He accepted
the invitation with a hearty grasp of the hand, and the simple promise
"I'll come." Those words were the beginning of a partnership which
lasted eighteen years, and a friendship that death alone will
terminate.
The Indian contractor returned on time, and the next day I started
home with Daugherty's outfit. And on the way, as if I were pursued by
some unrelenting Nemesis, two of my horses, with others, were stolen
by the Indians one night when we were encamped near Red River. We
trailed them westward nearly fifty miles, but, on being satisfied they
were traveling night and day, turned back and continued our journey. I
reached home with sixteen horses, which for years afterwards, among
my hands and neighbors, were pointed out as Anthony's thousand-dollar
cow-ponies. There is no denying the fact that I keenly felt the
loss of my money, as it crippled me in my business, while my ranch
expenses, amounting to over one thousand dollars, were unpaid. I was
rich in unsalable cattle, owned a thirty-two-thousand-acre ranch,
saddle horses galore, and was in debt. My wife's trunk was half full
of land scrip, and to have admitted the fact would only have invited
ridicule. But my tuition was paid, and all I asked was a chance, for I
knew the ropes in handling range cattle. Yet this was the second time
that I had lost my money and I began to doubt myself.
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