Dunham's employer had given him instructions on the point of rendezvous, appointed for the following day, and turned him loose to go his way alone. This gathering-place of the border defenders was at a certain crossing of the Cimarron River, which flowed toward the east for a matter of fifty miles so nearly on the line that Texas cattlemen used it as a marker to know when they were out of the Indian country. At places it formed the line between the two political divisions, and the point where the Kansas stockmen were gathering was one of these spots. There the old Texas cattle trail crossed.
Garland said he had to go home on his way down, which would increase the distance several miles and throw him late the next day in arriving at the meeting-place, an unnecessary detour which Dunham need not put his horse to the labor of merely for the sake of company. The most direct way to the border, he said, was to follow the old Santa Fé Trail to the crossing of the Arkansas, where it was cut by the cattle trail from Texas. It was as plain as daylight from there on, and Dunham no doubt would be joined by others heading down that way.
So it was that Dunham found himself riding the road
