After bidding aunt Mary and uncle "Jim" good-bye I struck out for Allen, Pool & Co.'s ranch on Simms' bayou. There I hired to a Mr. Joe Davis of Clear creek, who had the contract furnishing beef to the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe R. R. which was just building out from Galveston.
About the first of September I mounted Ranger, a pony I swapped Boney-part for and lit out for Tresspalacious. My wound by that time was about well.
On arriving at Mr. "Tom" Kuykendall's at the head of Tresspalacious river, I learned that mother was at Mr. Morris', at the mouth of Cashe's creek, waiting for me. She had arrived there just a few days after my departure—for parts unknown, as no one knew where I was going.
You see after getting shot I wrote to mother telling her of the accident and also sending her some money, as I was in the habit of doing when flush. Hence, like a kind mother, she came out to be of service to me, but arrived too late.
It is needless to say we were glad to meet, for the first time in several long years.
I went right to work trying to rig up a home for her. She had brought some money with her and I sold a lot of Mavricks—some of those I branded the winter previous—for two dollars a head, therefore we both together had money enough to build and furnish a shanty.
As Mr. Morris was just going to Indianola in his schooner we sent by him after our lumber, etc. But before he got there the "big" storm, which swept nearly every soul from the Peninsula and nearly wiped Indianola out of existence, struck him and scattered his boat, money and everything he had aboard to the four winds of Heaven. He and his son "Tom" barely escaped with their own lives.
Mother and I experienced a share of the same storm too; we were still at Mr. Morris.' The storm came about ten o'clock at night and blew the Morris mansion down, leaving us, Mrs. Morris, her three children and a step-son, "Jim," mother and myself to paddle around in water up to our waists until morning.
When daylight came the Bay shore was lined with dead cattle just as far as the eye could reach; cattle that had blown into the water and drowned.
When Mr. Morris got back he started a new ranch up at the head of Cashe's creek, where I had camped the winter before and I built mother a shanty a few hundred yards from his, so she wouldn't get lonesome while I was away.