I was born Nov. 11th, 1857 on Brushy Creek five miles east of Old Round Rock, Williamson County, Texas.  We lived there until I was about a year old, when we moved to Grandfather McMordie's farm about a mile below where we were living.  The first little incident was when I was about a year and a half old.   I was playing out in the yard and got into a red ant bed, when my mother found me I was nearly dead.  Of course, I don't remember anything about it.  When I was about two years old we moved up on Lake Creek about three miles SW from Round Rock.  We lived there all through the Civil War.  I will mention a few things that I can remember that happened during that time until we moved to Round Rock in December 1867.

I will begin with telling you about when Grandfather McMordie would come to see us.  When he would come I would tell "Ma" that Grandfather liked fried sweet potatoes.  I liked them as well as Grandfather, but I knew she sould cook them for him.  I was then about four or five years old.  I can remember well how he looked.  He died at our house in May 1863.  I was then five and a half years old.

I will mention a few more little things that happened to me about that time.  I was playing on the rock fence and fell off and cut a hole in my temple -- the scar is still there.  It was a bad hurt.  I remember it took a long time for it to get well.

Another narrow escape I had was when I took Aunt Matt's Indian pony to the creek to get water for him.  When he started back from the creek we had to go up a pretty steep hill and I had to clinch my legs to hold on when "Pony" started to run.  He went running through the yard and out of the front gate and on up in the timber.  I realized that would be very dangerous, so I jumped off and just did miss hitting a stump, which very likely would have killed me.  I was riding bareback with a rope halter.  When we found out what made him run away was because I had a little brass spur on on of my bare feet and the more I spurred him the faster he would go.  I stoled it out and put it on.  I suppose I was about seven years old then.

Another experience I had with a horse was when Uncle Abe and Uncle Bob started to go to Round Rock.  They put me on a horse that was not very gentle:  he had just been broke.  When we had gotten about a mile he commenced pitching and threw me off.  I had a shoulder blanket on and I think that touched him in the flank.  After he threw me he went as hard as he could go back home.  When he got there Aunt Matt started to see if I was killed or badly hurt.  I met her and told her that I was not hurt.  She had met Uncle Abe and Uncle Bob, they told her that I was not hurt, but she came on anyway to see for herself.  I was about eight years old.  That is the only time that I have been thrown from a horse, but it was not because I could ride so well.  I was just luck in keeping them from pitching to hard.  I have been very lucky all my life, considering the chances that I have had to get killed or badly hurt.  I had never had a broken bone until I fell in the bathtub and broke two ribs.  I have had many horses to fall and roll over with me, but somehow I managed to get out of the way.

I think the Lord has taken care of me and I thank Him every day for it.  I have a lot to be thankful for:  my dear wife (Bertie Bell McMordie) and my three lovely children, (Warren C. McMordie, Mary Wilma McMordie Maddox, Vera Vivian McMordie Barron) and two fine little grandsons (Warren C. McMordie, Jr., Robert Kenneth McMordie) are the most cherished of all.

I will mention a few more little things that I can remember that happened when I was between five and ten years old.  I can remember when Maggie, my second sister, was born August 17, 1862.  I was five and a half years old but can remember it well.  My father killed two deer that day:  they came up to the salt rocks where we salted the cattle to lick salt and he killed them both.  Another little thing that happened was when Uncle George Blair and I went out looking for the horsed early on morning.  We found a wild turkey on her nest.  When we got home I went with father to the place and he shot her on the nest.  She was fat and fine.  We took the eggs home -- about a dozen -- and set them under a chicken hen.  I think every egg hatched, but the hen and all of the little turkeys got drowned when they were about a month old.  There was a hollow just back of the lot and they roosted there, so the branch got up an drowned the hen and all of the little turkeys.

