While I was engrossed with my many duties, the superintendent cunningly went north and secured proxies in his name, and returning, beat me by two votes, secured for himself my position as general manager, and then proceeded to wreck the whole enterprise, much to his own pecuniary benefit, while my friends who had invested on my representations, blamed me for their losses though I was entirely innocent of any wrong whatever. To cap the climax, this superintendent refused to make an accounting for several thousand dollars with which I had entrusted him to make purchases of lands on my personal account. I secured a warrant for his arrest, chased him half over the county with a sheriff, and brought him to the city for trial. On our way to the hotel, I was set upon by a crowd of roughs who had been dined and wined by said W----, and who threatened to lynch me. I backed up into a corner of the hotel piazza, laid my hand on an imaginary revolver, threatening to shoot, and was defending myself with a whirling chair, when the sheriff's posse rushed to my deliverance in the nick of time, and W---- was forced to hand over my money. He then made life unbearable by sending negroes at night in my absence to annoy my family, who escaped injury only by the vigorous use of a revolver by my wife who defended the little ones by numerous shots which sent the tormentors flying to the woods. This unscrupulous superintendent secured by his cunning a large amount of our funds; but it was a curse to him for he squandered it in riotous living. When he married he chartered a large steamer and brass band, took on board a crowd of guests, champagne flowed like water, every luxury was furnished liberally, and the excursion was a prolonged debauch. To-day this fellow is a fugitive from justice, forsaken by wife and fair weather friends, and thus really, if not literally, is fulfilled the prophecy of the poet, "Her dark wing shall the raven flap O'er the false-hearted, His warm blood the wolf shall lap E'er life be parted, Shame and dishonor sit O'er his grave ever, Blessing shall hallow it Never, no never." CHAPTER XXI. A MILLION DOLLAR BUSINESS WITH A ONE DOLLAR CAPITAL. Soon after my encounter at S---- with the unspeakable W----, I met Major St. A----, who gave a cordial invitation to myself and family to become his guests in his new town of T----, with a view to securing our cooperation in the development of his multitudinous schemes. This invitation we accepted, and very early one beautiful morning in March, my wife, four children and myself, with driver and guide, embarked on a "prairie schooner," drawn by three horses, for the promised land.