A year before I had sent five hundred gallons of wine of my own manufacture to each of the military posts, Davis and Stockton, and on arriving we found that it had all been sold at $5 per gallon, and Mrs. Mills stuffed the greenbacks into her little handsatchel for future use.
The postmaster at Fort Concho, “Jim” Trainer, whom I had never seen, had threatened to whip me on sight because he had been told that I had said he gave false receipts to the Mail Company, as other postmasters had done. After we got into camp near Concho I told my wife that I would go up to the sutler’s store and see Mr. Trainer, and I remember her cheery words to me as I walked away: “Look out for yourself!”
Arrived at the store I entered and asked for Mr. Trainer. A good-looking, good-natured gentleman behind the counter replied that he was the man, and when I told him who I was he hesitated awhile and then invited me into the office, gave me a chair and a cigar, and after we had chatted awhile he asked me if I knew he had intended to thrash me. I told him yes, but that I had never spoken unkindly of him and did not know anything about his acts as postmaster. He said he had been the victim of liars, and presented me with a bottle of fine brandy and wished me a pleasant journey. Trainer was not a coward but had been played upon by my enemies.
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When we arrived at Fredricksburg, sixty-five miles west of Austin, where Mr. Zabriskie left us for San Antonio, we stopped at Nimmit’s Hotel for a day’s rest, and Mrs. Mills and I were given a room upstairs. During the day I met in the hall of the hotel Albert Kuhn, who has been mentioned in my war story as the man who piloted the party of Texas soldiers who kidnapped me in Juarez in 1861, and who had received the reward for my capture. Kuhn had left El Paso with the Confederates in 1862, and I had not seen or heard of him for eight years. Kuhn was a very large man of rough and almost frightful appearance, and prided himself on being considered _bad_. He was a prototype of Mark Twain’s “Mr. Arkansas.” We passed each other without speaking, but when we met a second time in the back yard Kuhn said: “Mills, don’t you know me?” I replied: “Yes.” “Then why didn’t you speak to me?” “Because I did not wish to do so.” Kuhn then went to the bar and proceeded to get himself drunk. I told “Johnnie” what had occurred and instructed him to harness the team and be ready to proceed on our journey. I told my wife that Kuhn was at the hotel and that there might be trouble. I went down stairs again, armed, of course, and met Kuhn, but he made no demonstration. Mrs. Mills and I then went to the ambulance, Johnnie being already on the box, and Mrs. Mills got inside, but before I could take my seat Kuhn appeared with a cocked pistol in his hand and swore great oaths that if I did not get out he would kill me where I was.