The dry weather still prevailed, and in spite of all our efforts to earn extra money, we were getting deeper into trouble month by month. By the summer of 1918 we were about finished in our new venture. There was no grazing and no money for livestock feed. Cows and horses grazed the short grass, taking in sand with each bite. Sand clogged their stomachs and they died with sand colic. Many died but a few didn't. Something simply had to give. We just had to try something else. After a long heart-breaking battle against the elements, we rounded up the remaining cattle and drove them to the railroad stockyards at Lamesa. That was a slow exodus. They were so poor and weak some fell by the wayside and didn't finish the ten-mile drive. Most of them did make it. I don't know where Papa sold them nor what he got for them. I know he couldn't have gotten much. After that, we sold the smaller farm and got rid of the Buick car. Susie and Dode moved onto the large farm, and the rest of us moved to a farm near the community of Abbie, about nine miles east of Hamlin. We bought out a crop from someone in mid-summer. It, too, proved to be a failure--we made three bales of cotton. In that year and a half we had lost most of our money, our cattle, quite a few of our horses and our best car. After the crop failure at Abbie we had to try something else again. So we loaded the Reo car and went to Wichita Falls, Texas, where the government was building an aviation camp to train flyers for the war that was still going on. Papa hired on as a carpenter at six dollars a day. Let me tell you about one night when some of us green-horn country boys went to downtown Wichita Falls with Papa. While he was attending to some business, we boys got out of the car and were looking at newspapers out in front of a drug store. It must have been a Saturday night because the newsracks were full of Sunday funny papers. We were keeping hands off and just seeing what we could see without touching the papers when a stranger came by and told us, "You boys can have all the funny papers you want. They only want the newspapers. Help yourselves to all you want." Boy! We were sure pleased to hear that. I was beginning to believe that city life was much more interesting than the country life we were used to. The funnies were just what we wanted. And we were getting more than our share when a friend, Harry Stacy, came along and informed us that, "If you boys don't want to get put in jail, you better put those papers back in the racks and get in that car in a hurry." We did what he told us to do. Harry was one of Frank's buddies. He and Frank were carpentering out at the aviation camp. As far as I was concerned, I respected Harry and I knew he had almost as much authority to spank us boys as Frank had. At least he was concerned about our well-being. We didn't know that a stranger would lie like that to country kids just to see them get into trouble.