In the mean time I was not idle.  By the first of July it was known that three hundred thousand cattle would be the minimum of the summer’s drive to Abilene.  My extensive acquaintance among buyers made my services of value to new drovers.  A commission of twenty-five cents a head was offered me for effecting sales.  The first week after severing my connection with Major Seth my earnings from a single trade amounted to seven hundred and fifty dollars.  Thenceforth I was launched on a business of my own.  Fortune smiled on me, acquaintances nicknamed me “The Angel,” and instead of my foolishness reflecting on me, it made me a host of friends.  Cowmen insisted on my selling their cattle, shippers consulted me, and I was constantly in demand with buyers, who wished my opinion on young steers before closing trades.  I was chosen referee in a dozen disputes in classifying cattle, my decisions always giving satisfaction.  Frequently, on an order, I turned buyer.  Northern men seemed timid in relying on their own judgment of Texas cattle.  Often, after a trade was made, the buyer paid me the regular commission for cutting and receiving, not willing to risk his judgment on range cattle.  During the second week in August I sold five thousand head and bought fifteen hundred.  Every man who had purchased cattle the year before had made money and was back in the market for more.  Prices were easily advanced as the season wore on, whole herds were taken by three or four farmers from the corn regions, and the year closed with a flourish.  In the space of four months I was instrumental in selling, buying, cutting, or receiving a few over thirty thousand head, on all of which I received a commission.

I established a camp of my own during the latter part of August.  In order to avoid night-herding his cattle the summer before, some one had built a corral about ten miles northeast of Abilene.  It was a temporary affair, the abrupt, bluff banks of a creek making a perfect horseshoe, requiring only four hundred feet of fence across the neck to inclose a corral of fully eight acres.  The inclosure was not in use, so I hired three men and took possession of it for the time being.  I had noticed in previous years that when a drover had sold all his herd but a remnant, he usually sacrificed his culls in order to reduce the expense of an outfit and return home.  I had an idea that there was money in buying up these remnants and doing a small jobbing business.  Frequently I had as many as seven hundred cull cattle on hand.  Besides, I was constantly buying and selling whole remudas of saddle horses.  So when a drover had sold all but a few hundred cattle he would come to me, and I would afford him the relief he wanted.  Cripples and sore-footed animals were usually thrown in for good measure, or accepted at the price of their hides.  Some buyers demanded quality and some cared only for numbers.  I remember effecting a sale of one hundred culls to a settler,