midnight
I was personally interested in the general tendency of the men from the upper country to contract for heifers and young cows , and while the prices offered for Northern delivery were a distinct advance over those of the summer before , I resisted all temptations to enter into agreements . The Northern buyers and trail drovers selfishly joined issues in bearing prices in Texas ; yet , in spite of their united efforts , over two hundred thousand cattle were sold during the meeting , and at figures averaging fully three dollars a head over those of the previous spring . The convention adjourned , and those in attendance scattered to their homes and business . Between midnight and morning of the last day of the meeting , Major Hunter and I closed contracts for two trail herds of sixty-five hundred head in Erath and Comanche counties . Within a week two others of straight three-year-olds were secured , -- one in my home county and the other fifty miles northwest in Throckmorton . This completed our purchases for the present , giving us a chain of cattle to receive from within one county of the Rio Grande on the south to the same distance from Red River on the north . The work was divided into divisions .