There was talk of other cow towns, east of Ellisville, west of it, but the clannish conservatism of the drovers held to the town they had chosen and baptized.

Thus the family of Mother Daly kept up its numbers, and the Cottage knew no night, even at the time when the wars of the cowmen with the railroad men and the gamblers had somewhat worn away by reason of the advancing of the head of the rails still farther into the Great American Desert.
There was yet no key to the Cottage bar when there came the unbelievable word that there was no longer a buffalo to be found anywhere on the range, and that the Indians were gone, beaten, herded up forever.

Far to the north, it was declared, there were men coming in on the cow range who had silver-mounted guns, who wore gold and jewels, and who brought with them saddles without horns! It was said, however, that these new men wanted to buy cows, so cows were taken to them.

Many young men of Mother Daly's family went on up the Trail, never to come back to Ellisville, and it was said that they were paid much gold, and that they stole many cows from the men who had silver-mounted guns, and who wore strange, long knives, with which it was difficult to open a tin can.
Mother Daly looked upon this, and it was well.

She understood her old boys and loved them.