The primary arrangements thus entered into for the recovery of this money and materials were absolutely necessary, inasmuch as no one but McCartney could put into the hands of the authorities this vast amount of property. He alone knew where it was. He had himself manufactured and secreted it. And he had no "confidences." He proposed this thing himself.
"I offered to give up to former U. S. officers more of this coney than they ever saw," said McCartney, "if they would deal fairly with me. They couldn't get it, otherwise. They would promise, but always cheated me. Col. Whitley and his men never promised anything. They did not deceive me, therefore, and I felt that they were working with different motives. They never demanded pay of me, and I never paid them any hush-money, as I did other's. But all these men knew very well that they could get no bogus money out of me unless I was inclined to help them. I have nothing to say against Whitley or his men. But the other crowd were unprincipled, grasping, and utterly deceitful—from the start—promising everything, and performing nothing. They put up jobs, and went back on me, more than once."
McCartney, a few years since, married a daughter of John Trout,, a noted counterfeiter, now in the State Prison at Jackson, Mich. Her mother, Mrs. Trout, was a smart and skillful counterfeiter, also, who is now at Decatur, Ills. The wife of Pete is a handsome woman, some years his junior, but a shrewd aider and abettor of her husband. Mrs. McCartney's sister married Ben Boyd, another famous coney man at the south-west, who has latterly given up the business, it is believed. Pete has children, to whom he is devoted, and his family are greatly attached to him.
At Springfield, in the winter of 1870, after Mac's final
