(T)he time had come for the drive toWhen weather was bad we scarcely hadbegin…. For months the cow catchers in their various camps had worked gathering cattle over
a large area…. It was not an easy task to round
up such a herd … but with our large outfit of
skilled riders, we soon had a herd of 2,500
thrown together…. enough to eat. Buffalo chips, our only fuel on
the prairie, would become so soaked with rain
during days of storm that we could not get
enough dry ones to make a little coffee, let
alone bake bread. Before clear days came we had an experi-During the first year I was on the trail, everyence with a tornado which I wouldn’t care to
repeat. Arriving at the Canadian River in Indian
Territory … I seen such queer-looking clouds.…
I was on herd with the horses. Everybody but
the cook and me went with the cattle. We were
as nearly ready as we could make ourselves for
the oncoming storm when hailstones began to
strike all about us…. The stones were hammer-
ing my head so fiercely that it seemed to be on
fire….river from the Red to the Arkansas was “big
swimming.” We were fortunate in having no
serious accidents to our men while crossing
swollen streams, but we lost a number of cattle
and horses by drowning. Bad thunder and hail storms added difficulty. At times we went for days with scarcely a wink
of sleep because of winds and rain which made
the cattle hard to control. In some places on the
trail the ground was boggy from long spells of
rain, and we had to … snatch a little sleep as
opportunity permitted. When three riders were
free at a time, they would go a little distance
from the cattle, dismount, and lie down in the
form of a triangle, each man using his neigh-
bor’s ankles for a pillow to keep his head out of
the mud and water. Suddenly I came to a gulch fifteen feetdeep…. I could neither turn my horse nor stop
him. Over we went, with one hundred badly
frightened horses at our heels…. Water was
pouring down the little gulch where I lay. I had
to get out of the way quickly or be drowned, for
the water soon rose to seven or eight feet. I
crawled to the top of the bank and drifted with
the storm, the hailstones raising blood blisters
on my face and hands…. Any minute I knew I
could expect some huge hailstone to knock me
senseless; if it did, I would drown in the icy lake
at my feet. [I was] praying one minute for the
Lord to save me, and wondering the next if my
body would ever be found.… It was easy to drift into sleep, joggingaround the herd. My method of combating
sleepiness was to mix chewing tobacco with
saliva and rub it on my eyelids…. Above all else
in the mind of the cowboy ran the thought,
“Stay with the cattle; hold the herd.”

What in Cook’s account would most make you want to re-up?

What in Cook’s account would cause you not to re-up?