Thence on there was no need for the wagon tongue or the North Star. One Chisholm Trail, of many mythical ones, was now really begun. The marks of the wagon wheels were unmistakable. The giant steers of the Del Sol vanguard swung out along the main traveled road as though this was what they long had sought. McCoyne expressed wonderment at seeing so few men handle thousands of great animals.
“You’ve been doing ten or twelve miles a day?” said he. “We can make fifteen or twenty. Push them along. All Abilene is waiting for them.”
It was plain sailing and the weather was good. No tribute-seeking Indians appeared, and the cattle were as peaceable as though they never had dreamed of a run. The Del Sol outfit put mile after mile behind it, rapidly, steadily, the work oxen on the carts sometimes almost on a trot, the sore backs exempt in the remuda, every man feeling that trail’s end was not so far.
Between them and the Arkansas River now ran only one considerable stream—the Salt Fork, spoken of with respect by drovers, for quite customarily it offered swimming water. But now, even if the advanced season had not left the water low, the Salt Fork would have been by no means an insuperable obstacle, for Jesse Chisholm had left here a good raft which he had built for his own purposes. It was better than a bridge. The cattle swam the stream readily, confidently, and in brief order the carts were jerked across at the ends of spliced reatas. The entire crossing went forward methodically and without the loss of a single head.
“So that’s the way you do it?” commented the man of Abilene. “You had some rivers below here too?”
“Almost. This here is play compared to it,” said Nabours. “But you can go anywheres with cows if you know how. That’s the only thing us Texans does know. Yes, we got sever’l cows down in Texas. And I don’t see why this country here wouldn’t raise cows—in the summer anyhow.”
They advanced through the Osage country, over as beautiful grassland as a man ever saw, the prairie covering wavering knee-deep and spotted with many flowers. Wild game was in sight much of the time. There was not a weed. No plow had been here.
“Roll along, little dogies!” came the lazy voice of a swing man. “Roll along, roll along!”