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Show KANSAS REVISITED. 437 have been sensational stories about the posse overtaking the fugitives in the groves west of the Verdigris River, where a desperate fight took place, in which both the women were " accidentally killed." Without going into particulars, it is safe to say that the Bender family " ceased to breathe " soon after their flight, and that their carcasses rotted be-neath the soil of the State so scandalized by their crimes. A few miles southward bring us to Cofieyville, terminus of the Leavenworth, Lawrence & Galveston Railroad, which was to have continued on to the gulf, had not the Cherokecs objected. By the " Treaty of 1866," which settled the present status of these tribes, they consented that two railroads might traverse the Indian Territory, and Congress enacted that those roads which first reached the border should have that right. A race ensued, and the privilege was won by the Atlantic & Pacific Road, which enters from the east, and the Mis-souri, Kansas & Texas from the north. Coifeyville is the great cattle depot of this section. For the five months of cold weather the laws of Kansas allow Texas cattle to be driven through the State ; there-after they must stop at the border, or be shipped through by rail. None are sent either way in midsummer, and thus it results that Cof-feyville and its neighbor, Parker, have one busy season in the spring and another in the fall. The rest of the year they are dull, for border towns ; and, in the language of one of our party, " lie fourteen miles outside of the knowledge of God." A half- hour's ride from Coffeyville brought us to the border, and thence into a rolling plain dotted as far as the eye could see with vast herds of cattle herds numbering from a hundred to ten thousand each. It was a grand sight. Some were stretched in long lines, feeding in one direction, or grouped in the shape of a crescent ; others had collected in a dense mass, their reddish brown coats harmonizing finely with the hue of the prairie, and their immense horns looking not unlike a thicket of dead underbrush. The cattle men have here rented from the Cherokees a strip fifteen miles wide, and collect their stock there, waiting for the shipping season. These cattle, having run wild upon the plains of western Texas, are collected by a grand t( round- up ;" from the mass each owner selects those bearing his own mark, and thence they set out on the long drive northward through the Indian Territory, along the famous cattle trails. Utterly unac-customed to being herded or penned, they are almost as wild as the buffalo ; it requires both skill and daring to herd and drive them, and the Texan vacquero is necessarily a daring horseman. The same treat-ment which breaks the wild spirit of the cattle not unfrequently en- |