X
An Exciting Fisticuff
Colonel R. D. Hunter wrote to Captain S. A. McMurray of our company, asking him to let me have a leave of absence to go to Thurber to attend to some anarchists and dynamiters, who were giving the officials a lot of trouble at the mine. He said, in his letter to Captain McMurray, that he would give me a hundred dollars a month to act as an officer for the company and rid the mine of these characters.
The captain showed me the letter and asked me if I thought I could do the work. I told him that I was perfectly confident that I could. He then asked me if I wanted to go and try it, and I told him that that hundred dollars looked mighty good to me. He gave me permission to go, and I left on the next train for Thurber, and reached there as quickly as possible and made a contract with Hunter to do the work which he had mapped out for me. I remained in the employ of the coal company eight months.
One night, about twelve o’clock, I located thirteen anarchists in one bunch, hidden in a little dark corner, planning to dynamite the mine the following night. I had two men with me, and we crawled up close enough to hear every word that these anarchists said. When they had perfected their plans and stopped their discussion, we arrested the whole bunch and jailed them.
A saloon was run at the mines by Tom Lawson, who had a ten-year lease on the building. Lawson also owned a fourth interest in the mine, but he and Hunter, the president, had a falling out for some cause, and Lawson got to standing in with the tough element.
One night I heard a pistol shot in the saloon and ran in there to investigate, believing that somebody had been killed. When I reached the inside, I learned that Lawson, who was behind the bar drunk, had shot at a miner, but failed to hit him. This was on pay night and everybody was full of beer and whiskey, and I had already filled the calaboose with drunken men.
I decided to arrest Lawson and put him in with the other men, but when I advanced on him he made a play for his six-shooter, but I fell squarely on top of him with my gun, removing enough skin from his head to half-sole a number 10 shoe. He swore that he would not be locked up, but I put him in the calaboose, all the same, and he was made to pay his fine as any other man.
After paying his fine, Lawson left immediately to report me to Captain McMurray. Colonel Hunter saw Lawson in Fort Worth looking for McMurray and wired me about it, saying that he (Hunter) would stand between me and all danger.
About two weeks after that Captain McMurray came to Thurber and told me that he understood that I had knocked Lawson in the head, and that he wanted to know the cause of it.
I told him that Lawson was disturbing the peace and that he had shot at a miner, and when I tried to arrest him he attempted to draw a gun on me, and that I hit him with my six-shooter instead of shooting him with it. “I disarmed him and put him in jail,” I continued, and my captain replied that I ought to have broken his neck.
About two months after that, Lawson and his bartender, Malcom, and Colonel Hunter, all three met in a drug store. Hunter and Lawson began cursing each other, and I heard the row and rushed into the store just in time to see Hunter burst the bottom of a spittoon out over Tom Lawson’s head. Hunter then threw a box of cigars at him, striking Lawson in the ear and scattering cigars all over the floor. I noticed Malcom slipping up behind Colonel Hunter, preparing to hit him in the back of the head. Just as he started to strike Hunter, however, I struck Malcom myself, in time to stop what would have been a dreadful blow. Malcom whirled around and saw that it was who hit him. I struck him five times in the face, but he did nothing but back, off the gallery. I struck him once again when he reached the outside and kicked him off the gallery. I thought I had him whipped, but when he got up he said he would fight me if I would pull my six-shooter off. He was a stout man and weighed about 230 pounds, but I was not afraid of him. I removed my six-shooter and threw it over to Henry Kronk, the druggist, and told him to look out for it. I then pitched into Malcom again, striking him in the face. He suddenly threw his big arm around my neck and pressed my head against his body. I could not get my head free without breaking my neck, and, having the advantage of me in that respect, he commenced beating my head, nose and eyes until my face looked like jelly. I do not know what would have become of my face if Bob Ward, the company’s lawyer, had not come to my rescue. Ward knocked Malcom loose from me and knocked him twelve feet from where we were clinched. Tom Lawson then knocked Ward down, he falling on top of Malcom. Hunter was pacing around after Lawson with a heavy rock, but never did get in his lick.
When a carpenter, who was working near by, saw the dangerous position that I was in when Malcom had me clinched, he ran to my rescue with a hatchet in his hand. He was frightened and as pale as death, and he intended to cut Malcom loose with his hatchet, but Ward got in ahead of him and did the work for him.
My face was in a terrible fix, and the doctor put a beef steak on it to draw the blood out of the bruised places. My face was so badly bruised and swollen that one could hardly tell where my eyes and nose were. I had a girl then, whom I was loving very dearly, and I could not go to see her for a long time, on account of the sad condition of my complexion. I shunned her everywhere for quite a while, for I well knew that it would never do to let “Betty” see me in that fix.
I went to the justice of peace the next morning after the fight and paid my fine, which amounted to twelve dollars. The money was paid back to me by Colonel Hunter. Hunter, Ward, Malcom and Lawson all fought their cases hard, but it cost them about two hundred dollars apiece before they were through, while the fight only cost me twelve dollars, and the money was refunded to me.
XI
Waterspout at Quanah
On the fourth day of June 1891, one of the hardest rains that I ever experienced began falling in Quanah at noon, and lasted all the afternoon and throughout that night. I knew that the rain was going to do lots of damage if it kept up, so I resolved to go down to the railroad bridge before the northbound passenger train arrived to see if the dam was in good condition.
I held my watch in my hand, and when it was nearly time for the train to arrive I walked down to the bridge, where the passenger was to cross. I stood near the railroad tank until the train came in, but it was raining so hard that I could not see the smoke from the engine as the train came down the track.
The passenger arrived on time, and stopped on the east side of the tank to take water, while I was on the west side examining the dam. I soon saw that the dam was giving away, so I waded into the tank and attracted the attention of the engineer. He could not hear what I was saying, so he left his engine and waded in the tank close enough to me to understand what I had to say. I told him that the dam was breaking, but he did not see any signs of it from where he was, and, thinking that I was unduly excited, he decided that I was mistaken, and, going back to his engine, he reversed the throttle and prepared to cross the bridge. About that time the dam broke and was swiftly washed away to the other side. The engineer stopped his engine just in time to save the train from going across the dam and being thrown overboard. Nearly four hundred passengers, including many women and children, were on the train, and they seemed to be very grateful to me for the part that I played in saving their lives. The train crew were also thankful that they did not get any further than they did before the accident occurred.
When the dam broke, the railroad bridges, the county bridge, two or three houses, and a number of windmills were all washed away. Several other rivers in that part of the state got on a rampage, and quite a number of county and railroad bridges, besides those around Quanah, were destroyed.