I was wondering if you were going to keep going Birdy. Glad you did. Good story.
"At this location, a hollow along the river a few miles from the Comanche camp, Moore paused, this being the location where they would leave tbe cattle and excess baggage before closing on the Indian camp. Hard to imagine herding cattle on an errand like this, expecially at night, but there it is."
Just an aside for you since you are not wise in the ways of cattle.
By this time (2 weeks) the bunch of cattle he had, any meniton of how many?, would be well trail broke. That is to say the bunch would have selected a leader early on. There is always a leader in any bunch of cattle. The others just naturally follow the leader. You don't really have to herd the whole bunch all you have to do is control one, the leader.
When you do that the rest will just follow along. Only if you try to chouse or hooraw the whole bunch will they try to break by and scatter. If you just keep the leader moving at a decent clip the rest will follow. It takes a good eye to know how fast you can push but I suspect those old boys knew how to do it.
I've never fooled with longhorns much at all but what I have said applies to all other cattle that I have ever fooled with and I doubt longhorns are all that much different.
