On the 10th day of June we yoked up and started on the long journey. At the outset everybody about the train, from the captain to the cavayard driver, was filled with good humor. The weather was perfect, the view of the apparently boundless prairie exhilarating. The road having been surveyed and established by the government before the country was at all occupied, was almost as straight as an arrow toward the southwest. The wagonmaster would arouse the men before daylight in the morning and the cattle would be driven up to the corral, yoked up and hitched to the wagons by the time the cooks could prepare breakfast, a cook being assigned to each mess of six or eight men. Some of the oxen were not well broken to the yoke, and it was a difficult task at the dim break of day for a green man to select each steer that belonged to his team in the corral, where the 250 were crowded together so that their sides would almost touch. Once on the road the drive was continued for from eight to twelve miles, the stops being governed by the convenience of camping-places, where grass and water could be found for the cattle. Familiarity with the route was essential in the wagonmaster, who, riding some distance ahead, would select the camping-place, and when the train came up direct the formation of the corral. The cattle were immediately unyoked and turned loose, herded by two of the teamsters. Often it was necessary to drive the cattle a mile or more from the corral in order to find sufficient grass, that near the road being kept short by the incoming trains from Mexico and the outgoing trains ahead of us. At Council Grove there was a considerable settlement of Indian traders. There we found assembled a large band of Kaw Indians, who had just reached there from a buffalo hunt on the Arkansas. The Kaws were not classed as “wild” Indians, and I think had been assigned to a reservation not far off, but when they got off on a hunt their native savage inclinations made them about as dangerous as those roaming the plains at will, and whose contact with the white man was much less frequent.