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"Lord a' mercy, Pap; the Indians !" screamed Mrs. Blair, and they ran, leaped and tore through the brush in their frantic efforts to reach their unprotected children. Mrs. Blair has always affirmed that the agonizing fright of those few minutes frosted
*Next morning the cougar was skinned, his fat rendered to grease hides and his carcass given to the chickens, as such meat and clabber were all they had to live on. The cougar's hide was stretched to the martin-box pole, and the skillet of rendered fat set outside the door. Not a hog was to be seen all day, an attack like the one the night before always frightening them into the woods. But towards sun- set they came home. Mrs. Blair was alarmed at the vicious, ugly sounds she heard. and going to the door she found the hogs were acting like wild, tossing the skillet in their fury, rearing up to get to the cougar's hide, and "ughing" and "booing" in the most ferocious way. The children were brought in. The hide was taken to the field.
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HISTORY OF EASTLAND COUNTY.
her hair. "To think a pig could make me forget my children was what hurt," she said.
Daily contact inures one to dangers, yet quickens one's instinct to watchfulness. This is strikingly true of the frontiersman. At this Blair's Fort a man would pick up his gun and go out hunting alone, when it was well understood that when the light of the moon should come the Indians would be raiding the white settle- ments.
Cn a hazy October afternoon, when one of the men had just come in with a deer on his shoulder, Jim Mc- Gough went to the spring. three hundred yards away, to water his horse. While there he was attacked by the Indians, and attempted to outrun them to the gates of the Fort. In this short, but impetuous race, the fright- ened animal pitched him into the brush. The Indians, endeavoring to head him off, chased up the other side of the dense thicket, but seeing the gates closed, they disappeared, when Mr. McGough came running up to the Fort with his face covered with blood.
Cattle and hogs were the commercial possibilities of the County, on which the settlers relied for sustenance and for money.
Blair's Fort stood five years, 1860-1865.
THE FIRST WEDDING.
"Ma, guess what I found." Mr. Blair stood in the doorway.
"Found?" echoed Mrs. Blair, rising up from the hearth, where she was putting coals on the lid of the
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HISTORY OF EASTLAND COUNTY.
skillet into which she had just put the "corn dodgers" to bake. "Found? A cougar or panther, like as not." Then noting the look of satisfaction on his face, she cried out, "Not a bee tree, Pa ?"
"Yes, a bee tree, and chuck full of honey, too. Where's a tub ?"
Mrs. Blair smiled and looked at Sarah Jane, who clapped her hands, while all the little Blairs jumped up and down in glee.
When one remembers that on this far Western fron- tier, one hundred miles from the nearest mill, only ne- cessities were provided-bread, coffee, beans, etc .; no sugar, no fruit-one can readily comprehend the glee of the small children at thought of a "tubful of honey," but may wonder at Sarah Jane crying, "Honey cakes, Ma! Honey cakes! Oh, think of it!" A bee tree wasn't found every day, and they had no cakes any other time. But a more subtle reason, still, existed and caused Sarah Jane's delight.
Only the night before the daughter had said, "But think, Ma, a wedding without cakes ! And everybody'll be here."
"But, honey, you have a pretty white * nainsook dress trimmed up in embroidery, and made low neck and short sleeves. And another thing you have-I wasn't goin' to tell you 'til he was through with 'em-is such a pretty pair of shoes as Bill McGough is makin' you, the vamp all notched; and he's goin' to shine 'em up. and they'll look like real store-bought shoes." Now, that
*Mr. Blair paid fifteen bushels of wheat, at 75 cents a bushel for the wedding dress.
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HISTORY OF EASTLAND COUNTY.
the cakes were assured, Sarah Jane's cup of happiness was running over.
