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17.
like me, but that made no difference. These dogs could get the majority of the cattle in line when no one else could. The cattle would obey them at all times, if the dogs could get the start on them. When the snow was deep and the weather bitter cold caused by a 'norther' we would see that the dogs did not suffer even though we did. At that time of the year each man worked close in and sometimes we would have our shacks so that a man walking a line and leading a horse could come up with another man on another line and then we would have a little chuck together and a pipe and a few songs and a story or two. Then we would beat back over the line and see how the cattle were getting along. The cowboys who were black and the cowboys who were white made no color distinction when out on the plains. They were all the same and shared alike each other's fortune and hardship. "Old Nelson" and "Old Bob" worked for B. Waggoner for years. Both these men were as black as coal. Old Bob is now buried at Ardmore, I.T. He was one of a number of colored cowboys buried there. Nelson was a man who went to Waggoner's rescue in many ways. The nights were never too dark or too stormy that he didn't do his duty just the same. He was an old Indian fighter and a scraper from the word go and I never saw him whipped in camp although he was in many a fight. 
Court Babb was another man that I knew in these early days. He was driving for Waggoner [[strikethrough]] in those early days [[/strikethrough]]. He is now a cattle inspector at the Fort Worth stockyards. He was a big fellow. In the Osage Nation one time he was with a herd in the Arkansas river when the herd began to mill and sink. The boys rescued him and saved his life. For that he was ever grateful. He fought a man who was in a boat and with the help of the other boys was saved. Last time I ever met "Old Nels", he said, "I wish Hec that I had been like you and then I would now be with the man you are with. You are going to outlasts us all". So far I am about the last of the colored cowboys who were on the plains in the early days of the cow business in Texas. When I was first hired to Tom Burnett, he told me to write a book of my early days in Texas and that is what I am doing. When I first went with him we went on the Commache Indian reservation. It was up in the nation. We didn't have box houses in those days, but lived in the old fashioned dug outs.