A few held their herds together and went to other ranges, one or two other, particularly the Bay State and the Union Land & Cattle Company, acquired landed possessions that eventually pulled them out of the hole.

The Ogallala was one that went into Wyoming with the herds, and Paxton pulled that company through in due time, and good shape.

FREWEN'S RANCH EXPERIENCE -- HANGING OF BILLY NURSE BY VIGI- LANTES--HOLDING UP DOC. M1DDLETON -- DEATH OF THE FAMOUS CHARACTER

About the time that Mills and Bullock and others, were putting in their herds a few hundred cows around Fort Laramie, the big herds began to arrive from Texas.

Westward from the eastern border of Wyoming much of the prairie and inter-mountain country was not good range for cattle. There were bad lands, sage brush lands, and greasewood lands galore, but occasionally were patches of natural meadows. The Laramie Plains was one of these green pastures of nature, and it was soon located by the cowmen looking for places to run their herds. The Texas herds ran into thousands.

As John Bratt says : "from 1867 the business kept changing. From the date that they drove their first herds from Texas to the Laramie Plains, for ten years, ten thousand head was considered a large herd. But in the next ten years, or until about 1886, twenty thousand was not considered a big herd, and some book accounts ran as high as forty thousand."

It was in the early eighties that the Swans were buying herds in great quantities. A