USA > Texas > The evolution of a state, or, Recollections of old Texas days > Part 24
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In the summer of '60 there came an unprecedented rise in the Colorado, the water climbing into the second story of the mill, doing no damage, however, except to float out a threshing machine which was not secured. A mile above the mill there is a cut-off which in a flood takes the cur- rent away, leaving the mill in an eddy. The threshing
machine, therefore, floated off up stream some sixty yards, where we succeeded in lassoing it and anchoring it to a tree. The rise came very suddenly, the first indication being noticed about noon, the highest stage being reached in three hours, by which time the water was running over the fall without even a ripple to indicate its presence, not- withstanding the volume diverted by the cut. A half mile
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below the mill the two streams came together, the river bed there narrowing to a deep gorge. There the spectacle was appalling. The maddened waters, freighted with driftwood and trees torn from the banks, rushed into the gorge, hurling the drifting timber high in the air and dash- ing it against the rocky walls with the roar and crash of a mighty battle. I am told that another flood some years later, went that of '60 several better, rising even to the roof of my old mill, which I am gratified to know held its own and is still intact. Founded on a rock, bolted to the mas- sive masonry, it will stand till the stone itself crumbles.
A man's fittest monument is that which he rears for himself. That old mill, which I believe still bears my name, is all the monument I desire. In justice there should perhaps be emblazoned on its wall an incident that occurred during its building.
My dwelling, which stood near the edge of a narrow strip of table land between the river and the hills, was headquarters for a number of the mill hands. One night, just after dark, my dogs ran to the edge of the hill bark- ing furiously at something below. Stepping out to see what game they had flushed, I heard a stone fall among them, by which I knew it was some person, and suspected that he was skulking, as the road ran on the opposite side of the house. It was too dark to make observations and knowing the watchful nature of my canine guards, I didn't give myself further trouble. It was, perhaps, an hour later that a bright light like a campfire was noticed a mile or so above in the river bottom; coupling that with the inci- dent earlier in the evening, we someway hit upon the the- ory that they must be runaway negroes, which were not desirable additions to the neighborhood.
We determined to investigate, but the light died down, and there being no other means of locating the supposed
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camp, we deferred the foray till morning. Bright and early a couple of the boys set out to reconnoiter. In an hour, before it was light, one of them returned, confirming our suspicions. A party of five of us then sallied forth, an- other having remained in the vicinity of the camp to watch the movements of the occupants, who were seen to be negro men. The runaways, too, were early astir, and by the time the storming column reached the camp were off. The dogs of course accompanied the chase, and among them was a noble fellow, half bloodhound, that could be depended on to track anything living. Tiger promptly took the trail and bounded away with the rest of the pack at his heels; we hurried on and directly heard the dogs baying and then a shot. In a few minutes the dogs came back, Tiger bleeding from a shot through the skin under the throat. This put a serious aspect on the affair; we had not counted on arnicd resistance. The sight of my wounded favorite aroused my wrath and what had before been a mere frolic now becanie a personal matter. Tiger, who was not seriously hurt, was also apparently eager for revenge, but to guard him against further injury I tied one of the ropes we had brought along to secure our con- templated prisoners with around his neck so as to keep him in hand. Finding him hard to manage I handed my trusty rifle to one of the boys, taking an old-fashioned horse pistol in exchange. The delay had given the fugi- tives a chance to reload and get away. The river being up prevented escape in that direction. A little way on the came upon a horse which they had stolen on Hickory creek : the animal had bogged in crossing a little creek and, there being no time to waste, his captors abandoned him. The negroes then took to the higher ground. By some accident favorable to the fugitives our party became sep- arated, three of them carrying rifles getting off on the trail
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with the dogs, leaving me, armed with the old pistol, and two others with only small pocket pistols. For some rea- son the negroes doubled on their track and came back in full view of our position. We intercepted them and de- manded an unconditional surrender, the only reply being the presentation of a rifle in the hands of a powerful black fellow. Thinking that he meant business, I threw up my pistol and without waiting to take sight, blazed away. There was a deafening report and something "drapped," but it wasn't the darkey. I sprang to my feet, the blood streaming from a wound just above my right eye; my right hand was also badly torn and bleeding, and my weapon nowhere to be seen. I comprehended the situa- tion at once. The old pistol had been so heavily charged that when I pulled the trigger it flew into fragments, the butt of it taking me just above the eye. My blood was now thoroughly up, and thinking that the negro had fired simultaneously with myself I snatched a pistol from one of my companions and called to them to charge while his gun was empty. I discharged my piece without apparent effect, the only remaining shot was then a small pocket pistol in the hands of Billy Kay.
