The following is from Mary Einsel's "Kansas, the Priceless Prairie."
     Each western state has its early history a famous cattle spread that
  overshadowed all others. Kansas had the Comanche Pool, which was located
  near Medicine Lodge, the largest cattle ranch in the state's history.
     The ranch was started by four men: Jess Evans, Wylie Payne, Richard
  Phillips, and Major Andrew Drumm, after an Army order, isued from the
  Indian Territory, stated that no more Texas cattle drives were to cross
  the Oklahoma Strip.
     The best source for facts about the Comanche Pool is an old newspaper
  published in Medicine Lodge, the town closest to ranch headquarters and
  the only town of any size in south-central Kansas at the time of the pools
  organization.
     Evans, Payne, Phillips, and Drumm talked to the handful of ranchers
  who were already in south-central Kansas, then they mvoed in large herds
  of their own, starting the ranch with some 26,000 head. The idea was for
  "members" (the four mentioned above were by far the largest holders) to
  range their cattle as one great common herd. A Board of Directors was
  formed, with Wylie Payne as treaurer. All expenses incurred and profits
  received were in direct proportion to the number of cattle a particular
  rancher owned compaired to the total number of the whole herd.
     The ranch house and main headquarters, called Evansville were built
  among the rolling hills 28 miles southwest of Medicine Lodge. Warehouses
  were maintained in different parts of the ranch territory, to hold supplies
  sent out from Kansas City by Major Drumm to outfit the three principal 
  horse camps.
     Mrs. Frank King, coldwater, whose husband worked for the pool and had
  been in Evansville many times, remembered how Major Drumm usually arrived
  at Evansville in a fine black surrey driven by his personal valet. She
  also recalled that a barrel of currants was included in the freight one
  day. "A little cub bear came out of the trees and got into the currants.
  He came back tot he barrel so many times that he got real friendly and 
  had the run of the place."
     To cover the territory, the pool kept a sizable herd of horses. According
  to the paper, "of their 400 saddle horses, they came through the winter (1882)
  with a loss of only eight head. Most of the horses were wintered on the 
  Cimmeron in Oklahoma. It was described this way: "They fenced in a strip one-
  half mile wide up and down the river all winter, and when spring came those
  horses were generally fat. Other wild animals wintered in the trees too.
  There were antelope, deer, bears and lots of wild turkeys."
     At roundup time, as one early-day resident recalled, it looked like an
  army camped out on the prairie. The pool always put notices in the paper so
  other outfits could come along too. The territory was divided into sections
  with each having a boss. A man took seven good horses. One for every day in
  the week.
     A calf was branded according to its mother, and tally sheets were kept 
  by the range boss. During branding, the range boss hired extra hands at $40
  a month.
     After the cattle were gathered (according to Jeff Long, Medicine Lodge)
  "there'd be so many they'd have to string 'em out before they could work 'em.
  The different outfits brought their own chuckwagons - they'd feed about 12
  men each. Some outfits had several wagons. Night was the worst time. You
  didn't want any cattle running."
     Mr. Sampson, the bookkeeper from St. Louis, drew up balance sheets and
  presented them to members every six months. He found it cost 9 cents a month
  to keep each head of stock. Other expenses noted were for 5,000 bushels of
  corn and two carloads of horses arriving on the train from Harper, Kansas.
     Stories about the pool cowboys were related by people who had had some
  relatives work for the pool or who had lived in the vicinity of their range.
  Ben Harbaugh, a rancher living in the area who did not belong to the pool,
  said "They always treated me right. They told me to let my few cows drift;
  that they would look after them and see that I got them back after roundup.
  They did, too."
     After pay day, pool cowboys preferred to do their celebrating in Kiowa,
  because it was considered a more wide-open town. "But if they didn't drink
  too much," Mrs. Frank Gordon reminisced, "they were not a bad lot. They
  just liked to cut up and dance a lot. There was the time they bought all
  the paper flowers the store had and gave one to every lady that passed by
  on the street."
