The branding over, I soon grew impatient to be doing something.  There would be no movement in cattle before the following spring, and a winter of idleness was not to my liking.  Buffalo hunting had lost its charm with me, the contentious savages were jealous of any intrusion on their old hunting grounds, and, having met them on numerous occasions during the past eighteen months, I had no further desire to cultivate their acquaintance.  I still owned my horse, now acclimated, and had money in my purse, and one morning I announced my intention of visiting my other comrades in Texas.  Protests were made against my going, and as an incentive to have me remain, the elder Edwards offered to outfit George and me the following spring with a herd of cattle and start us to Kansas.  I was anxious for employment, but assuring my host that he could count on my services, I still pleaded my anxiety to see other portions of the State and renew old acquaintances.  The herd could not possibly start before the middle of April, so telling my friends that I would be on hand to help gather the cattle, I saddled my horse and took leave of the hospitable ranch.

After a week of hard riding I reached the home of a former comrade on the Colorado River below Austin.  A hearty welcome awaited me, but the apparent poverty of the family made my visit rather a brief one.  Continuing eastward, my next stop was in Washington County, one of the oldest settled communities in the State.  The blight of Reconstruction seemed to have settled over the people like a pall, the frontier having escaped it.  But having reached my destination, I was determined to make the best of it.  At the house of my next comrade I felt a little more at home, he having married since his return and being naturally of a cheerful disposition.  For a year previous to the surrender he and I had wrangled beef for the Confederacy and had been stanch cronies.  We had also been in considerable mischief together; and his wife seemed to know me by reputation as well as I knew her husband.  Before the wire edge wore off my visit I was as free with the couple as though they had been my own brother and sister.  The fact was all too visible that they were struggling with poverty, though lightened by cheerfulness, and to remain long a guest would have been an imposition; accordingly I began to skirmish for something to do—­anything, it mattered not what.  The only work in sight was with a carpet-bag dredging company, improving the lower Brazos River, under a contract from the Reconstruction government of the State.  My old crony pleaded with me to have nothing to do with the job, offering to share his last crust with me; but then he had not had all the animosities of the war roughed out of him, and I had.  I would work for a Federal as soon as any one else, provided he paid me the promised wage, and, giving rein to my impulse, I made application at the dredging headquarters and was put in charge of a squad of negroes.