to start at once; but the healing
of my reopened wound was slow, and it was March before I started. My
brother gave me a good horse and saddle, twenty-five dollars in gold,
and I started through a country unknown to me personally. Southern
Missouri had been in sympathy with the Confederacy, and whatever I
needed while traveling through that section was mine for the asking.
I avoided the Indian Territory until I reached Fort Smith, where I
rested several days with an old comrade, who gave me instructions and
routed me across the reservation of the Choctaw Indians, and I reached
Paris, Texas, without mishap.

I remember the feeling that I experienced while being ferried across
Red River. That watercourse was the northern boundary of Texas, and
while crossing it I realized that I was leaving home and friends and
entering a country the very name of which to the outside world was a
synonym for crime and outlawry. Yet some of as good men as ever it was
my pleasure to know came from that State, and undaunted I held a true
course for my destination. I was disappointed on seeing Fort Worth, a
straggling village on the Trinity River, and, merely halting to feed
my mount, passed on. I had a splendid horse and averaged thirty to
forty miles a day when traveling, and early in April reached the home
of my friend in Paolo Pinto County. The primitive valley of the Brazos
was enchanting, and the hospitality of the Edwards ranch was typical
of my own Virginia. George Edwards, my crony, was a year my junior, a
native of the State, his parents having moved west from Mississippi
the year after Texas won her independence from Mexico. The elder
Edwards had moved to his present home some fifteen years previous,
carrying with him a stock of horses and cattle, which had increased
until in 1866 he was regarded as one of the substantial ranchmen in
the Brazos valley. The ranch house was a stanch one, built at a
time when defense was to be considered as well as comfort, and was
surrounded by fine cornfields. The only drawback I could see there was
that there was no market for anything, nor was there any money in the
country. The consumption of such a ranch made no impression on the
increase of its herds, which grew to maturity with no demand for the
surplus.

I soon became impatient to do something. George Edwards had likewise
lost four years in the army, and was as restless as myself. He knew
the country, but the only employment in sight for us