Mesquite-post tough Howie Forrest just thought he’d seen the elephant when he reached Independence, Missouri with two thousand head of ornery Mexican steers despite tornadoes, hail storms, cattle rustlers, and Jayhawkers.

If he’d been holding a squalling bunch of wild tomcats with their tails tied together in each hand, he couldn’t have found himself in more trouble and despair than agreeing to trail boss an ox train of twenty-eight brides over six hundred miles to Palo Pinto, Texas—after he taught the women how to drive oxen.

He discovered soon enough that nothing compared to handling twenty-eight independent women, not even breaking up fights, fording swollen rivers, rescuing runaway boys from Kiowa Indians, tending rattlesnake bites, and fighting off Comancheros.