Preparations for the great event to take place next Thursday assumed a new dignity which was personified in beautiful Sarah Jane, for there was not a boy on the Sabanno, or in the Fort, but envied handsome Coon Keith. All the petty jealousies within those picket walls were for the time forgotten and everybody lent a hand in the preparations. Venison and turkey were brought in in the greatest plenty, and the men barbecued the fat mavericks.
Coon Keith and Jim McGough, on good mounts, went to Comanche town for the license, and on the day of the wedding Joe Smith was delegated to go for the preacher, Reverend Coker, who came alone from Co- manche to Albert Sowles' on the Sabanno, where he was met by Mr. Smith. After a ride of a couple of miles the two men came upon a fresh Indian trail. and they wondered if there would be any interference in the wed- ding arrangements. They halted presently where the Indians had had breakfast. There was the cow freshly slaughtered, part of her meat lying still in the skin, and the fire warm and glowing.
The men rode cautiously and slowly on. It was past the noon hour, and they had ten miles yet to go. The wedding was to take place at four o'clock. and Smith was "best man."
At last the trail made a sharp turn to the west, and the men rightly surmised that the Indians were going home on the Western route, and again spurred their horses onward, and were soon at the Fort.
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HISTORY OF EASTLAND COUNTY.
At last the hour arrived. The long tables glistened when the sun fell on them through the thick-leaved branches of the sturdy oaks. The minister took his stand, and the couple to be married walked out into the yard.
Coon Keith, the man, was eighteen years old. He had black hair and eyes, cheeks like June apples, carried himself like the young Apollo he was, and was dressed in blue pants and black sack coat, with two big * six- shooters buckled around him. The girl holding to his arm so timidly, half frightened by the impetuosity of the man's eager love, looked like a unique lily. A faultless skin, without a shade of color, large, deep blue eyes, her throat and shoulders and arms rivaling her embroidered nainsook dress in whiteness, and crown- ing this, her blood-tinged, yellow-brown hair combed loosely back and tied with white ribbon, made a picture that still lives vividly in the minds of those who saw her.
The menu of this first wedding was:
Beef, a la barbecue. Turkey, with dressing and sliced eggs. Venison, bread, butter, coffee, milk. Honey cakes.
After the wedding, Reverend Coker wanted to preach. This, they would not allow on such a festive occasion, but gave themselves up to the pleasures of "Weavely Wheat" and kindred games until the yard was beaten into powder, and the cock was crowing for day.
*Tom Keith, a cousin, had intimated that he meant to enter objections when the time came.
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HISTORY OF EASTLAND COUNTY.
Miss Lizzie Keith, now Mrs. Presley of Curtis, maid of honor, and Joe Smith, best man, both wore white.
Mr. Keith has accumulated much wealth, and lives with his still beautiful wife in Erath County, not many miles from Desdemona.
CHAPTER VI.
AN INDIAN RACE.
In Steve Brandon's home everything was going wrong. His wife had been ill for two days. The four or five grown boys could turn "flapjacks" and make "corn dodgers," but their big hands were clumsy when they tried to "pat up" Ma's pillow, or give her a dose of medicine.
"I'm goin' for Mrs. Kohen," Mr. Brandon announced after dinner. "She's over at Clayton's. Keep a sharp lookout for the red skins, boys."
"You do the same, Steve," feebly called out his wife, as he buckled on his six-shooter and left the house.
The sun shone from a clear sky on that memorable afternoon, December 15, 1860. Brandon was a brave man, but his heart was heavy with forebodings as he started on that fateful journey of five or six miles. As he went deeper into the wood, however, thinking of his sick wife and his own imminent danger (as it was the light of the moon) he realized, perhaps unconsciously, that nature is capable of restoring one's peace of mind and calming one's fears.
Mrs. Kohen readily consented to go, and for lack
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HISTORY OF EASTLAND COUNTY.
of any better way, Mr. Brandon took her up behind him on his trusty * black steed and started off in a smart pace for home.
