When I was a lad of 12 years of age my father had a red-headed overseer, good-natured, loquacious and fond of telling stories, the kind that suited the understanding and tickled the fancy of a boy. His stories were always related as being truthful accounts of actual occurrences, although I suspected they were frequently creatures of his own imagination. This overseer, a Westerner born and bred, had driven an ox wagon in a train across the plains to New Mexico; had made two trips across--in 1847 and 1848--one extending as far as Chihuahua, in Old Mexico. His observation was keen, and his memory unexcelled, so that, years afterwards, he could relate, in minute detail, the events of every day’s travel, from the beginning to the end of the journey. I was charmed with his accounts of the Indians and buffalo, wolves, antelope and prairie dogs. Reaching the age of 18 in 1857, with indifferent health, my father acquiesced in my determination to cross the plains to New Mexico. The doctor said the journey would benefit my health. Already an expert with a gun or pistol, I had killed all kinds of game to be found in Missouri, and had read Gordon Cumming’s book of his hunting exploits in South Africa, so that I felt as if nothing less than killing big game, like buffalo and elk, could gratify my sporting proclivities. Colonel James Chiles of “Six Mile,” Jackson County, was a state senator, and while at Jefferson City during the session of the legislature, my father telling him of my desire to go out to Santa Fé, the colonel sent me an invitation to come to his house by the middle of April and go out with a train belonging to his son. So in the early spring of 1857 I set out from my home in Saline County, well mounted and equipped for the journey. The spring was backward, and when I reached Colonel Chiles’s house in the middle of April winter was still “lingering in the lap of spring.” The grass was not good on the plains until the 10th of May. It was arranged for me to go out with the train commanded by “Jim Crow,” a son of Colonel Chiles.