driven them home.

This work being over, I proposed to spend a few weeks with my family at
North Platte, for the purpose of making their better acquaintance, for my
long and continued absence from home made me a comparative stranger under
my own roof-tree. One great source of pleasure to me was that my wife was
delighted with the home I had given her amid the prairies of the far
west. Soon after my arrival, my sisters Nellie and May, came to make us a
visit, and a delightful time we all had during their stay. When they left
us, I accompanied them to their home in Denver, Colorado, where I passed
several days visiting old friends and scenes.

Returning to Ogallala I purchased from Bill Phant, an extensive cattle
drover from Texas, a herd of cattle, which I drove to my ranch on the
Dismal river, after which I bade my partner and the boys good-bye, and
started for the Indian Territory to procure Indians for my Dramatic
Combination for the season of 1878-79.

_En route_ to the Territory, I paid a long promised visit to my sisters,
Julia--Mrs. J.A. Goodman--and Eliza--Mrs. George M. Myers--who reside in
Kansas, the state which the reader will remember was my boyhood home.

Having secured my Indian actors, and along with them Mr. O. A. Burgess, a
government interpreter, and Ed. A. Burgess, known as the "Boy Chief of
the Pawnees," I started for Baltimore, where I organized my combination,
and which was the largest troupe I had yet had on the road; opening in
that city at the Opera House, under the management of Hon. John T. Ford,
and then started on a southern tour, playing in Washington, Richmond and
as far south as Savannah, Georgia, where we were brought to a sudden
halt, owing to the yellow fever which was then cruelly raging in the
beautiful cities of the "Land of the cotton and the cane."

[Illustration: ONE OF THE TROUPE.]

While playing in Washington, I suddenly learned from a
reporter--Washington newspaper men know everything--that my Indians were
to be seized by the Government and sent back to their agency. Finding
that there was foundation for the rumor, I at once sought General Carl
Shurz, Secretary of the Interior, and asked him if he intended depriving
me of my Indian actors. He said that he did, as the Indians were away
from their reservation without leave. I answered that I had had Indians
with me the year before and nothing had been said about it; but
Commissioner Haight replied that the Indians were the