The thing that I enjoyed most was when my father and several other men would go hog hunting and they would let me go with them.  They had regular hog dogs:  they would trail the hogs until they foung them, when they would bey the hogs and keep them together until the men got there and if there were any fat hogs they would kill them and mark all of the unmarked shoats;  if they knew who they belonged to they would mark them for the owner, but if they didn't know the owner they would divide them between themselves and mark them and let them go.  Sometimes they would be three of four years old when they were killed.  I remember once we were hunting hogs when we ran across a big bunch of wild turkeys.  My father killed a big gobbler.  He weighed 22 pounds.  (That has been about seventy years ago, but I can remember the weight of the turkey and everything as well as if it had happened a year ago.)

I will tell you a few more little things that I can remember that happened during the time we lived on Lake Creek.  I was telling you about hunting wild hogs.  My father and Mr. Jack Bargesley killed a bunch of hogs belonging to Mr. W. A. Davis, who lived on Brushy Creek about three miles west of Round Rock.  I think there was about a dozen of them.  They got half of them:  that was the rule to give half for killing and delivering the dressed hogs.  I was not with them when they killed them, but when they came home to get the wagon th haul them home I went with them to help clean them.  Water was very scarce and we had a hard time gettng enough to scald them.  I remember well my job was to get the water to the place.  I had to dip it up out of the cow tracks and it was a job too.  They made a big fire and heated rocks to heat the water.  It was late in the evening when we got to the place and I think it was about midnight when we got through.  We were at Willow Springs, about a half mile above where we lived.  I was about eight years old.  Along about that time Nettie, my oldest sister, got her feet very badly burned in hot embers that had been drawn from a lime kiln.  She ran through them and got both feet cooked up above her ankles.  It took a long time for them to get well.  Billy Freeman and my father owned the lime kiln.  It was at Willow Springs, the same place where we cleaned the hogs.

Another little incident that I can remember was when my mother and I had been up to see Mrs. Cummings, and as we were coming back home Ma took a wrong road and got lost.  I remember how she hollowed to try to make somebody hear her.  I would say, "Oh, Ma, hush."   I was not scared a bit but she was.  I was riding behind her on old Lucy, a big bay mare we had.  I will tell about a couple more times that I was riding behind on old Lucy.   The first was when Aunt Matt was going up to Old Lady Standifer, who lived about four miles west of us.  We spent the day, had a nice dinner, and when we started home the old lady said she was sorry that there was no body there to feed our horse.  I told her that she could have given her a bundle of oats.  Aunt Matt said she wanted to skin me for saying that after she had treated us so nice.  Lucy had a colt following her that was mine was the reason that I was looking out for his mother.

I will tell you of another time I was riding behind Ma coming from Round Rock.  I was walking a while when we came to where a big wolf was trying to catch a calf.  There were about a dozen cows and calves in a bunch and the cows would keep him away from the calves.  I was not long in getting up on Lucy.  I was then between nine and ten years old.  The reason I can remember the date is because it was about the time father started to Tennessee with a bunch of horses in May 1867.

Some time during the war, I don't remember what year it was, Uncle Bob was at our house and for some reason he was hiding out so he would stay in the thicket not far from the house, and I would take his meals to him for several days.

I remember well when father would come home on a furlough or parole.  When he would leave we would watch him as long as he was in sight.   He was stationed at Brownsville and would come home every few months.  Another thing that made a lasting impression on my mind was when father sent a lot of goods home at the close of the war.  He sent them to Webberville and we had to go down there after them.  Seeing so many dead cattle between Round Rock and Webberville is what I remember most.  I suppose by there being so many dead cattle that it must have been in the winter before the war closed in June.

I am ten years old now and we are moving from Lake Creek to Round Rock.  The first little incident was when we were moving the house to Round Rock.  Father was driving four mules, riding one of them and I was riding on the lumber.  I was riding on the end of a long plank when we went over a rocky place.  The springing of the plank threw me off and nearly knocked the breath out to me.   I could not hollow and father didn't know anything about it, and by the time I could get up he was nearly out of sight.  I got up and caught up with him. This happened close to where two other things happened that I have told you about:   One was when the horse threw me off and the other was where I saw the wolf running the little calve.  All of these things happened a long time ago but I can remember them all well.

