About an hour or two before day, Campbell asked me to let him get up and sit by the stove. I told him that would be all right, and he came over and began talking to me. He ran his hand over his face and said his face was paining him. He also claimed that his mule pitched him off a day or two before that, and threw him into a rough place, bruising his face up badly. He said he couldn’t understand what was the matter with his mule; that he used to be a good mule, but had acted mighty strangely of late. He then claimed that the mule had also thrown one of his boys recently and bruised his face up considerably.
The next morning we had all eight of the men up before the grand jury. Campbell testified before the grand jury that a little grey mare had fallen down with him in a rough place and bruised his face. Another man before the grand jury testified that a dun mare had fallen down with Campbell twelve miles further up the river. They made such conflicting statements in trying to get out of trouble that the grand jury indicted Dave Campbell and his father for the murder of Edd Hartman.
Dave Campbell jumped his bond and was caught seven years later in Arizona, where he was living under the name of “Alex Miller,” and was brought back to San Saba, but he was acquitted.
Old man Campbell got a change of venue to Fort Mason, and was convicted and sentenced to seven and a half years in the penitentiary, but appealed his case. He was tried sixteen times in eight years, and finally got off on a light sentence of two and a half years, and went to the penitentiary from Lampasas to serve it out. I had to go to court twice a year for eight years to testify in that case.
Mr. Hartman, the father of the murdered man, is now dead, but he lived to fight the case for eight long years, and finally heard the sentence read to Campbell. In fighting the case he spent every dollar he had, and sold his farm and home and stock, in order to keep up the prosecution, and when he died at the age of seventy-seven years he was renting land. He had remained faithful to his son to the last.
XIV
The Chase After Del Dean, When I Break My Arm and Ankle
While court was in session at San Saba, Del Dean, an alleged horse thief was notified that he had been indicted by the grand jury for stealing livestock. Dean at once mounted his horse and left town. Sheriff Hawkins asked me to capture Dean, saying that Dean had just left town, going out on the Llano road.
I mounted my horse and started out in pursuit. Riding fast, I soon came in sight of Dean, who was urging his horse to the utmost speed. I clamped spurs to my horse and commenced to gain still more on Dean, and for some time we kept up a hot race.
It was misting snow and the weather was raw and cold. I was going down hill as fast as my horse could run, when he suddenly struck a flat table rock and let his feet slip from under him. He fell, and I was thrown twenty-three feet from the saddle. My horse was running so fast when he fell that it was remarkable that I was not killed. When my horse and I took that sudden stop, I fell into a pile of rocks, and my head was badly bruised, my face terribly lacerated, my right arm broken, and my ankle sprained.
Dean, of course, made his escape, and I do not think that he saw my horse fall with me. I was badly crippled up, and was treated by Doctors George and John Sanderson (brothers) for forty-six days. It was two years before I had any strength in my right hand and arm. I learned to shoot left-handed, and when my right arm got strong again, I could shoot as well with one hand as I could the other.
Dean was captured by Edgar T. Neal after the latter became sheriff of San Saba County. When I went back to San Saba I went to the jail and saw Dean. All the prisoners shook hands with me except Dean. He had turned out his beard and I could not place him; so I asked him his name.
He said, “I am Del Dean, the man whom you were pursuing when you broke your arm, and for that reason I thought probably you would not want to speak to me.”
I assured him that he was mistaken; that I had no ill feeling toward him at all. I told him that while it was my duty to pursue him, it was natural for him to try to escape, and that I did not blame him with the accident. I told him that I felt sorry for him because he was in jail and hoped he would lead a better life when he got free again.
XV
The Capture and Escape of Morris, the Noted Murderer
In 1891 there lived in the little town of Vernon, one Jim Morris, and the two Moss brothers, who left together, during that year, for Greer County, where the three men were to take up land. The two Moss brothers had between them about five or six hundred dollars, which fact was known to Morris when the three left Vernon together. After reaching Salt Fork, which is in Greer County, they pitched camp to rest up a bit. While there, Morris and one of the Moss boys walked out a mile or so from the wagon to kill some game. After being gone a little while, Morris suddenly turned his gun on Moss and fired, killing him instantly. After burying the dead body in a sandhill, he went back to camp and told the other Moss boy that his brother had sent back for him and the wagon, as he had found a much better place to camp, and for him to hitch up and bring everything to the new stopping place. There happened to be two cowpunchers at the camp at this time who heard the conversation. Moss was sick, and when the two left, as Moss supposed, for the new camping place, he lay down in the bottom of their wagon, with his head near Morris, who was driving.
Ignorant of the terrible fate that had just overtaken his brother a little while before, Moss unsuspectingly put his hat over his face so he could rest easier, with the sun’s rays thus kept from his eyes.
Morris took advantage of this opportunity, and shot and killed the sick man, the bullet passing through his hat and blowing his brains out. He then threw the body out of the wagon and buried it in a nearby sandhill, exactly as he had disposed of the remains of the other man. Besides getting all of their money, he kept one of their watches, and also the coat which he took from his first victim. This coat had a bullet hole through the back, indicating the manner in which the man had been slain. Among other things found in the coat was a note which Moss had written to a young lady asking her for her company to church. The lady had accepted his invitation, according to this note, which had slipped into the lining through a worn-out pocket. When this murder occurred I was stationed in Quanah.
At that time there was no jail at Mangum, where we caught Morris, so we placed the prisoner in the calaboose, but as there was strong talk of lynching him, the officers removed him to Quanah, where he was safely landed in the county jail. He was kept there about two years, and was closely guarded a greater part of that time by some of the Rangers. He was tried on two indictments for murder and was sentenced to hang in both cases.
He appealed his case, however, and got a new trial, but the jury again brought in a verdict of death. He became very desperate, and was a hard man to keep imprisoned. One night during his trial, while being guarded by Bob Dawson, a, constable of that county, he picked his shackles with a writing pen and broke away. In escaping he jumped from a two-story window, and was at large three days and nights before he was recaptured and placed in jail. Morris kept us mighty busy before he was found, and, when we did get him, we took him in a few days to Fort Worth for safe keeping, until the day of his execution; but he succeeded in breaking away from that place, also, and never has been captured nor located since. At the time of his escape Morris was twenty-seven years of age, tall, broad-shouldered, and very handsome.
One morning at sunrise, while in the brakes searching for Morris,