The railways pushed westward across buffalo country and the Texas cattle drives came up from the South. The Texas cattlemen drove their cattle to the railheads in Kansas and overnight cattle towns like Abilene sprung civilization, profit, and vice out of the Kansas prairie. The following is a first-person account of George W. Brown and what it was like in western Kansas as a freighter, drover, buffalo hunter, and Indian scout. George W. Brown tells how he joins the times' growing commerce, traveling along the military routes in 1868.