The first day
after our return, we rode the mills and the river. Convinced that to
sink other wells on the mesas would be fruitless, the foreman decided
to dig a number of shallow ones in the bed of the river, in the hope of
catching seepage water. Accordingly the next morning, I was sent with
a commissary wagon and seven men to the mouth of the Ganso, with
instructions to begin sinking wells about two miles apart. Taking
with us such tools as we needed, we commenced our first well at the
confluence of the Ganso with the Nueces, and a second one above. From
timber along the river we cut the necessary temporary curbing, and put
it in place as the wells were sunk. On the third day both wells became
so wet as to impede our work, and on our foreman riding by, he ordered
them curbed to the bottom and a tripod set up over them on which to rig
a rope and pulley. The next morning troughs and rigging, with a _remuda_
of horses and a watering crew of four strange vaqueros, arrived. The
wells were only about twenty feet deep; but by drawing the water as fast
as the seepage accumulated, each was capable of watering several hundred
head of cattle daily. By this time Deweese had secured ample help, and
started a second crew of well diggers opposite the ranch, who worked
down the river while my crew followed some fifteen miles above.
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