Thus were the great herds accumulated in Texas after the war. But cattle were so abundant that their local value was trifling. Markets had to be sought. The only outlets were the mining camps and Indian agencies of the Northwest, and the railway construction camps then pushing west from the Missouri River. So the Texans gathered their cattle into herds of two thousand to three thousand head each, and struck north across the trackless Plains. Indeed this movement reached such proportions that, excepting in a few narrow mining belts, there is scarcely one of the greater cities and towns between the ninety-eighth and one hundred and twentieth meridians which did not have its origin as a supply point for these nomads. Figures will emphasize the magnitude of the movement. The cattle-drive northward from Texas between the years 1866 and 1885 was approximately as follows: 1866 260,000 1877 201,000 1867 35,000 1878 265,649 1868 75,000 1879 257,927 1869 350,000 1880 394,784 1870 350,000 1881 250,000 1871 600,000 1882 250,000 1872 350,000 1883 265,000 1873 404,000 1884 416,000 1874 166,000 1885 350,000 1875 151,618 --------- 1876 321,998 Total 5,713,976 The range business on a large and profitable scale was long since practically done and ended. In Texas there remain very few open ranges capable of turning off fair grass beef. With the good lands farmed and the poor lands exhausted, the ranges have become narrower every year; and every year the cost of getting fat grass steers has been eating deeper and deeper into the rangeman's pocket. Of course, there are still isolated ranges where the rangemen still hang on, but they are not many, and most of them must soon fall easy prey to the ploughshare. When the rangeman was forced to lease land in Texas, or buy water fronts in the Territories and build fences, his fate was soon sealed. With these conditions, he soon found that the sooner he reduced his numbers, improved his breed, and went on tame feed, the better. A corn shock is now a more profitable close herder than any cowpuncher who ever wore spurs. This is a sad thing for an old rangeman to contemplate, but it is nevertheless the simple truth. Soon the merry crack of the six Footer will no more be heard in the land, its wild and woolly manipulator being driven across the last divide, with faint show of resistance, by an unassuming granger and his all-conquering hoe. The rangeman, like many another in the past, has served his purpose and survived his usefulness. His work is practically done, and few realize what a noble work it has been, or what its cost in hardship and danger.