When they had covered but half the distance they were most abruptly apprised of immediate danger. The air was cut by the whizz of an arrow, which lodged in a tree directly in front of them. The noble animal knew as well as the riders that an Indian was behind them, and plunged wildly down the homeward path in a race for life.
The hiss and sight of the arrow lodged in the tree instantly restored to Brandon's mind the gloom that had rested upon his soul as he entered the woods from home. Glancing backward, he was filled with unfeigned horror, for not one Indian, but twenty, swung into view, and came after them yelling like demons, the ar- rows playing about them thick and fast.
Brandon, leaning forward, loosened the rein and urged the horse onward. The woman's grip about him tightened.
"My God !" he thought, "she is shielding me !" And as his gloom had been lifted by the sweet breath of na- ture in these woods a couple of hours before, so now, the responsibility for the life of this woman, on her errand of mercy for one he loved, thrilled him, angered him, lifted the burden from his soul, and in his restored man- hood he thundered :
"Halt ! wheel !" The horse obeyed his master. The
*Color of horse not known.
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HISTORY OF EASTLAND COUNTY.
man * fired thrice in quick succession at the bewildered Indians as they tumbled off their ponies into the grass.
"Go, * General, go!" shouted Brandon, and again the mad dash forward for life !
The Indians instantly recovered their ponies. On they came; on, on, like a horde of devils, while their in- fernal yells and hissing arrows environed their victims as with a funereal pall. The white man urged his horse forward. The air was thick with hideous sounds. He gasped for a good breath of God's air. The Indians gained on him! The gloom was again settling upon his aonl, when Mrs. Kohen cried out :
"I am shot, Steve !"
Again was he angered, angered at the fiends seeking life.
"Hold fast !" he cried, as he, wheeled and fired. The Indians repeated their former movement with greater agility, and the race was on again.
Not a moan escaped the lips of the woman as she pleaded :
"Steve, my back is full of arrows; I am killed already. Think of your sick wife, and drop me and save your- self."
This appeal cleared the atmosphere for once and for all. How good was sweet nature's breath! With every barrel loaded, Brandon wheeled, and with a shout of
*There is a difference of opinion about the kind of gun used. Messrs. McGough, Sam and William Allen. Smith and Strawn and Mrs. Parm of Cisco, a sister-in-law of Mrs. Ko- hen, are authority for the incident.
+'Presumed name,
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HISTORY OF EASTLAND COUNTY.
defiance that startled the woman into tightening her hold, he sent six bullets on errands of fate. Hope surged mightily in his bosom, as he shouted :
"Forward, General!" The gallant steed seemed to have caught his master's spirit, as, unfalteringly, he once more threw himself into the race with death. Brandon's cries now came as shouts of victory. He gained on the Indians, and, coming in hearing of his home, he raised his voice and called loudly.
One of the big boys, out at the barn feeding the stock, for it must be done before night, heard the clat- tering of hoofs, listened, heard the velling Indians, then his father's call. He rushed into the house.
"Jim, you stay with Ma. Come Steve, you and Tom. The Indians are after Pa." They ran out with their guns, making a great hullabaloo, whereupon the Indians fled, and the race was won!
Mr. Brandon was hit six times, and they pulled seven arrows from poor Mrs. Kohen's back. Strange as it may seem, she recovered rapidly. Some time after this she became the wife of Mr. Clayton, * and now lives in El Paso, Texas.
A TURKEY HUNT.
That same night two men, Joe Smith and "Bad Reese," working on the Flannagan Ranch, about twelve miles southwest of the Brandon Ranch, went out to hunt wild turkeys, thinking there was little danger. as no Indians had been seen for some time.
*Mrs. Clayton died Feb. 24, 1904, at Toyah.
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HISTORY OF EASTLAND COUNTY.
Suddenly, when they were down near the edge of the bank of Colony Creek, they heard a stealthy tramp on the dead leaves.
"What's that ?" whispered Reese.