This is December 31st, 1867 and we have gotten moved to Round Rock.  I started to school pretty soon afterward.  Miss Mary Henderson taught in a log cabin a few hundred yards west of where we lived.  The school house was in the woods and I remember we would go out and gather black haws every day.  Those were about the happiest days of my life I think.  I went to school off and on until I was seventeen years old.  I had to work so much is the reason that I didn't go more.  I had to do all kinds of work.  I would help quarry rock, build rock fence, haul wood, and all kinds of work.  I had to work during my raising.  When I was going to school at the old college in Old Round Rock, I was a champion marble player:  there was but one that could beat me.  Edgar McNutt was the only one.

The thing that I enjoyed most was when my father and I would go back to the old place every spring and drive a bunch of cows and calves.  We would keep two or three milk cows in the winter, but as soon as the grasses came we had eight or ten.  They were not very good milk cows and it took that many to give us plenty of milk and butter.  I was one of the main milkers.  Sometimes the cows would not come home until late and we would have to wait for them.  I have lain down in the cowpen while we were waiting for the cows and gone to sleep many times.  When I would come home from the farm as tired as I could be, I felt like going to bed but had to wait until the milking was through.   I had a pretty hard time in my raising, but I enjoyed it and got through it all right.   I wish I had my life to live over again.  I think I could make a good many improvements.  I had to work the most of the time, but when I got a chance I would go hunting or fishing.  Reese (or Ruse?) Smith and the Christian boys, Charlie and Arthur, would take our guns and dogs and go up in the woods and stay all day.  We would have a fine time.  We would take our dinner with us.  This lasted from the time I was twelve or thirteen years old until we left Round Rock to move down about twelve miles below Round Rock Jan. 23rd, 1875, which date never passed without my remembering it.  There was not a single one that wanted to go, but we had not been there but a little while when we would not have thought of going back to Round Rock.  We got acquainted with the people and commenced going to dances, which I certainly did enjoy.  We would go as far as ten miles to dance.  It would be day light the most of the time when we would get home.  I would eat breakfast and go to work in the field.

I will mention two of the best dances I ever attended.  One was at Ben Darlingtons, ten miles down Brushy.  There was a big crowd there and every body feeling fine.  We had a fine string band from Taylor, the Burke Brothers, four of them, and they could certainly play.  Mrs. Darlington had a fine supper.  She had turkey and everything you can imagin to eat.  The table was set from about ten o'clock until daylight, and whenever we wanted to eat we would go in the dining room and help ourselves.  I never had such a time in my life.  The other time was at the Rice Crossing Store, about seven miles below where we lived.  We had the Burke Brothers play that night too.  We had a nice supper but it did not last all night.  Everything went fine until we started home about four o'clock.  Some boys that were not invited tried how mean they could be.  They stole overcoats, laprobes, and other things.  They took the taps off buggy wheels, cut the harness and different things.  I had to go home with one wheel tied on.  That wheel was locked but I had a good double team and made it all right.  I thought there would be trouble about it, but it passed off without any further trouble.  I had a fine time anyway.

I will begin telling some of my experiences in the cow trail.  The first part of 1879 I commenced getting ready for my first trip on the trail.  I did not go to South Texas where the cattle were bought but stayed at home and bought about two hundered head for Uncle Bob and myself.  The most of the cattle belonged to Uncle Bob.

I remember well the introduction I had to trail life.  The evening of May 12th, 1879 I took my bunch of cattle down to where the trail crossed Brushy, about three miles below where we lived.  It was about night when we got to the herd and a little after dark there came a big hailstorm.  I had knots on my head for several days made by the hailstones.  The next morning was bright and pretty.  I started on my twelve hundred mile trip.  We would make from ten to twelve miles per day on an average.  Everything went all right, and I liked it fine except losing so much sleep.  I would get on a average of about six hours sleep.  We passed Belton, Waco, and Ft. Worth.  I think it was on Main Street, but the streets did not look like they do now.  Ft. Worth was not much of a place then.  After we got through supper, when we were getting ready to start camp, I found out that my hat was gone from the rack, so I took the one nearest like mine.  I had a fine white $8.50 Stetson hat.  The hat that I got was not as good as mine.  When we got to the Red River Station, we were watereing the herd and another herd was watering just below us when one of the boys from the other herd and I got together and were talking when I noticed his hat.  He said that was where he got it.  It so happened that I had his hat, so we traded back hats and I was awfully glad to get my hat back again.

