The day herder, at ease, on a ridge a quarter mile to the west—probably reading a Frank Merriwell baseball story—was letting the herd feed north, and so long as the cattle did not attempt to go over the rise to the east, out of sight, Wes Shuemaker would have no occasion to ride down my way. And it would have been futile for me to have tried to call him, with a south wind blowing forty-fifty mph.
My brother was safely on the other side of the ravine close to trees, but he slipped out the back way and went home. I knew he was doing the right thing. And I knew too that I would remain in the tree until the arrival of the riders. Those Texas cattle behaved nicely for mounted men, but they could not abide a person on foot.
I really had no business on that side of the ravine, with those cattle feeding there—but I guess I was, as always, a little too venturesome. I knew that herd had some bad actors in it. In fact, I had been warned to never get off my horse when riding as relief herder of that same herd, on several occasions. And one time while all alone at the dinner hour my mount, in jumping a ditch, broke the saddle girth and spilled me on a rattlesnake infested prairie, amongst those longhorns—with not a tree in sight.
However, nothing untoward happened. Had my luck been running true to form, there should have been at least one rattlesnake coiled on the margin of the shallow ditch into which I squeezed myself, and waited in misery for the day herder to return. As I lay in the ditch I just had to recall the time, a short while before, when a rattlesnake, coiled by a cowpath, struck as I trotted past—barefoot, of course—and got his fangs hooked in my trouser leg, requiring two wild jumps to dislodge his snakeship.
The herd was owned by Than Morris and Abe Williams, the latter a brother of Mrs. Jake Wolfley. Morris and Wolfley were brothers-in-law. John Taylor, herder, was a son of Hebe Taylor, of Atchison. John Taylor was later bailiff of the Nemaha county court, in Seneca. And he was the father of Earl W. Taylor for whom the Seneca American Legion Post was named. Hebe Taylor also, at one time, ran cattle in the open country southwest of Wetmore — with Ed. Keggin.
Charley went straight to the Morris general store in Wetmore and told Than of my predicament, and Morris immediately rounded up two cowpunchers. John Taylor, working with a herd to the southwest, chanced to be in town, and rode out with Abe Williams.