To prevent any such complication, he sent two other outfits of equal dimension, under Radcliffe and Bean, to assist.

On the first day of August, 1884, six thousand cattle were rounded up out of Nine Mile canyon, now in Scotts Bluff county, and delivered at the Seven-U ranch. The thirty men had them about half branded with the receiving brand, when four thousand more were delivered from the Winter creek round-up, which was a few miles farther up the rive. The cattle were mostly of the long-horn Mexican type.

"Now," sand 'Gene, "Mr. Sheedy has shot his wad." And so it proved. About five thousand more were delivered in smaller bunches that fall, and about five hundred the following spring. That concluded the delivery. Had Sheedy accepted Mr. Paxton's alternate offer, he would have been ahead, and the fact that his foreman, Drummer, had wrongly advised, caused some friction between Sheedy and Drummer in the days that followed.

George Bosler died shortly after the Seven-U transfer, and Paxton in 1885 struck a deal with the other brother for the entire Bosler outfit, for one million dollars. The 3oslers had ranches on the Blue, on Brown creek, on Coldwater and Lost creek. It was a great stroke of business for the Ogallala, for big dividends of the company followed the shipment of beef cattle the three following years, and these beef cattle came very largely from the Bosler herds. Ten thousand beeves were shipped in the autumn of 1885, practically all Bosler cattle, and the company paid seventeen per cent, dividends. The following year ten thousand more, principally Bosler steers, went on the market, and another big dividend was declared.