"Charge on him, Billy," I commanded.
Billy charged and received a bullet in the groin.
The negro had reserved his fire. By this time the other boys came up, but the negroes had gotten the best of the fight and were off, with the dogs in hot pursuit. Tiger had gotten away when I fell; directly we heard another shot and the dogs returned, Tiger having received a shot through the body. Neither Kay nor the dog were disabled, but Kay's wound was a dangerous one and we made all haste to get him home and get a surgeon. The chase had therefore to be abandoned.
In sorry plight we returned home. In our haste to get
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off after the game in the morning, hoping to bag them in camp, we had not waited for breakfast, thinking to be back in an hour or two. A messenger was dispatched for Dr. Moore, our Fourth of July orator, sixteen miles away. The doctor came post haste, but could not locate the ball with which Kay was loaded. The neighborhood was aroused and the country scoured in vain. Several days later the fugitives were heard from over on Sandy, where they held up Jim Hamilton and made him give them direc- tions for reaching Mexico. We subsequently learned that the negroes had escaped from the lower part of the state. They were never recaptured, though one or two other par- ties attempted it. I hope they reached Mexico in safety. That big fellow deserved to; he certainly was as brave a man as I ever met. Singlehanded-his companion being unarmed-he had whipped six white men, all armed, and as many fierce dogs. That was unquestionably the worst fight I ever got into. I think now, looking back over a life of ninety years, that that was about the meanest thing I ever did. Though having been all my life accustomed to such things I did not then take that view of it. The cap- ture of fugitive slaves was a necessity of the institution.
Billy Kay was laid up about two months, the bullet finally causing suppuration, by which means it was located and removed. Tiger's wound eventually caused his death. My injuries soon healed, but I still bear the scar, which might well have been the brand of Cain. The only por- tion of the double-acting pistol that was ever found was the guard, which caught on a bush some yards away from the scene of battle.
It was curious to note the different views taken of that affair by the negroes-a man and a woman-in my pos- session. The woman, who was a mulatto, openly avowed her sympathy for the fugitives, while the man, a full- blooded negro, took the other side.
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It was, I believe, in 1858 that the grasshopper plague visited our section. They came on the wing and in such numbers that the sun was literally darkened with them. Anyone who has ever looked toward the zenith during a snowstorm will remember that the snowflakes looked like myriads of black specks. That is just the appearance the grasshoppers presented when first discovered. Soon they began to drop, and the ground was alive with them. It was late in the fall and they went into winter quarters, devouring every green thing in sight except the rag-weed, which is intensely bitter, utilizing the denuded bushes and weeds for roosting purposes. When the cold nights came on they were frozen on their perches, and in this state they fell easy victims to the hogs, which devoured mil- lions of them, but there were still enough left to seed the ground for the next season's crop, which they did by boring holes into the earth with their tail-ends. They did not distribute themselves evenly, some farms being almost free of them. On one such place there were only a few dropped down, and the owner thereof, mustering his whole family when the hoppers began to light, gathered tin pans, beating them energetically until the main body of the pests passed over. After his neighbors had received the' full force of the invasion he was wont to attribute their affliction to shiftlessness. "If you had just got out and fought them, as I did, you might have saved your crop." Pretty soon, though, there came on another detachment. When they began to drop our hero got out with his tin pans and brooms and "beat" and "shooed" till he was ex- hausted, but the hoppers kept on dropping, and lost no time in getting to work, cleaning out everything in sight.
