Consequently, General Mitchell determined to drive them south so that they would cease their murdering and depredations along the Overland and Denver trails. On the evening of January 27, 1865, he set out prairie fires, simultaneously all the way from Fort Kearney to Denver. There was a brisk north wind blowing, and it "sure" was one sight to see the sheet of flame three hundred miles long, sweeping over the

table lands to the south, leaving blackness and desolation in its wake.

The effect of this was to drive the Indians north of the Platte, and the Indians from the south were soon joining them, and making life a hazard of great interest to the people of this section.

Early in February, they drove off some of Creightoirs fat work cattle from the head of Rush creek, and feasted upon them.

J. F. Coad had the contract for hauling wood for Fort Sedgwick from the wood reserve on Lawrence fork, and had difficulty with them also.

These adventures with the oldest of our cattlemen are related elsewhere, but it had the effect of the establishment of the very first of all the permanent ranches in this part of the west ; namely, the Creighton ranch on the Laramie Plains.

One of the oldest of the ranches to actually engage in raising cattle as a business is the Tracy ranch at Pine Bluffs. Mr. Tracy came to the country as early as 1867, and he cut cordwood in the Pine Bluff hills which he sold to the Union Pacific. This railroad was just then penetrating into the western part of Nebraska and they used, handled and sold large quantities of wood. Tracy had one pile of a hundred cords or more, cut in the winter of 1867, or the spring of 1868, waiting for the* acceptance of the company.