"Sh'. It's Indians, sure's you're born," said Smith, and, catching the other man's hand, that they might stay together, they took two steps out from off the dead leaves on to the soft grass bordering the stream, and cunningly striding on up the creek, artfully dodged the red skins.
When they reached the ranch, and next morning told the other men there, John Flannagan, his son, Golston, (Gols), and Ral Smith, they were laughed at for their scare.
"It was Indians, I tell you, sure's you live," affirmed Smith. "I heard their steps. They were all about us. I believe they were in six feet of us. They'd 'skyed' us, you know, before we got too low down, and couldn't see us anymore. Oh, you can laugh, but it was Indians."
If the warning had only been heeded the two young men-Joe Smith and Gols Flannagan-would not have been started out alone that morning to Blair's Fort. and the lone grave under the tree still bears testimony to the grim truth that "it was sure Indians."
The following account of the attack of these same twenty Indians who had chased the self-reliant Brandon, who had all but captured Smith and Reese the same night, and now finish up their gruesome work, is told by Joe Smith, who lives at Victor, Erath County, seven miles from Desdemona.
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HISTORY OF EASTLAND COUNTY.
THE LOST ARROW HEAD.
"On the 16th day of December, 1860, Gols Flan- nagan and myself started in an ox wagon to Blair's Fort, fifteen miles away, for some bread stuff. We had
JOE SMITH, VICTOR, TEXAS.
only gone a mile when we were waylaid by Indians, who opened fire on us at close range from a little ravine by the side of the road, which we were about to cross.
"Fifteen or twenty red skins facing a fellow on a turn in the road is enough to make the cold chills run down any man's back-Gols was only nineteen and I was twenty-but we didn't have time for more than
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HISTORY OF EASTLAND COUNTY.
that, for the bullets and arrows sung a funeral dirge about us.
"'I'm shot!' I exclaimed, falling backward in the covered wagon, and pulling a stinging arrow out of my knee. Gols turned and looked at me in a dazed manner, not seeming to understand. There was a red spot on his shirt front, and I knew he was hit, too.
"The young oxen, at sight of the Indians, wheeled around and ran as if wild, followed by the howling fiends. Presently the animals left the road and took
THE LOST ARROW HEAD.
to the open, making for a timbered spot. They ran some two hundred yards, when the wheels hit a tree, and they broke loose from the wagon.
"I was nimble as a cat in those days, and the Indians having fallen some little distance behind, I leaped from the wagon and ran off in the timber. There I looked and waited for Gols, thinking perhaps he was hiding in a little hollow below me. My knee got to hurting me so bad I decided to make my way to the ranch. Gols had not come in. 'Bad' Reese went at once to look for
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HISTORY OF EASTLAND COUNTY.
him, and found him dead and scalped. Reese and Ral Smith went out and brought him in on a horse. Early the next morning the men went to McCain's Ranch for help, and Mr. Highsaw and Lyman McCain came back with them and buried Gols, and we all moved up to their forted ranch the next day. By April I was able to get around on crutches. From about the middle of January I was at my father's house in Parker County, and was disabled for six months.
"One day in 1886 something pricked me on the under side of my knee. On examination, I found a sharp black point sticking through the skin, and knew at once that twenty-five years ago I had been shot with a double-headed arrow, and had only pulled one head out. Three weeks later, on February 21, 1886, after having carried it in my knee for twenty-five years, two months and five days, the arrow head came out."
CHAPTER VII.
IN WAR TIMES.
In 1861 news did not travel fast in Eastland County, for it lay on the very border land of civilization, with its three or four scattered settlements.
Recruiting agents went where some degree of success might attend their patriotic efforts, and it was not unitl 1864 that men in this section were called upon to bear arms.
It was not from a desire on the part of the Gov-
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HISTORY OF EASTLAND COUNTY.
ernment to make every man feel the burden of war that the frontiersman was impressed, or even that he might take part in the civil strife caused by the black man, but he was called upon to repel systematically the inva- sions of the red man.
