Above Fort Worth village, head due north, to Bolivar. Then don’t go on to the Station—swing northwest up the Elm. Cross near the Spanish Fort. Feel west then for the Beaver. Then run by the North Star six hundred miles. Good water and grass. You can make all crossings. Time about two months. Keep west of the Whisky Trail. Herd cutters and thieves. Watch out all the time for Indians. Which, to a trail boss wholly without map, guide or knowledge of the far and unknown country of the north on ahead, must have seemed a godsend, even lacking authenticity or origin. CHAPTER XX TAKING TOLL UNTIL now Jim Nabours, Texan native born and, barring his travels under General Kirby Smith, of small experience abroad, had been in the habit of regarding his own horizon as sufficient. He had yet to learn a thing or two to show him how swiftly customs were changing in the Lone Star State. In a general way he had heard of “river improvements,” paid for in Texas land scrip, but as to details in that new and pleasing form of plunder he had little knowledge and no concern. Neither had he ever heard of cattle inspecting—yet another form of graft devised in Austin, where more was known or foreseen of the coming cattle hegira than anywhere else in Texas. Furthest of all now from his suspicions was the fact that a gentleman by name of Jameson, well accredited in the current administration, combined in his person the duties of president of a certain “Land and Improvement Company” and of State Cattle Inspector as well; and that this same Jameson that spring was engaged with a small party of his own on a wilderness trip, scouting up and down the Red, in search of towhead snags that might be pulled, or of passing cattle that might be inspected, to the glory of God, as the first Spanish improvers and inspectors of that country once would have phrased it. Commerce sometimes becomes religion, as religion sometimes becomes war. There always lacked explicitness in the story of the Del Sol crossing of the Red River. Jameson—owner of fat contracts in river improvements and cattle inspector by the grace of the carpetbag imperator at Austin—could bring no imposing narrative of himself and his deeds in connection with the advent of this apparition of thousands of wild long-horned kine, handled by a concourse of wild men, which one day broke out of the blackjacks near his camp. That was the Del Sol herd; but Jameson, being only a cattle inspector, could not be supposed to notice the T.L. and Fishhook brand. It was Nabours himself, riding ahead to scout the approach to the high south bank, who had stumbled across the new camp of the inspector and his men. “How, friend?” the herd foreman saluted. Jameson came forward. “Which way?” “North”—succinctly. “North? Across the river? That’s the Indian country.” Nabours grinned. “Shore it is.” “North? But who are you?”