Take 'em North

Tall Edwards sat on his buckskin stallion, idly watching as his men drove the last of his herd into the pens along the railroad tracks. Tracks that over the next few days would carry over twenty-one hundred head of cattle, sixteen hundred of which belonged to him and his brother, to a packing house in Chicago. They would be his cattle only a short while longer. After the final count was made, and the bank draft was in his hands, the rangy, long horned, ill tempered beasts would be the headache of Tom Jamison, the buyer for the slaughter house owners back east. Tall would take enough cash to pay each of his men five months wages, with a small bonus added. The rest, he would deposit in the bank Jamison had recommended. Nineteen men, including the cook and the horse wrangler, had started up the trail from sixty miles south of San Antonio. Fourteen of those men, plus four Cherokee Indian wranglers Tall had enlisted in Indian Territory, had lived to see the drive end. After paying the men, his plans included a visit to a barber shop for a haircut, a shave, and a bath. He would arrange steak dinners for his men, have a couple of drinks with them, and then experience the feel of a real bed under him until he awakened. Taking turns riding nighthawk, the men had gotten by on five or six hours sleep every night, less if there was a stampede or stormy weather. Tall had averaged half that.