Prior to 1868, Eastland, Shackelford and Calla- han Counties were under the jurisdiction of Comanche County. After this date Eastland was attached to Palo Pinto.
At every meeting of the Legislature laws were passed for the protection of the frontier. They were adhered to as closery as the conditions and times would permit, and that was all the law required. About the 1st of February, 1864, Eastland was organized under the Conscript naw for military purposes.
* Forty men were required to form a company, and at that time it took every man between the ages of eighteen and forty-five in the Counties of Eastland, Shackelford and Callahan to muster the required num- ber.
Think of the rich fields of corn and cotton and grain that thrive in our County to-day; of the handsome and substantial houses that dot its surface; of the many beautiful churches, school houses, public buildings, and of the whirring machinery; of the eighteen to twenty towns with their three hundred to three thousand in-
*Chapter 36, Section 3, General laws of the Tenth Legis- lature reads: "That the commissioned officers of each com- pany of fifty men or more shall consist of a Captain and two Lieutenants: if less than fifty men, two Lieutenants," etc. However, the spirit of the law was met in these fron- tier counties.
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HISTORY OF EASTLAND COUNTY.
habitants; then, in imagination, wipe out all these farms and houses and towns; fill the primeval forests and prairies, without a vestige of a shack of any kind, with the snarling, hungry animals, and the fiendish, treacher- ous Indians, and you have a picture of the territory traversed by those early guardians of our country. Flan- nagan's Ranch, McGough Springs and Jewell marked the western limit of the white man's tread in Eastland in 1864.
The following roster was furnished by T. E. Keith, who joined the Company as soon as he was eighteen years old :
Sing Gilbert, First Lieutenant ;.
J. B. McGough, Second Lieutenant.
J. L. Head, Sergeant.
H. York, Corporal.
Privates: W. N. Arthur, Thomas Mansker, James Stubblefield, J. B. Smith, John Temples, James Tem- ples, John Ward, Frank Caddenhead, Tom Caddenhead, *Ike Ward, C. C. Blair, J. M. Ellison, S. C. Shirley, W. C. McGough, Joe Henshaw, Gabriel Keith, B. M. Keith, G. B. Ely, Sam Gilbert, Tom Gilbert, James Gilbert. Jasper Gilbert, Taylor Gilbert, Joseph Dudley, William Fisher, J. J. Keith, J. M. York.
As three of these men lived in Comanche County- Joseph Dudley, William Fisher and S. C. Shirley -- there were, really, only twenty-eight men in Eastland. A
*It was not known until after the war closed that four or five of these men were deserters from the army. Ike Ward was arrested during the war, taken to Arkansas, court- martialed and shot as a deserter.
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HISTORY OF EASTLAND COUNTY.
few months after the organization of this company, how- ever, all the available citizens of Callahan and Shack- elford Counties were added to it, making the required forty, and First Lieutenant Gilbert was made Captain, J. B. McGough, First Lieutenant, and N. H. Kuyken- dall, Second Lieutenant.
The Company was divided into three squads, and each man was required to serve ten days out of thirty. The starting place was Nash's Spring, half way between McGough Springs and Jewell, and the incoming scout was always met by the outgoing squad, thus keeping a lookout committee continuously on duty.
Several days after Lee's surrender a detachment of Gilbert's Company arrived at Blair's Fort. There they received the sad news from Lewis Keith, who had just returned from Louisiana, and the Company dis- banded.
When the danger of being "pressed" into the Con- federate Army had passed, it is said that at least one- third of the men in Eastland County moved back across the Brazos River. That this was a fact, the census of 1870 proves, as the entire population numbered only eighty-eight. The only wonder is that any remained, as there was no Government protection at all until the next Legislature met.
