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a few wise men got theirs while the getting was good and laid the foundations of fortune with a rope and branding iron. Markets would have meant the difference between poverty and riches. But there were no markets.

A new day was about to dawn. The first faint glimmer of change was beginning to show on the dark horizon. The year 1367 was big with fate in the history of the West. The day of the covered wagon and the old immigrant trails was drawing to a close. The day of the railroad was at hand. With the completion of the Union Pacific, a through transportation line joined the two oceans. The Kansas-Pacific was pushing rapidly westward New York and San Francisco suddenly became neighbours. The rich markets of the East were at last open to the prairies.

Markets! The magic of markets transformed the whole cattle situation of Texas overnight. Prosperity swept over the ranges in an avalanche. Tragedy changed into bonanza. From cattle poor, the state became cattle rich. The dollar cow of yesterday was the twenty-dollar cow of to-day. The first herd swept north to Abilene. Soon the longhorns by hundreds of thousands were pouring toward the railroads across Red River, the Indian Nations, the Staked Plains, No Man's Land, over trails a thousand and two thousand miles long from every part of Texas—the Gulf Coast, the Rio Grande, the Nueces, the Frio, the Colorado, the Brazos.

Followed for nearly twenty vears the bonanza era of the cattle trails. Abilene, Newton, Wichita, Caldwell, Ellsworth, Hays City, Ogalallah, Dodge City, lived in succession their crowded hour as trail-end capitals. The cattle drives lifted them as on a tidal wave to fame, fortune, and hectic life, and, ceasing, left them stranded in the drab