At this moment the lady of the house came on the porch where we were sitting and invited us in to eat dinner, and she told the Captain she had prepared a special dinner for him.

The Captain laughed and said:  “Well, my good woman, here is my comrade, Mr. Drannan; what shall we do with him?  I expect he is hungry, too.”

She said:  “Well, Captain, you may invite him in.  Maybe you can spare enough for him to have a taste.  I have only got a gallon of green peas and a ham of venison roasted and four squash pies and a pan of corn bread cooked for you, so I reckon you can spare Mr. Drannan a little bite.”

As we went into the house the man said, “My wife must think you are a pretty good eater Capt.” to which the lady replied, “I tried him a year ago, and I have not forgotten how much it took to fill him up then.”

We sat down to the table amidst the laughter that followed this remark, and I can safely say that I never ate a meal that I enjoyed more than I did that dinner, and I thought that the Capt. had not lost the appetite the lady gave him credit for having the year before.  And what made the meal more enjoyable was the Texas style of cracking jokes from the time we sat down until we left the table, and I will say this for Texas that of all the states I have ever visited from that time until this day Texas was then and is now the most hospitable.

It is fifty years ago that I ate that meal in the little settlement that was miles away from the busy cities, and I can with safety say that I have found in the state of Texas more large hearted people than I have found in all the other states put together that I have visited.

When we were leaving the house we told the young man that we would come back the next day and bring the horses for him, to take care of.

We left the settlement and struck the trail for our camp, and we found that the boys had good success in hunting.  They had four deer all dressed and hanging to the limbs of trees.

That evening I asked the Capt. what course he intended to pursue now.  He said, “We have the horses off our hands for a time at least, and we will pull south for a month or six weeks, and then if all is well we will come back and get our horses and pull for Dallas.  By that time the farmers will have disposed of their crops and will have money more plenty, and I think we can do better in selling our horses than we ever have done.  I think we have crippled the Apache tribe so much that some of the settlements will not be troubled with them again, and if we are as successful in our fights with them the balance of the season, they will be pretty well down, and what a great blessing it will be to the people of this country that we came to their relief.”

The next morning Capt.  McKee and I and the whole company broke camp and struck the trail for the settlement, driving the captured horses before us.  We met the herder coming to meet us.  He assisted us to drive them to his corral and helped us to count them, and there were one hundred and thirty-eight horses in the band.  Nearly everyone in the settlement was at the corral when we got there.  The people had heard that we were coming, and everybody wanted to see the horses we had fallen heir to when we killed the Indians.