All this cheered up my wife, who concluded that I was not a desperado after all.
Having promised my wife that I would abandon the plains, I rented a hotel in Salt Creek Valley--the same house by the way, which my mother had formerly kept, but which was then owned by Dr.J.J.Crook, late surgeon of the 7th Kansas.

This hotel I called the Golden Rule House, and I kept it until the next September.

People generally said I made a good landlord, and knew how to run a hotel--a business qualification which, it is said, is possessed by comparatively few men.

But it proved too tame employment for me, and again I sighed for the freedom of the plains.
Believing that I could make more money out West on the frontier than I could at Salt Creek Valley, I sold out the Golden Rule House, and started alone for Saline, Kansas, which was then the end of the track of the Kansas Pacific railway, which was at that time being built across the plains.

On my way I stopped at Junction City, where I again met my old friend Wild Bill, who was scouting for the government; his headquarters being at Fort Ellsworth, afterwards called Fort Harker.