     One of the pool cowboys was described by Frank Lockert, Coats, as "the
  best horse-breaker I ever knew. His name was Bill Hill, a Negro, who came
  up with some long-horned Mexican cattle from the San Antonio country. He
  could do anything with a horse. He always wore high-topped boots, a ring
  on each little finger and a horsehair watch guard on a fancy vest. One day
  he got drunk in Medicin Lodge and someone doped his liquor and he went crazy.
  They had to take him away to an institution. But I heard later that he got
  over it and went back to breaking horses."
     Once, when a five-year-old girl wandered away from her home on the 
  prairie, word was sent tot he pool and the men fanned out across the plains.
  Jeff Mills, one of their hands, found her at daybreak.
     Two years after the pool began operating the newspaper in Medicine Lodge
  began to show evidence of the size of the pool's holdings. In April 1882,
  "it is estimated that 20,000 beeves will be shipped from the Comanche Pool
  this eyar." And, "Evans and Hunter during the past week gathered from the
  Comanche Pool beef pastures two herd of beeves, of 2,000 each, and started
  them north to fill beef contracts in Wyoming and Dakota. They will be issued
  tot he Indians at the Pine Ridge, Standing Rock and Cheyenne agencies. The
  contract price is $4.10 per hundred. It will require 60 days at 10 miles
  per day to complete the trip."
     Then, in the summer of 1883: "The pool has about 10,000 beeves in their
  pasture and they are reported to be doing first class. These beeves will be
  shipped from Dodge City as will all the beeves in the section. Shipments will
  probably commence around the first of August.
     One of the biggest undertakings of the pool was the fencing of their range.
  Fence did not mean one continuous unbroken line. The southern and western
  ranges were marked by the natural barrier of the sandy bars along the Cimarron,
  and to the north and west drift fences were built along the high ridges. Their
  fencce building project had a slight interruption, according to the paper:
  "P.J. Larkins, boss of the Comanche Pool and J.C. Boston, who is holding cattle
  in the same county, had a big discussion - with fists.
     "Larkins and his men were cutting cedar posts when Boston ordered them to
  quit. They contineud to chop and Larkins and Boston came to blows. The former
  is a small man and the latter a big six-footer, and those who witnessed the
  affair said it appeared very much like a scrappy bantam and a big rooster 
  fighting. After several rounds, Boston got the drop on Larkins and he went
  down. They boys admire their boss' stand but not his discretion."
     Part of the pool's barbed wire is still in use today (1970). It can be
  found on ranches located in the vicinity and is easily identified by its 
  course thickness and many-sided prongs.
     Within four years after the pool's beginning, the steady influx of home-
  steaders began to tell. Pool cowboys were ordered to "prove up" along many
  of the good streams, but the changing times were making free open range in 
  Kansas a thing of the past. News items such as this appeared in the paper:
  "The Comanche Pool still objects to giving in their property for taxation. 
  The commissioners, on the other hand, have ordered that the levy be made.
  The matter, of course, can only be settled in court."
     One night in 1884, irate farmers who came to the home of Ben Harbaugh,
  the same man who had had the pool look after his small bunch of cattle. The
  farmers said they were fed up with the cattlemen and were going to burn off
  the prairie. "I told them I wanted no part of it." Mr. Harbaugh recalled,
  "to leave me alone, that I had a Winchester that could reach all over my
  section and that I'd have nothing to do with them. They only suceeded in
  burning off about 100 acres. But before that, I took the oxen and plowed 
  five or six furrows completely around my place."
     Taxes, homesteaders, enactment of the herd law (cattle had to be fenced),
  the harsh winter of 1885 and the even harder one of 1886 brought the end of
  the Comanche Pool. Frank King, the last foreman for the Pool, took the
  remaining cattle to leased Indian lands in the Cherokee Strip.
   
                  
     Source:Chosen Land - Barber County, Kansas,  pg. 8
     From Mary Einsel's "Kansas, the Priceless Prairie."