We had now abandoned our tin peddling business except as a means of settling expense bills, and had become successful horse dealers.

Our fine horses gave us a sort of prestige and welcome in traveling over the country. Our lookout for bargains was always in unmanageable young horses, which usually became docile through kind treatment. Of the three brothers, Collins was the best judge of a horse, while Gordon and I were close buyers. Our method was to trade for or buy unmanageable young sound horses and put them on the wheel of a four-horse team. After they had fought and tired themselves out they would come along and soon be working all right. In this way we could tame the ugliest animals and never whip them. Then they were for sale and would please the buyer. Sometimes we had more than one hundred horses, which gave a good selection for the buyer.

A few of our men were on good salary, but many were hangers on.

Frank Button, from Vermont, was always on hand in the time of trouble. He was kind-hearted, but when on a lark was always looking for the bully of the town. The Aurora papers came out one morning with large headlines, stating that Ben Grim, the "Terror or Terrier" of Aurora, had tackled one of Richardson's horse jockies, named Button, who although appearing like a common cloth-bound wooden-button, proved to have been brass inside, but it was hoped that Grim would live.

At Davenport we camped over Sunday on the river just north of the town, where the Methodist minister (a jolly good fellow) thought to invite us to come and hear him preach. In coming up through the teams he chanced to climb the six-horse van to see how things looked inside. Tiger, the one-eyed brindle pup, could not stand for that, and when we all rushed to see what the stranger was yelling about, we found the minister swinging from the top bar of the Broad Gauge by both hands, while Tiger was swinging from the seat of the minister's pants by his teeth. Our liberal donation for his new pants virtually healed the breach, but that evening, when in his sermon he lauded us for our Christian benevolence and sympathy, he said nothing about the seat of his pants, nor even mentioned the faithfulness of our beloved Tiger.

At Evansville I boarded an Ohio River steamer for Louisville, on which there were four colored men, accustomed to singing old plantation melodies at each landing. I took them with us through the hills of old Kentucky for several weeks and we all learned to sing their songs. I am wishing now I could be in that old camp once more, and hear those voices again:

"Oh, Dearest May, You're Lovelier Than the Day," "Down on the Old P. D.," "My Old Kentucky Home Far Away," "Darling Nelly Gray," and the like.

Prosperity and joy were with us in every way, and never in all our travels did we have a man get severely hurt. We three brothers were strong, athletic and humorous and always made companions of our men.

Our foot and horse racing was often exciting. Our last foot race was in Cleveland, Ohio, where after we three brothers had outdone all the men we ran it off between ourselves on the Lake Shore, where Collins won, but I told him it was just by the length of his nose.

Some of us were good marksmen, but when we run on to a backwoodsman in Missouri, who had about a dozen squirrels he had killed that morning, all shot in the eye except one, which was hit in the ear, for which he apologized, as he declared that in the tallest tree he was able to hit ninety-nine out of one hundred in the eye, we boasted no more about our marksmanship.

If Frank and Jesse James, the notorious outlaws of the Wild West, ever visited our camp, we did not know it. I visited their old home twice while in Missouri, and listened to their mother's story about her boys she loved so well. At that time the State of Missouri had out rewards, in the aggregate of more than $50,000 for their capture, dead or alive.