So I put up an "outfit," wagon, cook, mounts for seven or eight men, etc., and set out on a very big undertaking indeed, and one that M----himself had not successfully accomplished for several years--a clean round-up of all the stock horses in the country.

These Staked Plains (Llanos Estacados) were so called because the first road or trail across them had to be staked out with poles at more or less long intervals to show direction, there being no visible landmarks in that immense level country.

They are one continuous sweep of slightly undulating, almost level land, well grassed, almost without living water anywhere, but dotted all over with depressions in the ground, generally circular, some of great size, some deeper than others, which we called "dry lakes," from the fact that for most of the year they were nearly all dry, only here and there, and at long distances apart, a few would hold sufficient muddy water to carry wild horses and antelope through the dry season.
But which lakes held water and which not was only known to these wild mustang bands and our mares that ran with them.

We took out with us some hundred of the gentler mares, the idea being to graze these round camp, and on getting round a bunch of the outlaws to drive them into this herd and so hold them.

Nearly every bunch we found had mustangs amongst them.
The mustang stallions we shot whenever possible.