In 1866, Nelson Story and two dozen cowboys drove six hundred longhorn cattle from Texas more than 1400 miles to the Livingston area in Montana, seeking to supply beef to the lucrative Montana mining camps. After leaving Fort Worth in the spring, they evaded toll collectors, outfoxed rustlers, and swam the herd across flood-swollen streams before facing greater danger on the Bozeman Trail in central Wyoming, where the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne were defending their hunting grounds and U.S. Army posts had come under siege. Near Fort Reno, Indians ran off many of the cattle, but Story and his men pursued them into the badlands and recovered the animals after a short skirmish in which two cowboys were wounded. Delayed for two weeks near Fort Phil Kearney when commander Henry Carrington refused immediate permission to proceed, Story eventually moved on without consent, traveling by night and corralling the herd by day to avoid further attacks. After passing Fort C.F. Smith and continuing up the Yellowstone Valley to near present Livingston, Story established a cattle camp, successfully completed the dangerous drive to Virginia City, became the first to make the long cattle drive from Texas to Montana, pioneered the famed Texas Trail, and helped lay the foundation of Montana's cattle industry. About thirty miles west of here on April 18, 1867, John Bozeman, the blazer of the Bozeman Trail and a founder of the city named for him, was allegedly shot and killed by Blackfeet Indians near the mouth of Mission Creek while traveling with Tom Cover to seek military contracts at the Bozeman Trail forts. Cover said several Indians approached their camp, Bozeman waved them in thinking they were Crow, and the men then opened fire, killing Bozeman and wounding Cover before fleeing with the horses; Cover said he killed one of them and then made his way up the Yellowstone River to Nelson Story's cattle camp. Yet Cover's account varied widely, rumors persisted that he had shot Bozeman himself, and evidence at the site suggested there had been no Indians, leaving the official story in doubt.