offered to pay for each of the cattle he found in the mountains, and any unbranded cattle would be his outright. While rounding up cattle, Montford noticed the wild cattle desired salt. Using salt licks, he devised pen-traps that allowed cattle to enter but did not allow them to escape. This greatly increased the number of cattle Montford was able to corral with relatively little effort. Around this time, Montford hosted his friend Jesse Chisholm on a buffalo hunt on the western range of Chickasaw territory, south of present-day Norman, Oklahoma. At that time, the area was largely undeveloped, and Montford thought it would be perfect to range cattle there. Jesse Chisholm suggested Montford negotiate agreements with the tribes indigenous to the area. With Chisholm's help, Montford was able to make a deal with the tribes that allowed him to use the land as long as he did not hire white men as ranch hands. Montford began his first ranch in the spring of 1868, taking a team of men to [Walnut Creek], the same location of the buffalo hunt. Montford placed ranch hand Jack Brown in charge of the Walnut Creek Ranch. As payment for his services, Jack received every fourth calf born on the ranch, making Jack Brown possibly the first sharecropper of Oklahoma. By fall 1869, Montford moved his family to a new homestead at the site of Camp Arbuckle. Montford began farming a 50-acre plot in 1870. He used the practice of burning fields to rid the land of old growth, as well as to prevent diseases and ticks. Montford used the burn technique his entire life. Johnson Establishes Additional Ranches Around 1870, cattlemen from [Texas] stopped using the Shawnee Trail and began driving their herds to Kansas on the Western Shawnee Trail, what would become the Chisholm Trail. In 1870, Montford's sister, Adelaide, married her second husband, Jim Bond, a trader and stockman. Montford settled his business with her (which was started while he oversaw her homestead during the war), giving her 15 cows and calves and several steers, worth approximately $1,100 at that time. Montford was pressed by distant relative Chub Moore to take in several orphans. He agreed, taking in seven children, two of whom were almost adults. To lessen the burden of adopting so many children, Adelaide agreed to take two of them, and Granny Vicey Harmon (a family friend and Chickasaw)