knew a Sergeant by the name of Joe Graham. "Oh, yes," one man replied,
"he is down there in camp now." This soldier volunteered to bring him
to see me.

Mr. Graham's father was a Methodist preacher in Monterey, New York, when
Joe and I were small boys, and we greeted each other with warmth and
affection, and had a jolly time talking over the "old times" when we
were bare-footed school lads. Finally Joe asked me where I "was holding
forth and what I was doing?" I told him that I had been living with
Colonel Boone, driving the stage coach from there to Bent's Old Fort,
but this trip I was on my way from Denver acting as conductor of the
mail. Mr. Graham asked me how long I had been with Colonel Boone. I told
him I had been with him up to that time, about six months. "I
understand," said Mr. Graham, "that Mr. Boone is a rebel." I told him
that he was most emphatically mistaken, that Colonel Boone was one of
the strongest Union men I had ever known, and that he was as strong a
Unionist as ever lived. Then it was that I found out what mischief
Haynes had sent the soldiers to the home of Colonel Boone, to do.

Joe Graham told me that he was the Orderly Sergeant of the company that
had camped at Mr. Haynes, and Mr. Haynes had told the Lieutenant that
Colonel Boone was a rebel, and had a company of Texas Rangers camped
close to his premises for the purpose of making a raid on the Union
soldiers. Joe Graham stated that the Lieutenant had ordered him to take
some soldiers and go to the home of Colonel Boone, and if he found
things as Haynes had represented, to confiscate all his property, and to
burn all his buildings, but that the Lieutenant had cautioned them to be
careful and to ascertain if the story Haynes had told was true before
they began depredations.