In 1859 the first Indian raid was made in the vicinity of Burnet. They were discovered near town, and a party immediately went in pursuit. Being overtaken, the
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Indians showed fight, one of them slightly wounding Adam Johnson, later a general in the Confederate army, while he in turn wounded an Indian. Billy McGill, a lad of thirteen, had the honor (?) of killing the only Indian left on the ground, and on investigation it proved to be only a squaw. The savages got separated in the retreat, one party of them getting down into the cedar brakes below Burnet, where they made an attack on Joe Allen, the negro previously re- ferred to. Joe had been spending Sunday with his wife at the Mormon mill, and started very early Monday morning for home. In passing through the brake about daybreak he was fired upon by the Indians. He made haste to seek the protection of a house a short distance away, reaching it in safety, only to find it deserted. The enemy did not seem to be aware of the fact so they did not venture to follow. The alarm was given, and all over the country private companies were organized, guards being stationed at intervals, to watch for any signs of hostility. The In- dian wounded by Johnson was found the next day and dispatched. That was the last Indian seen in the vicinity during my residence.
It would have been a distressing affair had old Joe Allen been killed, as he was the sole support of a poor widow with a large family, among them several grown-up sons. The injustice of the situation forced itself upon my recog- nition at the time, and I often wondered how it fared with Joe and his wife Mandy when they were free. Two more honest, faithful people could not have been found in all the country. Joe was so entirely trustworthy that his mistress permitted him to hire himself to suit himself, him- self collecting his wages, which were faithfully delivered to the mistress, while his own wife went barefooted and in rags, her hire and that of one of her children by a former husband supporting another white family. I had both
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Joe and Mandy in my employ, and never had the least cause to find fault with either one. At another time the widow's family had a narrow escape from losing their means of livelihood. Joe was wending his way to his work early in the morning, after having Sundayed with his wife, when he was bitten on the leg by a rattlesnake. He had a chunk of tobacco in his pocket, which he chewed up, hastily binding it on the wound with his handkerchief, and went on his way, not losing a day's work.
CHAPTER XXVI.
In the summer of 1860 Colonel Dale came out from St. Louis, Mo., and bouglit land just below Burnet. He was connected with a manufacturing firm, which was pro- jecting a scheme to build a woolen factory somewhere contiguous to the wool-producing section. The advantages to be gained by the utilization of the waterpower led Colonel Dale to the highlands of the Colorado. The Marble falls was the objective point in view, but the owner, Colonel Todd, held that site at a very high figure. My mill, having stood tlie test of the high water, next attracted the attention of Colonel Dale, and, after looking the situation all over, he made me an offer of $12,000 for it. Considering that suni a pretty fair return on my in- vestment, and rather longing for more worlds, in the way of mill building, to conquer, anyway, I accepted the offer.
Colonel Dale then went back to St. Louis to report to his firm, proposing to return in the fall with the cash for the purchase, and the machinery for the plant.
In the meantime the presidential election came on, and the disturbed condition of the country arising therefrom knocked all enterprises out. We had had the locust plague,
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the eclipse of the sun, and the comet, all of which the superstitiously inclined averred foreboded war, and now the war was upon us. Scarce fifteen years had passed since we were rejoicing over being admitted to member- ship in the great American Union-fifteen years of com- parative peace and unexampled prosperity. The country had settled up rapidly, capital was flowing in and new enterprises were being inaugurated. Schools, and good ones, were being organized all over the country, mail routes and postoffices established. The great overland stage route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific traversed hundreds of miles of Texas territory, with strong probabil- ity that a transcontinental railroad would in the near future supersede it. The iron horse had crossed the Brazos and was heading towards Austin. And now all the advantages accruing to us under Uncle Sam's beneficent rule were to be thrown to the winds. In vain our leading men-Hous- ton, Culberson, Hamilton, Hancock, Throckmorton, Duval and many others-tried to reason with the excited popu- lace. They were deaf to reason.
