, I question if I was thoroughly _reconstructed._
Before our disabilities were removed, we ex-Confederates could do all
the work, run all the risk, turn in all the cattle in filling the
outstanding contracts, but the middleman got the profits. The contract
in question was a blanket one, requiring about fifty thousand cows for
delivery at some twenty Indian agencies. The use of my name was all
that was required of me, as I was the only cowman in the entire ring.
My duty was to bid on the contract; the bonds would be furnished by my
partners, of which I must have had a dozen. The proposals called for
sealed bids, in the usual form, to be in the hands of the Department
of the Interior before noon on a certain day, marked so and so, and to
be opened at high noon a week later. The contract was a large one, the
competition was ample. Several other Texas drovers besides myself had
submitted bids; but they stood no show--_I had been furnished the
figures of every competitor._ The ramifications of the ring of which
I was the mere figure-head can be readily imagined. I sublet the
contract to the next lowest bidder, who delivered the cattle, and we
got a rake-off of a clean hundred thousand dollars. Even then there
was little in the transaction for me, as it required too many people
to handle it, and none of them stood behind the door at the final
"divvy." In a single year I have since cleared twenty times what my
interest amounted to in that contract and have done honorably by
my fellowmen. That was my first, last, and only connection with a
transaction that would need deodorizing if one described the details.

But I have seen life, have been witness to its poetry and pathos, have
drunk from the cup of sorrow and rejoiced as a strong man to run a
race. I have danced all night where wealth and beauty mingled, and
again under the stars on a battlefield I have helped carry a stretcher
when the wails of the wounded on every hand were like the despairing
cries of lost souls. I have seen an old demented man walking the
streets of a city, picking up every scrap of paper and scanning it
carefully to see if a certain ship had arrived at port--a ship which
had been lost at sea over forty years before, and aboard of which were
his wife and children. I was once under the necessity of making
a payment of twenty-five thousand dollars in silver at an Indian
village. There were no means of transportation, and I was forced to
carry the specie in