We crossed Red River, and that was the first time I had been out to Texas.  We had not traveled but a few days until I saw my first Indians.  From then on we would see them pretty often.  We had a stampede one night, so early next morning I was riding the mesquite brush looking for cattle when I thought I had run across an Indian camp.  I saw what I thought was a red blanket waving in the breeze and felt a little scared, but it turned out to be a badger digging a hole in the red dirt.  A few days after this I had another experience that was not very pleasant.  I herded the saddle horses at night, and that night the horses took a good run.  When I was trying to get ahead of them my horse ran into a washout.  It was a place three or four feet deep washed out in a dry hollow.  It was big enough for my horse to go to the bottom of it.  He landed on his side and caught my leg under him.  I pulled his head around so he could not get up.  I was afraid he might get up and my foot hang in the stirup.  He wanted to go with the bunch of horses, and I knew he would go as soon as he got up.  It did not hurt me any, but I was glad to get out of that place.  It was about midnight and a mile or more from camp.  All of the horses got away but found them all the next morning.

Everything went about as usual for several days.  When we were nooning (getting dinner) a big bunch of Comanche Indians came up.  There were about a hundered of them.  I did not like their looks and actions very much.  I didn't know what they might do.  They rode around and talked for a good while.  We gave them a beef which they killed and ate.  We found out that they had been out on a big hunt.  Some of them could speak a little English, but the most of their talking is by signs and grunts.  When they are speaking about horse they hold their hand up to their chin, and cattle they hold each hand out from their head, representing horns.  A cow or steer is a woshaw and the boss of the herd is a Wohaw Chief.  I have forgotten what they call a horse.  I was glad when they left.  This was the biggest bunch of Indians I ever saw.  We would see a few every day or so until we got through the Indian Territory.

We got up into Kansas pretty soon.  Dodge City, Kan. was our first town to pass and it was a wild place -- about the worse place I ever saw:  drinking, gambling, and everything else.  So many of the hands quit there that we had to throw both herds together.  It made a big herd -- about five thousand head, but being in open country we got along fine.  After passing Dodge City, Kansas, we passed Buffalo, Kansas and Ogalalla, Nebraska.  Dodge City is on the Arkansas River and Ogalalla is on the South Platte River, which is about twenty miles above where the South Platte and the North Platte run together.  From Ogalalla we went about twelve miles over to the North Platte and went up it to the ranch on Deer Creek.  When we got to the Platte Valley we could see the chimney rock.  Uncle Bob asked me how far I thought I was to it.  I told him I guessed it was eight or ten miles.  He said it was fifty miles.  It took us several days to get to it.  It is a straight rock ten or twelve feet in diameter at the base and gets gradually smaller as it goes up.  It is a pretty sight to look at.  It was not built there -- it is a natural rock.  Except in the valley it is a rough country with a good deal of pine timber.  It is a pretty country.

A few days after passing the Chimney Rock we passed Fort Laramie, a Government Post where there were lots of soldiers.  We camped a little way above the post that night near enough for us to hear the bands playing.  It made me wish that I was a soldier instead of a cowpuncher.  Fort Laramie is right on the Platte where the Laramie runs into the Platte.  The next place we passed was Fort Fetterman.  It was not as big a post as Laramie.  We were then about thirty miles from the ranch where we were going.  From Fetterman we went up Deer Creek to the ranch.  We had to brand a good many cattle after we got to the ranch.  The brands were not plain and we had to brand them again.  The corral was near the creek and one day a boy we had with us went down to the creek and came back nearly scared to death.  He said he saw a big black bear in a willow thicket.  Some of us went down there but never saw the bear.  The boy was about twelve years old.  We had his father for a cook and we took the twin boys along with us.  After we got through branding, we drove the herd up in the mountains and turned them loose.

