Among the pioneer ranchmen of the Rockies was Nelson Story. He netted more than ten thousand dollars in the placer mines of Alder Gulch. This sum he invested in a thousand Texas longhorns in 1866. With twenty-seven trail-hardened cowboys he brought the cattle to Montana. It was a tremendous undertaking to get them through a veritable gauntlet of hostile Indians and desperate white thieves. Three of his men were killed before they reached the end of Bozeman Trail.[178] Gold dust in exchange for beef proved more profitable than taking it from the placers themselves. Even the poorest ox would bring a hundred dollars, and so the traffic increased. At this time the able Sioux chief, Red Cloud, served notice upon the government that he would kill every white man who traveled along that trail. It was not an idle boast; the record shows nearly two hundred casualties in the last six months of 1866. In fact, the Bozeman Trail became one long battleground, scene of such Sioux victories as the Fetterman and Wagon Box massacres. However, the military persisted, and with constant operations stemming from Forts Kearney and Smith the trail was kept open.[179] In 1870 more than 40,000 Texas cattle reached Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. Six years later the mountain Indians were largely liquidated. The removal of Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull opened the way for new cattle commonwealths. By 1880 the federal census reported 428,279 head in Montana and 521,213, in Wyoming. Soon the stockmen evolved a considerable network of mountain trails. The main artery went up the Yellowstone to Fort Custer and thence into Wyoming via Forts McKinney, Reno, and Fetterman to Cheyenne for shipping. New names entered the stage with the growth of the cattle business such as Granville Stuart, James Fergus, A. J. Davis, John Ming, John Grant, Conrad Kohrs, R. S. Ford, Ancenny, Poindexter, Iliff, Flowerree, and George Searight.[180] Then there were the famous companies, The Union Cattle Company, The Swan Land and Cattle Company, North American, Powder River, Prairie, and Horseshoe being among the major names. Professor Dan E. Clark states that twenty Wyoming companies were organized in 1883, with individual capitalization from ten thousand to three million and a combined value of twelve million dollars.[181] In Montana, though, the Stock Growers Association represented an ownership of half a million head of cattle in 1884. The Eastern Montana Stock Growers Association of the same state claimed a capital investment of thirty-five million dollars.[182]