As the son of a revolutionary soldier, I could not raise my hand against the Union he had fought to establish. I had fought to make Texas a member of the Union, and I would not turn round and fight to undo my work. But when I talked of war my hearers scouted the idea. Many men offered to drink all the blood that would be shed.
"Oh, there won't be any war. The Northern men are all a set of d-d cowards; one Southerner can whip a dozen of them," said one.
"Well, Billy," I replied, "in former wars the Northern men have not shown themselves lacking in courage, and although I think I have as good a reputation as a fighter as most of you, when you parcel them out you needn't give me but one, and I don't care to have him a very stout one."
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It was the prevailing impression that there would be no war; an impression to which the apathy of the out- going administration gave color. Had there been an An- drew Jackson in the presidential chair, there would prob- ably have been no war to speak of; his sentiments on the subject of secession being clearly defined in the case of South Carolina, twenty-nine years before. "By the Eter- nal, the Union must and shall be preserved." I was a Democrat of the Jackson school, my first vote having been cast for the hero of New Orleans, and when the term Democrat was made to mean secessionist I could go with the party no further. I was ever a man of strong convictions, and with me to think was to act. I was un- alterably opposed to secession, both on principle and pol- icy. I did not believe that the South would be benefitted thereby, nor did I believe that the North would tamely acquiesce in the disruption of the nation; and I felt a firm conviction that in case of an armed conflict the South must inevitably go down; a calamity from which I exerted all my little influence to save Texas, even taking the stump for the first time in my life, a course which placed me under the ban.
"Just wait till we get things fixed and we'll attend to your case," said one of the leaders, a man who never set foot in the country till all the danger from Mexicans and Indians had passed. I didn't wait. When the ordinance of secession passed, I immediately set about getting away. I sold my farm for $2,000. The mill for which I had been offered $12,000 I could not cash at any price. I was, how- ever, bent on fleeing from the wrath to come, so I turned the property over to my nephew, John Hubbard, who, though also a Unionist, decided to stay and face the con- sequences ; a decision that cost him his life. I didn't get a dollar for the mill, but took promissory notes, secured by
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mortgages, for $4,000. A fine young negro man that had a few months before the election been assessed at $1,500, I sold to Governor Houston for $800, and everything else in proportion.
Having decided on California as the land of refuge, and the trip thither to be made overland, the next thing was to provide means of transportation. As we had to run the gauntlet of two hostile tribes, we could not rely upon our horses or mules, which were liable to be stampeded, so there remained only the slow, but sure ox or a train of burros. A number of my acquaintances joined the movement, and we rigged out a fleet of prairie schooners and gathered up a lot of wild, long-horned Texas steers, few of which had ever felt a rope except when they were branded. These we tied together in couples as the pre- liminary step.
"What are you going to California for? That state will secede before you get there," I was asked.
"Well, if it does," I replied, "I'll get me one of those big trees they tell about and dig me a dugout and go across to the Sandwich Islands."
I went down to Austin to lay in supplies for the trip. Speechmaking was the order of the day. Somebody, I don't remember who, was liolding forth from the steps of the capitol. A big, rough looking fellow, a carpenter, I believe, stepped up among the crowd, and, after listening a few minutes, said to those in his vicinity :
"What the hell's it all about, anyway?"
"The nigger," someone answered.
"The nigger! H-1. I ain't got no nigger. Give me a nigger, some of you, and I'll fight for it as long as any of you. I ain't going to fight for somebody else's nigger." And yet that was just the kind that had to do a large part of the fighting.
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I went to see General Houston and had a long talk. "General," said I, "if you will again unfurl the Lone Star from the capitol, I will bring you 100 men to help main- tain it there."
"My friend," said he, "I have seen Texas pass through one long, bloody war. I do not wish to involve her in civil strife. I have done all I could to keep her from seceding, and now if she won't go with me I'll have to turn and go with her."