We rested a few days and started home.  Five or six of us boys went to Cheyenne in a wagon from the ranch.  It was a hundred and fifty miles to Cheyenne, which took four or five days to make.  Some of the boys stayed on the ranch for the winter.  Major Wolcott, the owner of the ranch, wanted me to stay but I thought it would be too cold for me, so I pulled back to Texas.  I stayed in Cheyenne several days.  From there I came to Chicago with a train of cattle.  There were twenty-four cars of them.  My passage to Chicago was all I got for it.  When the train would stop I would get off the train and go to the end of the train to see if everything was all right and whether any of the cattle were down or not.  The train would generally start about the time I got to the front end and I would have to get up on the top and walk back to the caboose.  I had to do this at night, too.  It is a wonder that I did not fall off and get badly crippled or killed, walking that running board with a lantern in my hand.  One time as we were going down the Platte Valley between North Platte City and Omaha, the north wind was blowing so hard that I was afraid to risk it, so I sat down on top of the train and waited for it to stop.  I think it must have run at least fifty miles before it stopped.  That was day time too.  We crossed the Missouri River at Omaha.  I remember the caboose was left in the R.R. yards at Omaha and I rode across the river on top of the train.  The river is not very wide there.  About like the Rio Grande at Laredo, possibly some larger.  After we crossed the river it was only a little way to Council Bluffs, Iowa.  We unloaded the cattle there and fed and watered them.  We stayed all night there.  The next morning we loaded up and started for Chicago.  We passed through Des Moines, Iowa.  The next time we fed was at Peoria, Ill.  It was a nice little town then.  It is a city now of over one hundred thousand population.  We stayed there nearly a day.  I walked around and took a pretty good look at the place.  I remember of seeing a big apple orchard in the edge of teh city.  This was our last stop until we got to Chicago.  I went through the stock yards and packing houses, which I was very much interested in.  Another thing that I saw adjoining the stock yards was the largest cabbage patch I had ever seen.  I suppose there were twenty acres in it.  I am sure that cabbage patch is covered with fine businesses now.  That was in the fall of 1879, fifty-six years ago.  I stayed there two or three days.  I then went to St. Louis over the Chicago and Alton Rail Road.   I stayed in St. Louis a day or two.  I walked across the Eads Bridge and watched the boats go up and down the river.  I enjoyed that about as much as anything that I had seen on my trip.  I liked everything that I saw on my trip.  The morning that I left there I went to the lunch stand at the Union Depot and ate breakfast.  The thing that impressed me there was a green country boy eating his breakfast.  When he got through and went to pay his bill.  I think it was about two dollars.  He did not realize that everything that he ordered cost ten cents each.  When he was told the amount of the bill he was terribly astonished.  I don't remember but I think he had enough money to pay the bill, but he looked pretty bad over it.

I left there for Texas and could hardly wait to get home.  When I got back I thought it was the hardest looking country I had ever seen.  It was a dry year and not much crops raised:  it looked like starvation.  I remember my father dug his sweet potatoes and hilled them up in the potato patch and somebody stole every one of them.  There was only about fifteen bushels of them but it was all we had and we certainly missed them that winter.  We would usually would put up fifty or sixty bushels for winter use.  1880 was a good crop year and we pulled through all right.  I did not go on the trail that year.  I traded in cattle in a good deal and Uncle Bob and I made good long trip all over West Texas looking for a place to winter a bunch of cattle that he wanted to drive to Wyoming the next spring.  He wanted to buy six thousand one and two year old steers but failed to get them.  If he had have gotten them I would have gone to Tom Green or some of the West Texas counties and been ready to hit the trail early in the spring of 1881.  He had already bought two hundred head of saddle horses and they were a fine bunch of horses.  We wintered them in the W. S. Carothers pasture at Thorndale.  George Flinn, Emmett (McMordie) and I took them down there in September.  I will never forget how bad the mosquitoes were all the way from home to the ranch.  We had to fight them off with broom weeds:  they were just like swarms of bees.  It was about night when we got there, so we had to stay all night there and there was no hotel there.  We bought some canned goods and slept in the cotton seed house on the railroad that night.  The mosquitoes liked to have eaten us up, but we managed to live through.

