While we were talking over old times and thinking no harm a file of the guard appeared at my door and informed me that they had orders to take Dowell to the guard house and his mare to the Government corral.
I was, of course, indignant. What? Federal bayonets shoved into _my_ door after all that I had gone through? In this frame of mind I called on Colonel Bowie and gave him what in these days might be called “a song and dance.” I told the Colonel that Dowell was ready to take the oath prescribed in President Lincoln’s amnesty proclamation, but he replied that he would not permit his adjutant to administer the oath, but out of consideration for me he would permit my friend to return to Mexico with his mare. He went, but the following day I wrote out the proper paper for Dowell and he swore to it before Henry J. Cuniffe, United States Consul at Juarez, and I took my friend and introduced him to Colonel Bowie as a fully fledged American citizen!
The Colonel gracefully acknowledged that he was beaten, and Dowell remained with us. Dowell owned some desirable town lots in El Paso, which were saved from confiscation by his timely oath of allegiance. These lots were of little value at the time, but he managed to hold them till the advent of the railroads and the first El Paso boom, so that he lived poor and died wealthy.
The Dowell race mare proved useful; and here I state some facts of which I am neither proud nor ashamed. Uncle Ben assured me that she could outrun any quarter nag that would come to El Paso, and we formed a partnership under which he furnished the animal and the “horse sense” and I the money for the stakes. The race track was nearly along the line of West Overland street, the outcome being at its junction with El Paso street. Race animals were brought from California, New Mexico and Colorado to contest with us, and in four years we won several thousand dollars _without losing a race_.
I withdrew from the partnership and quit all such business after my marriage in 1869.
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While the hostile Texans were approaching Fort Craig I was a lieutenant and aide-de-camp to the commanding officer at that post, Gen. B. S. Roberts. The General directed me to try to find some intelligent, faithful citizen acquainted with the country to go as a spy to El Paso (from whence I had escaped) and bring him reliable information of the Texan forces in that vicinity. Brad. Daily, whom I had known well at El Paso, was at the time wagonmaster in charge of Ochoa’s train, and in camp near the post. He was an old frontiersman, an Indian fighter, and had often been employed as a guide by United States army officers. I knew that he was a Southerner, but I knew that when a man of that class took the Union side he could be trusted, and I knew that he possessed every other qualification for the dangerous service. I visited his camp and asked him casually what he thought about the war. He replied that while he was a Southern man “Uncle Sam” had always treated him right and that he would stand by the Government. I then told him what was wanted, and he agreed to undertake the enterprise.