ad been made
adjoining my ranch on the Clear Fork, and it began to look as if I had
more land than I needed. Yet I had confidence enough in the advice of
my partners to reopen negotiations with my merchant friend at Austin
for the purchase of more land scrip. The panic of the fall before had
scarcely affected the frontier of Texas, and was felt in only a few
towns of any prominence in the State. There had been no money in
circulation since the war, and a financial stringency elsewhere made
little difference among the local people. True, the Kansas cattle
market had sent a little money home, but a bad winter with drovers
holding cattle in the North, followed by a panic, had bankrupted
nearly every cowman, many of them with heavy liabilities in Texas.
There were very few banks in the State, and what little money there
was among the people was generally hoarded to await the dawn of a
brighter day.

My wife tells a story about her father, which shows similar conditions
prevailing during the civil war. The only outlet for cotton in Texas
during the rebellion was by way of Mexico. Matamoros, near the mouth
of the Rio Grande, waxed opulent in its trade of contrabrand cotton,
the Texas product crossing the river anywhere for hundreds of miles
above and being freighted down on the Mexican side to tide-water. The
town did an immense business during the blockade of coast seaports,
twenty-dollar gold pieces being more plentiful then than nickels are
to-day, the cotton finding a ready market at war prices and safe
shipment under foreign flags. My wife's father was engaged in the
trade of buying cotton at interior points, freighting it by ox trains
over the Mexican frontier, and thence down the river to Matamoros.
Once the staple reached neutral soil, it was palmed off as a local
product, and the Federal government dared not touch it, even though
they knew it to be contrabrand of war. The business was transacted in
gold, and it was Mr. Edwards's custom to bury the coin on his return
from each trading trip. My wife, then a mere girl and the oldest
of the children at home, was taken into her father's confidence
in secreting the money. The country was full of bandits, either
government would have confiscated the gold had they known its
whereabouts, and the only way to insure its safety was to bury it.
After several years trading in cotton, Mr. Edwards accumulated
considerable money, and on one occasion buried the treasure at night
bet