[2][3] In Texas, Loving received 640 acres (2.6 km2) of land in three patents spread through three counties Collin, Dallas, and Parker.

[3] By 1855, he moved with his family to the future Palo Pinto County, Texas, where he ran a country store and ranched on Keechi Creek.

[3] To market his large herd, Loving drove them out of Texas and in that same year he entrusted his nineteen-year-old son, Joseph, to drive his and his neighbors' cattle to Illinois up the Shawnee Trail.

[3] The drive made a profit of $36 head and encouraged Loving to repeat the trek successfully the next year with John Noble Durkee.

[3] However, the American Civil War had broken out and the Union authorities prevented him from returning to the South until Kit Carson and others interceded for him.

[3] During the war, he was commissioned to provide beef to the Confederate States Army and drive cattle along the Mississippi River.

The two men were reunited in southern New Mexico, where they went into partnership with John Chisum at his ranch in the Bosque Grande, about forty miles south of Fort Sumner.

[3][4] The weakened Loving sent Wilson back to the herd, eluded the Indians, and, with the aid of Mexican traders, reached Fort Sumner, only to die there of gangrene.

In the book, Augustus "Gus" McCrae is injured by Indian arrows and sends his companion Pea Eye Parker to retrieve Woodrow F. Call.