All honor to the brave men and women who still possessed their homes and held the line of civilization in Eastland ! All honor to the gray hairs of those who fought for her in those perilous times, and who still live among us! Eternal honors be to the glorious manhood and womanhood that creates pioneers !
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HISTORY OF EASTLAND COUNTY.
CHAPTER VIII.
I-ELLISON'S SPRING FIGHT.
On the 8th of August, 1864, J. L. Head, Corporal, led out eight men for a ten days' scout, camping the first night at McGough Springs. On the morning of the 9th the men went west till they struck the Leon, near where the Texas Central Railway now crosses it. There they discovered a large Indian trail leading southeast, the signs indicating there were were at least thirty-five or forty Indians, some riding, some walking. The men, knowing they were down to steal horses, pushed hard on after them. The trail crossed Nash's Creek about three miles east of Carbon, where the In- dians killed a beef for breakfast, then continued south until they reached the present location of the W. W. Boone place, one and one-half miles north of Jewell. It was then the Gilbert ranch.
Captain T. E. Keith, of Curtis, furnished the fol- lowing description of the battle :
"There we overhauled them, seven of us-Harris York's horse having given out, he had pulled for the ranch. We fought them at long range for awhile, un- til we saw we had no sort of showing, when our Com- mander ordered a retreat to the Gilbert Ranch for reinforcements. At the two ranches we got five more men, making our number twelve, with Sing Gilbert, our Captain, in command.
"We returned to where we left the Indians, took up the trail, followed it east about twelve miles, where,
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HISTORY OF EASTLAND COUNTY.
three hundred yards south of Ellison's Spring, in Un- cle Billy Jones' field, we discovered them. Our Cap- tain ordered a charge and led it up to within thirty or forty feet of their line.
"Think of it! Twelve men, armed with muzzle-load- ing rifles and shotguns and pistols, charging right up to a line of forty Indians, and most of them on foot and coming to meet us !
"Captain Gilbert ordered a halt. We, fired on them, but they kept coming. Our Captain ordered us to fall back. We turned right in their faces, and on that turn is where they got in their deadly work.
"The Indians wore shields that would turn our bul- lets, and were armed with bows and arrows, which, at short range, were more accurate and deadly than rifles and six-shooters.
"On that turn * our Captain was shot in the neck with an arrow, and died in less than two hours. Button Keith's horse fell, and they killed him right there. Jim Ellison received a deep arrow wound in the hip, which disabled him for life. Tom Caddenhead was shot through the thigh just below the hip joint and pinned to the saddle, and Tom Gilbert was shot twice through the arms. Two men killed and three disabled in less time than it takes to make the statement. Five out of twelve knocked out and not a load left in a gun or pistol !
"Well, there was nothing left for us to do except to outrun them to Ellison's house, which we did in grand
*Mr. Keith was unmounted in this direful retreat and separated from his party a few awful minutes, but recov- ered his horse and escaped unhurt.
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HISTORY OF EASTLAND COUNTY.
shape, the Indians following us to within eighty yards of the house.
"Runners were then sent to the Gabe Keith Ranch, fifteen miles away, to the Gilbert Ranch, twelve miles, and to Mansker's, eight miles, to let them know of the trouble. About nine o'clock that night my father, J. J. Keith, started to Stephenville to have graves pre- pared for the two dead men-that being the nearest graveyard. The distance was thirty-five miles, and not a settler at that time between the two places.
"He arrived at Stephenville at daybreak. and heard bells, and horses running on the hill east of town. Be- lieving that Indians were stealing the horses, he alarmed the town. Joel Dodson and another man, however, had heard the bells and running horses, and, taking their guns, had gone to investigate. While crossing the Bosque they heard a noise in the bed of the creek above them. Listening and sky-lighting they decided there were Indians near and fired, whereupon the savages ran off, leaving five bloody pallets and two * guns they had picked up on the battle ground the day before at Ellison's Spring, proving that they were the same Indians and at least five of them were wounded.
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