Early in the spring of 1881 Uncle Bob went to South Texas to buy cattle and I got everything ready to take the horses down.  I bought a wagon and had it fitted up for the trip.  I hired several hands and got every thing ready to go.  I went down and gathered the horses the latter part of March.  They were all fat and fine.  I thought they were the prettiest lot of horses I had ever seen.  Uncle Bob was late in getting ready for me to come on down to Refugio County after the herd.  It was about the tenth of April when I left home.   I took eighty head of horses with me and left the balance of the two hundred head in a pasture near home until we got back with the two herds of cattle -- five thousand head.  Uncle Bob had charge of one herd.  I was with Uncle Bob and was second boss.

We were at O'Brien's ranch in Refugio County about thirty-five miles north of Rockport receiving and branding cattle about two weeks.  It rained so much that we got along very slow.  We would have to stand guard at the corral at night and what sleep we got was on some piles of rails.  Sometimes the water would be several inches deep on the level ground.  After so long a time we got through and started north for a fourteen hundred mile trip with as fine a herd of one and two year old steers as I ever saw -- twenty-five hundred head. 

We made it to Green's ranch the first night, and as we had not gotten out of the range of the cattle we thought we had better pen the herd that night.  Green had a big corral made out of big post oak poles.  Just as we got the last cattle in the pen a little old burro (jack) came up to the back of the corral and commenced to bray, which made the cattle run.  They tore the whole side out of the pen, carrying those heavy poles on their backs, lots of them for nearly a hundred yards.  We held them together.  They were pretty hard to hold through the night but we held them by hard riding.  The next morning we hit the road towards Victoria.  We had to work hard for a few days until we got the herd well broke in.  Everything went fine until we got up in Lavaca County, when we had a pretty bad storm one dark night.  For some reason Uncle Bob and Mr. McClanahan, the boss of the other herd, had changed herds that night.  There was a big live oak thicket of several hundred acres that we struck as the cattle were running.  McClanahan kept us riding around the thicket all night, saying the cattle were all in that brush.  I told him that I could not see a steer, but he insisted that they were all there.   When daylight came, we found that I was right.  Everything was gone, but we had all of them except seven head that I tracked about seven miles.  I had no trouble in tracking them as the ground was wet and no range cattle there.

I believe the next trouble we had was in the same county.  One morning about four o'clock I was going around the herd while the other boy that stood guard with me went to camp to wake the cook.  I think my horse must have been asleep.  I tapped him with my quirt when he gave a big jump and scared the cattle.  They ran in an opposite direction from where I was.  I went as fast as I could go and was just about to get to the lead cattle when I struck a boggy place and couldn't go any farther.  The cattle got through and every one got away.  We lost a whole day getting them gathered up.  The whole country had those boggy places.  Sometimes the wagon would all four wheels drop down to the axle and we would have to dig it out.

Everything went all right for several days.  I don't think we had any trouble until we got to the Colorado River at Webberville.  The river was up a good deal.  We swam the cattle and horses but the wagon and all of the boys crossed on the ferry boat.  We also had to rope and tie down on the boat fifteen or twenty yearlings that we could not get to take the water.  The trail life is a pretty hard one.

After crossing the Colorado River we went a few miles and camped for the night.  The next morning Uncle Bob left the herd with me and pulled out for Round Rock to spend a few days with his family.  He caught up with us at Lampasas.  When we got up on Cottonwood, four or five miles from home, I went home to stay all night.  I told the boys to move the herd to Brushy Creek, about four miles, where we would noon.  When I got to where I supposed I would meet them, they were not there.  I went back down the trail and found them still at the same place.  I asked them what was the matter, and they told me that a man name of Sam Hill told them not to move the herd out of Travis County until he inspected it; and I told them to move them on to the creek, which is in Williamson County.  While we were eating dinner, Hill came up.  He said, "Didn't the boys tell you what I said about not moving the herd?"  I told him that they did, but I did not pay any attention to it.  He was so mad that he could hardly stand it.  He said he was going to inspect the herd if he had to follow it to Red River.  I told him that he could inspect it all he wanted to but I was not going to pay him anything.  He wanted fifty dollars.  The herd was inspected in Refugio County when we started from there.  The longer he stayed the madder he got.  When he left cursing, saying I would see him again.  After I got back I saw him and said to him, "Sam, what kind of a bluff was that you tried to pull on me?"  He said that it worked on a lot of them.  I told him that he saw that it did not work on me.  He lived in Manor.  The herds passed near there.

