them on the run all day, and finally ran them down. The captured horses I saw there were all beauties.
About sixty miles south of the Palo Duro River I saw the first dirt fence, which had been constructed to catch drifting cattle during blizzards. This fence ran east and west across the plains and served its purpose well, but occasioned heavy losses in some instances. As I journeyed on and when within about twenty miles of the Palo Duro, I began to see dead cattle every few hundred yards, and the nearer I approached to the river the carcasses seemed to increase until I reached the river, where there were literally hundreds of dead cattle scattered around over the prairie. I was told by the roundup men these cattle had drifted down to the dirt fence, where they almost perished for water, and when they came back to the river they drank so much water it killed them.
We had 3,000 head of the —X cattle in our herd and had to make a three days' drive without water to get to the river. There were also two more herds of 2,000 each of the JA brand, bossed by Fly and Doak, following us, making 7,000 head in all, and when we reached the Palo Duro River, where the old stage line from Dodge City to New Mexico crossed the stream, we found about twenty outfits of roundup ranch hands there with a lot of