Shortly after landing in Indianola I got two passengers, one of them a pretty young lady, Miss Ruthie Ward, to take to Sand Point in Lavaca county, just across the Bay from Indianola.
I remained in Indianola two days "bucking" monte. I left there broke after paying for a load of melons.
Chapter XII.
BACK TO MY FAVORITE OCCUPATION, THAT OF A WILD AND WOOLLY COW BOY.
When the oyster season began, I abandoned the melon trade in favor of the former.
I would load up at one of the many oyster reefs in the Bay and take them either to the factory or Indianola where they sold for one dollar a barrel, in the shell.
Along in October sometime, I worked up a scheme by which I thought I could make a stake. My scheme was to get into the Colorado river where there were no boats and speculate among the africans that lined the river banks on both sides just as far up as it was navigable, which was fifty miles or more.