Longhorn Empire Read Online Free Page B

ones, held. She turned quickly and vanished into the night.
    Austin Brant drew a deep breath. He glanced around at a sound and saw Norman Kane at his elbow. Kane was staring toward the
     door, the glitter in his black eyes intensified.
    “You see interesting things in this hangout,” he remarked.
    “Uh-huh,” Brant agreed absently, “you do.”
    The first beams of the rising sun found the Running W trail herd streaming north. Some distance ahead was a dust cloud that
     marked Norman Kane’s Flying V critters, which had gotten under way first. Still farther ahead another cloud denoted a herd
     that came from north of the Cimarron to hit the Dodge City trail.
    To the west and south a third cloud spotted still another outfit rolling in behind the Running W. The longhorns were on the
     march, as they had been for nearly ten years, as they would be for close to another de cade, in the course of which they would
     change the face of the land, the habits of the people, and the aims and history of the West.
    Nothing could stop the onward march of the long-horns. Cholera, Spanish fever, swollen rivers and other difficulties of the
     trail, loss of riders and loss of cows, rifles in the hands of angry grangers, prohibitory laws—all made the attempt, but the
     horns continued to clash, the wild eyes to roll, the shaggy backs heave, with the north and the towns of the north ever in
     view. The territories were filling up with land seekers who needed untold thousands of cattle to stock their ranges. The cities
     and the towns demanded cheap meat. Boom towns like Virginia City, Gold Hill and Deadwood were willing to pay any price for
     it. The government needed millions of pounds for the Indians herded onto the reservations and no longer able to supply their
     needs from the buffalo.
    All these provided the necessary incentive for the great drives that began on the watersheds of the Brazos, the Colorado,
     the far-off Nueces and the mysterious Pecos and thundered north. There was a golden harvest to be reaped. The cattle owners,
     large and small, were out to get their share. Nothing should stop them. Nothing could stop them. The great barons of the open
     range lived like feudal lords on this golden flood. Small owners and individual cowboys sensed opportunity. The herds grew,
     the drivers became larger, more frequent. The bawling of worried cows, the blatting of frightened calfs, the rumblings of
     disgruntled steers rose with the cursing, the song, the crack of six-shooters and the shouting of orders in a pandemonium
     that disturbed the silence of nature from the Gulf to Kansas, and beyond.
    It was the wild, unordered, triumphant song of marching empire. Born of economic necessity plus the challenge of the wilderness,
     the vast migration brought a dozen great states into being, made of Chicago the granary of the world and left an impress that
     would be plain half a century later, and more. The march of the Texas long-horns! The saga of the individualist! The very
     spirit of America laughing at the wilderness, setting to naught the problems of distance and terrain, accelerating the wheels
     of progress, creating a legend, a literature, turning dreams into realities and merging the impossible with the possible in
     a common pattern of fact.
    Twenty to twenty-five miles a day were covered in the early days of a drive, so that the cows were tired when night came and
     less liable to stampede. Later this was cut down to an average ofmore like ten. But with Dodge City still some seventy miles distant, Austin Brant stepped up the speed of the drive until
     the cows were travelling nearly as fast as they did when started north across the Texas Panhandle.
    “It’s gettin’ close to our deadline date,” Webb had told him when they left the crossing. “If things go along smooth, we’re
     okay, but if somethin’ should happen to delay us, the loop will be drawn mighty tight.”
    So Brant took no chances and pushed the