And so we parted ways. It was with a feeling of inex- pressible sadness that I bade farewell to old Austin and the many friends who had been associated with me in our early struggles. Many of them were Unionists, some of whom like myself fled the country, while others, like Gen- eral Houston, acquiesced in the will of the majority. Ham- ilton and Hancock were among the former.
Conspicuous among the latter was J. W. Throckmorton, whose memorable speech in the convention that passed the ordinance of secession deserves to live among the classics of the nation ; he being one of the seven who voted in the negative. When it came to his turn to vote he arose to his feet. These, I think, are the words he used :
"Unawed by the reckless spirit of revolution around me, in the presence of God and my country and my own con- science, which I fear more than either, I vote No." As he sat down some one hissed. Springing to his feet, he ex- claimed :
"Gentlemen, 'the rabble may hiss when the patriot trembles.' " How he reconciled his subsequent course with his conscience I do not know.
That Houston and Hamilton, both outspoken in their opposition to the secession movement, which was even then under discussion, were in 1859 elected by handsome majorities respectively Governor and member of Con-
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gress, is evidence of the loyalty of the people of Texas until carried away by excitement. Among other devices employed to influence the wavering, was a book entitled "The Armageddon," by one Baldwin, in which the author demonstrated to his own satisfaction that the impending conflict was that foretold in the prophecies of Daniel; in which the king of the North and the king of the South were to meet in battle, from which the king of the South was to come off victorious. Either Daniel, or Baldwin, was mistaken; but, the book had quite a run among the church people.
I was apprehensive that we had no time to losc, so we hastened our preparations, and on the 14th day of April, 1861, the very day that Fort Sumter was evacuated by the United States forces, though we were in total ignor- ance of the fact for many days thereafter, we started on our long, tedious, dangerous journey. For the second time I was being driven from the land of my adoption. There were about thirty-five souls in our train, of whoin thirteen were men, all armed with revolvers.
At Fort Chadbourne we encountered the first visible effects of the impending war in the absence of the Amer- ican flag from the fort where it had fanned the breeze so long. There were a few Texas rangers there, about one company, I think. There we struck the United States overland mail route to California, and in the dismantled and deserted stations thenceforward were constantly re- minded of the disturbed relations between thic two sec- tions of the country. The road paralleled the Concho river many miles. Through all that fine fertile country there was not even a stock ranch. The Comanche was lord there, At the head of the Concho a protracted rain canie on and, availing ourselves of the deserted station build- ings, we awaited fair weather. During the sojourn we got
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our first Indian scare. A couple of the boys who were out herding the stock, ascended a high knoll to recon- noiter. Discovering a lone horseman approaching, they hastened to conceal themselves to observe his movements. They were seen by the object of their distrust, who in turn, taking them for Indians and having descried our camp, hurried on up to warn us of the danger. We hur- riedly housed the non-combatant portion of our party and, being apprehensive of danger to the boys out herding, sent a party to their aid, which of course brought the matter to a solution. The lone horseman, Dr. Ferguson by name, proved to be the advance guard of a large train of emigrants from Dallas.
When the rain ceased we all started on together. With this accession to our strength there was little fear of an open attack from Indians; still we were in the Indian range and we older folks who had had experience in that line had much trouble in bringing our young folks to a realizing sense of their danger. Our girls would venture too far away from camp and our boys persisted in empty- ing their revolvers at everything and nothing, just for the fun of shooting. Many pounds of lead were thrown away in the vain attempt to kill a prairie dog, but if one was ever hit he tumbled into his burrow, to the mound sur- rounding the entrance to which he betook himself at the first alarm. Safe retreat being thus secured they stood up on their hind quarters to take observations, emitting little yelps, dispatches presumably to the inhabitants within. "Bing! Bang! Bang!" The dirt flew and all that the quickest eye could catch was the twinkling of tiny feet as the unscathed rodent disappeared down the shaft of his tunnel. So persistent were the boys in their ambition to secure a prairie dog scalp that there were times when if the Indians had charged us there would not have been a
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