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

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

don't know whether it was something a little wrong in the upper story, or whether it was a touch of the prairie that made so many cooks just a wee bit "oft."

Wagon men and cooks seemed to have irrational attributes oftener than the men who rode. The diversion of the riding, and the business of looking after cattle, served to occupy more fully their attention, and they were tired at night. But the monotony of the camp life, and the continual round of pots, dishes and pans, and baking bread, or cooking beans and meat, were the things that sent some of them "out of their heads."

It was in the early seventies, before J. S. Robb had gone back to Texas, that he was

with an outfit that had just turned loose a big Texas herd at Creighton's Horse Creek ranch. The boys were away, in pairs, looking after and getting the cattle acquainted with their new range, when one of the queer spells seized Billy Nurse, the cook. This one was, unfortunately, a drug eater before he went with the outfit.