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

ten word telegram would buy ten thousand. Those were sunny cattle days.

Frewen brothers came from London with quantities of money to invest in ranches. Dick Frewen of the Powder River Cattle Company was on the ground early, and he learned too late that many thousand cattle were counted twice over and paid for twice, out of the money that he had to invest.

When the ten days' storm in the spring of 1886 had passed and when every creek and gully was full of dead cattle, when about the only live cattle in this section were found in protected places, there was little left of the Frewen holdings.

The brothers have returned to London, long ago, and when someone asks them about going into ranch business, they whisper low: "Don't say 'ranch' -- say 'farm.' "

Many of the first "cowpunchers" were from Texas where the cow business had been developed for a number of years. But the cooks and wagon men, and occasionally a northern born "puncher" were among the outfits. I