PREFACE.
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My excuse for writing this book is moneyand lots of it.
I suppose the above would suffice, but as time is not very precious I will continue and tell how the idea of writing a book first got into my head:
While ranching on the Indian Territory line, close to Caldwell, Kansas, in the winter of '82 and '83, we boysthere being nine of usmade an iron-clad rule that whoever was heard swearing or caught picking grey backs off and throwing them on the floor without first killing them, should pay a fine of ten cents for each and every offense. The proceeds to be used for buying choice literaturesomething that would have a tendency to raise us above the average cow-puncher. Just twenty-four hours after making this rule we had three dollars in the potor at least in my pocket, I having been appointed treasurer.
As I was going to town that night to see my Sunday girl, I proposed to the boys that, while up there, I send the money off for a years subscription to some good newspaper. The question then came up, what paper shall it be? We finally agreed to leave it to a voteeach man to write the one of his choice on a slip of paper and drop it in a hat. There being two young Texans present who could neither read nor write, we let them speak their choice after the rest of us got our votes deposited. At the word given them to cut loose they both yelled "Police Gazette", and on asking why they voted for that wicked Sheet, they both replied as though with one voice: "Cause we can read the pictures." We found, on counting the votes that the Police Gazette had won, so it was subscribed for.
With the first copy that arrived was the beginning of a continued story, entitled "Potts turning Paris inside out." Mr. Potts, the hero, was an old stove-up New York preacher, who had made a raise of several hundred thousand dollars and was over in Paris blowing it in. I became interested in the story, and envied Mr. Potts very much. I wished for a few hundred thousand so I could do likewise; I lay awake one whole night trying to study up a plan by which I could make the desired amount. But, thinks I, what can an uneducated cow puncher do now-a-days to make such a vast sum? In trying to solve the question my mind darted back a few years, when, if I had taken time by the forelock, I might have now been wallowing in wealth with the rest of the big cattle kingsor to use a more appropriate name, cattle thieves. But alas! thought I, the days of honorable cattle stealing is past, and I must turn my mind into a healthier channel.
The next morning while awaiting breakfast I happened to pick up a small scrap of paper and read: "To the young man of high aims literature offers big inducements, providing he gets into an untrodden field."
That night I lay awake again, trying to locate some "cussed" untrodden field, where, as an author, I might soar on highto the extent of a few hundred thousand at least.
At last, just as our pet rooster, "Deacon Bates" was crowing for day, I found a field that I had never heard of any one trampling overa "nigger" love story. So that night I launched out on my new novel, the title of which was, "A pair of two-legged coons." My heroine, Miss Patsy Washington was one shade darker than the ace of spades, while her lover, Mr. Andrew Jackson, was three colors darker than herself. My plot was laid in African Bend on the Colorado river in Southern Texas.
Everything went on nicely, until about half way through the first chapter, when Mr. Jackson was convicted and sent to Huntsville for stealing a neighbors hog; and while I was trying to find a substitute for him, old Patsy flew the track and eloped with a Yankee carpet-bagger. That was more than I could endure, so picking up the manuscript I threw it into the fire. Thus ended my first attempt at Authorship.
I then began figuring up an easier field for my inexperienced pen, and finally hit upon the idea of writing a history of my own short, but rugged life, which dear reader you have before you. But whether it will bring me in "shekels" enough to capsize Paris remains yet to be "disskivered" as the Negro says.
Chapter I.
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MY BOYHOOD DAYS.
It was a bright morning, on the 7th day of February 1856, as near as I can remember, that your humble Servant came prancing into this wide and wicked world.
By glancing over the map you will find his birthplace, at the extreme southern part of the Lone Star State, on the Peninsula of Matagorda, a narrow strip of land bordered by the Gulf of Mexico on the south and Matagorda Bay on the north.
This Peninsula is from one to two miles wide and seventy five miles long. It connects the mainland at Caney and comes to a focus at Deskrows Point or "Salura Pass." About midway between the two was situated the "Dutch Settlement," and in the centre of that Settlement, which contained only a dozen houses, stood the little frame cottage that first gave me shelter.
My father who died when I was only a year old, came from the sunny clime of Italy, while my dear old mother drifted from the Boggs of good "ould" Ireland. Am I not a queer conglomeratea sweet-scented mixture indeed!
Our nearest neighbor was a kind old soul by the name of John Williams, whose family consisted of his wife and eleven children.
In the fall of 1859 I took my first lessons in school, my teacher being a Mr. Hale from Illinois.
The school house, a little old frame building, stood off by itself, about a mile from the Settlement, and we little tow-heads, sister and I, had to hoof it up there every morning, through the grassburrs, barefooted; our little sunbrowned feet had never been incased in shoe-leather up to that time.
To avoid the grassburrs, sometimes on getting an early start we would go around by the Gulf beach which was quite a distance out of our way. In taking this route though, I would generally be late at school, for there were so many little things to detain mesuch as trying to catch the shadow of a flying sea gull, or trying to lasso sand crabs on my stick horse.
Crowds of Cow Boys used to come over to the Peninsula from the mainland and sometimes have occasion to rope wild steers in my presencehence me trying to imitate them.
I remember getting into a scrape once by taking the beach route to school; sister who was a year older than I, was walking along the water edge picking up pretty shells while I was riding along on my stick horse taking the kinks out of my ropea piece of fishlineso as to be ready to take in the first crab that showed himself. Those crabs went in large droves and sometimes ventured quite a distance out from the Gulf, but on seeing a person would break for the water.
It was not long before I spied a large drove on ahead, pulling their freight for the water. I put spurs to my pony and dashed after them. I managed to get one old fat fellow headed off and turned towards the prairie. I threw at him several times but he would always go through the loop before I could pull it up. He finally struck a hole and disappeared.