After we got through dinner we pulled out and went about four miles N.W. of Hutto and camped that night.  Everything went all right until we got to Dry Berry's Creek, where we nooned.  There was a little field of corn with a very poor fence around it, and a few head of cattle got in the corn but we got them out before they hurt anything.  We did not see any body there.  We went four or five miles and camped for the night.  About twelve o'clock the owner of the corn field came up and waked me up and asked me if I was the boss of the herd.  I told him that I was.  He said that his wife told him that the cattle had ruined his corn and he was going to have the herd stopped if I did not pay him.  I think he wanted thirty dollars.  I talked to him until I got him in a good humor, then I told him that I would come back early in the morning and whatever the actual damage was I would pay him.  When I got back to his place, I told him, "Let's go and see what the damage was."   He said, "That is all right.  They never hurt it at all."  I think that old red headed woman put him up to it, thinking they would scare me out of some money.  That made the second attempt to get money out of me since Uncle Bob left the herd, but they both failed.  I remember the old man's name to this day:  his name was Wolverton.  Everything went all right for sometime.  Uncle Bob caught up with us near Lampasas, where I turned the herd back to him in fine shape.

I think the next bad luck we had was in Brown County.  One morning when we were catching our horses to ride that day, some of the boys accidentally roped a big dun horse.  Another boy threw a rope on him and he got away with two ropes on him.  He was the finest horse in the whole lot but was mean and wild.  We never heard a word from him after he got away.  It was in the timber and I suppose he got wound up and died.  I was glad that did not happen while I had charge of the herd.

It was not many days until I got sick.  I had a spell of fever.  I did not know anything for three or four days.  Some of the boys said they thought that I was going to die.  I had a lot of medicine that Ma had put up for me.  It was all that I had to take.  I rode in the wagon for ten days.  When I got so I could ride, I was so weak that I could not rope my horse.  I would throw my rope and it would only go about half way to them.  I improved fast and it was only a few days until I was all right and everything going fine.

The next thing of importance was just after we crossed Red River when there was an awfully bad storm.  I never saw so much lightning in my life.  It commenced early in the night.  The cattle ran a good deal and it was very dark.  We could not see a thing when it was not lightning.  It looked like everything and everybody was going to be killed by lightning.  You could see the lightning playing all over the cattle especially on their horns.  It must have been a type of lightning that did not kill or the whole business would have been killed.  We crossed Red River at Doans Crossing near where Vernon is now.

The next thing we saw of interest was in the Wichita Mountains, which are about forty miles north of where we crossed the river.  We passed just west of the range of mountains, which was very pretty.  Large stones weighing several tons had broken loose at the top and rolled down to level ground.

When we got tho the Canadian River and before we crossed it, Uncle Bob thought he would rest up a little and sent me and two other boys on ahead to see what the chances were for water ahead of us.  We found some water but not very much.  When we crossed the river, which was two or three hundred yards wide, sometimes we would be swimming and then we would be in the quicksand, which is very bad.  When we got back from looking for water, we crossed the river; and just as we were coming out on the north bank we struck quicksand and bogged down about twenty-five head of cattle.  It took us all evening to get them out.  We had to go in and dig them out with our hands.  It was a terrible job.

One morning a day or two after we crossed the Canadian River we had just sat down on the ground to eat breakfast when Sam Nard, one of the hands, drew a pistol on Uncle Bob and said he had taken all he was going to take and was going to kill him.  Uncle Bob said, "You cowardly pup, you would not shoot anybody."  We were all cut off from our pistols, which were at the wagon.  He then turned on the Negro cook, who had been rounding him up for not wrapping his bed roll up of mornings.  I thought my time would come next for the way I talk to him when we were on night guard.  In guarding the cattle, there would be two at a time going around the herd.  One would go one way and the other in the oppose direction.  He would go to sleep and his hat would fall off.  I would call him all kind of things.  When the cattle were bedded fairly close, it would be a half a mile around the herd.

A day or so after this episode, we were driving up a narrow divide where the trail ran and a big bunch of wild turkeys crossed the trail going towards the Canadian River.  It was a very narrow trail and we could only see them as they crossed but there must have been several hundred of them.  Some of the boys took in after them and killed several with their ropes.  They were all young turkeys that they killed and they were fine eating.  This was the biggest bunch of turkeys that I ever saw.

The trail ran up the divide between the Canadian and big breaks to the right.  I will never forget the big plum thickets we saw.  Sometimes there would be hundreds of acres of them and they were fine too.  In the same hills there were lots of fine grapes.

One day a man was looking through the herd for stray cattle and he came across a yearling heifer that had been in the herd for several days.  Uncle Bob told him not to cut her out, but he roped the yearling.  Then Uncle Bob ran up to him and hit him with his quirt.  That made the fellow awfully mad, and he said he would see him later.   I looked for him to come back and have trouble.  Uncle Bob was scared up too.  He said if I saw the man come, for me get around close to him.  I looked for him all evening, but he never showed up.  He got the yearling all right.  We were expecting to eat it ourselves.  We were getting within thirty of forty miles of Dodge City.

One day as we were going down a little gravelly hill the lead cattle stopped.  I was working the righthand point and a fellow by the name of Jackett on the left point.  I rode around to his place and commenced to get them started down the hill when he saw me, and here he came.  He said he did not allow anybody to work his point.  I told him that he ought to be at his place instead of being back talking to the man behind him.  I did not know but what we might have trouble.  We both had our pistols.  Uncle Bob told me to try and get along with him until we got to Dodge, that he would turn him off then.  I told him that I would see him in the bad place before I would speak to him.

We are saddened that death overtook Papa on September 23, 1937, before he wrote more of his autobiography, and it is ironical that "a little incident" led to his death after he had lived so dangerously in his early years.  On the steps of our home in Fort Worth, Papa lost his balance because of an untied shoestring and he fell backwards.  A broken hip led to Pneumonia and other complications; and within a few weeks he died, apparently without too much suffering.  At least he didn't complain.  I was with him one morning when it unexpectedly seemed he was dangerously sick.  I leaned over and put my hand on my dear Papa and said, "You have been a wonderful dad and we love you."  Tears welled in his eyes, which he then closed for the last time.  I know he heard me, and he no doubt thought, "I am a very lucky man."

I am sorry that he didn't write about many other things, such as the courtship which led to the marriage with Bertie Bell when he was thirty-five years old, also the raising of their children.  Their first baby was named Wallace Bell McMordie, who suffered "tuberculosis of the bone", had a leg amputated, and after a few months died when he was about eleven years of age.  I was only about four, but I do remember Big Brother faintly.

I was born near Round Rock on March 22, 1901; Mary Wilma McMordie (now Mrs. Frank S. Maddox) was born in Austin on July 10, 1903; and the youngest child, Vera Vivian McMordie (now Mrs. Ninnian T. Barron), was born on January 18, 1909, also in Austin.

This footnote concerns Papa principally, so my remarks are restricted to him as much as possible.  He dearly loved his wife and children and he was proud of us, despite our faults.  He didn't make the money he needed to spoil us, but he was generous by nature, he overcame disappointments with the feeling that "something would turn up and everything will be all right", and his family made up for the lack of money.  He was not one to "look on the dark side of things".  Papa was honest (possibly to a fault as a real estate agent), morally clean, tried to set a good example, I never saw him drink intoxicants, and he was the fine man I am thankful was my Papa.

Signed: Warren C. McMordie