Newspaper Page Text
170
old and young, great and small, and
among them were not a few of the little
subscribers to the Weekly. The editor
was glad to see and shake hands with
some of his little friends, and as he
trusts this is only the first of a great
many State Fairs to be held in Macon,
he hopes to see a great many more of
them present at the next Annual Fair.
Mr. Nothing.
fKNOW a funny little man,
As quiet as a mouse,
Who does the mischief that is done
In everybody’s house.
There’s no one ever sees his face,
'Ap And yet we all agree
That every plate we break was cracked
By Mr. Nobody.
’Tis he who always tears our books,
Who leaves the door ajar;
He pulls the buttons from our shirts,
And scatters pins afar.
That squeaking door will always squeak,
For, prithee, don’t you see,
We leave the oiling to be done
By Mr. Nobody,
He puts damp wood upon the-fire,
That kettles cannot boil.
His are the feet that bring in mud,
And all the carpets soil.
The papers always are mislaid ;
Who had them last but he?
There’s no one tosses them about
But Mr, Nobody.
The finger-mark upon the doors
By none of us are made;
We never leave the blinds unclosed,
To let the curtains fade.
The ink we never spill; the boots
That lying round you see
Are not our boots 1 They all belong
To Mr. Nobody I
Riverside Magazine.
*•.<».«
Written for Burke’s Weekly.
THE ADVENTURES OF
BIG-FOOT WALLACE,
The Texas Banger and Hunter.
By the Author of “ Jack Dobell ; or, A Boy's
Adventures in Texas."
CHAPTER XX.
WALLACE MAKES A TREATY WITH THE
LI PAX INDIANS —THE INDIANS BREAK
IT —PREPARATION TO PUNISH THEM —
FIRST APPEARANCE OF A LIVE AUTHOR.
FEW months after I had set-
tied on the Medina River, I
concluded that it would be
good policy to enter into a regular trea
ty with the Lipans, who, at that time,
occupied all the adjacent country. So
I made my preparations for a grand
dinner, to which, upon a certain day, I
invited all the chiefs, and after I had
feasted them to their hearts’ content,
on “bear meat and honey” and “sweet
ened coffee,” of which they are exceed
ingly fond, I broached the subject to
them, stating briefly that I was a lone
man, and they were a powerful tribe,
and that I wanted to make a treaty with
them, by which they should guarantee
BURKE’S WEEKLY FOR BOYS AND GIRLS.
never to interfere with me or my stock
so long as I conducted myself peaceably
towards them !”
Whereupon, the head chief, Coyo
lopto-hajo, or, literally, “Smells-bad
when-he-walks, ” (I suppose he had
some Congo blood in him,) rose up
from the buffalo robe on which he was
sitting, and made me a speech in reply,
in which he praised me in the highest
terms, saying I was a great warrior and
hunter, and a good friend to the Lipans;
that I did not have two faces like a
great many of the white people, and
that, therefore, they had confidence in
what I told them ; that they knew no
Lipan had ever come to my ranch aid
gone away hungry, but that I had al
ways filled their stomachs, (patting his
own,) with fat bear meat and honey, as
I had done that day.
He then turned to the other chiefs,
and asked them if they were willing to
enter into the treaty I proposed, and
they all grunted out their readiness to
do so. So the treaty was formally made
and ratified, and though the expenses
attending it were much less than the
cost of a majority of the ‘treaties’
made by “ Uncle Sam,” it was proba
bly as faithfully kept—at least for a
long time.
When the chiefs got up to leave, they
all shook me by the hand, and told me
that henceforth I was just the same as
a Lipan in their estimation, and that I
must steal plenty of horses and cattle,
(the only mode, as they supposed, of
getting them,) and that they would never
steal them from me; and that no other
Indians would dare to do so on their
‘ hunting grounds.’ But before the
chiefs left, I produced a jug of whisky,
(in order to ‘ clinch ’ the treaty effectu
ally,*) and told them they had to take a
parting drink with me. From the
length of time that “ Stnells-bad-as-he
walks ” held the jug to his lips, I think
he must have swallowed down at least
a pint —indeed I am certain of it, for
before they were out of sight, I saw
him charge his mustang over the other
chiefs, and go off whooping and yelling
like a maniac.
Well, for several years, the ‘treaty’
was faithfully kept on both sides, and I
never lost a horse or a hoof of any
sort, although my neighbors, (for after
a while several families settled within
six or eight miles of me,) could not
keep an animal on their ranches. But,
in the course of time, the Lipans con
cluded to emigrate from that part of
the country to the head waters of the
Gaudalupe river, and as I then had col
lected quite a stock of horses and mules
around me, the temptation to steal from
me was too great to be resisted ; and a
night or so after the tribe had left, they
sent back a party of warriors, who
* Our little readers must recollect that this
was in the backwoods of Texas, where every
trade was “ clinched ” by a drink of whisky—
a custom which prevails too much, alas, even
among civilized people.
made a clean sweep of every thing I
had in the shape of a horse on my
ranch. At first I did not suspect the
Lipans, supposing that the stealing had
been done by other Indians, but on fol
lowing their trail a short distance the
next morning, I picked up an arrow,
which I knew, from its peculiar make,
had belonged to a Lipan ; and also the
tail of a fox fastened to a carved wood
en handle, such as the chiefs of that
tribe generally carry with them on all
occasions of public ceremony. I was
indignant, of course, at being served
such a scurvy trick by my old friends
and allies, particularly as I had always
kept the‘treaty’ made with them in
good faith myself, and I determined to
make them pay dearly for it if I could.
So the next morning I went into San
Antonio, where there was a ranging
company stationed, in which I had
many old acquaintances, and I told
them how the Lipans had served me,
and proposed that we should make up a
party and follow the Indians, and give
them a lesson that would teach them
that they could not break their “ sol
emn treaties” with impunity.
The captain of the company, (who
was also an old friend of mine,) readily
consented that any of his men should
go with me, who desired to do so, and
about thirty of the “right sort” volun
teered at once, by whom I was unani
mously elected “commander-in-chief”
for the expedition. The captain also
furnished us with four fine pack mules,
and rations enough to last us a month.
Just as we were leaving San Antonio
for my ‘ranch,’ a quetr looking cus
tomer rode up to me, and introduced
himself by saying:
“ Captain Wallace, I believe.”
“ At your service, sir,” I replied.
“Well,” said he, “Captain, I have
understood you were about starting on
a trip into the ‘ wilderness,’ and if you
have no objection I should like to go
along with you. I am an author, sir,
and am now engaged in writing a novel
entitled the ‘ Wayworn Wanderer of
the Western Wilds,’ and never having,
as yet, been outside of the ‘settlements,’
I am anxious to accompany you on
your trip, in order to acquire some
practical information of the subjects to
be treated of in it.”
“ Well,” I replied, “Mr. Author, I
have not the least objection to your
going with us, if you wish it, but I will
tell you before hand, you will have a
very rough road to travel, and no tav
erns on the way to put up in at night.”
“Oh!” said he, “I understand all
about that, and if it is agreeable to you
I shall certainly go along.”
Seeing that it was evidently his inten
tion to go along with us at once, I said
to him:
“ Os course, Mr. Author, I have not
the least objection in the world to your
company, but you surely do not think
of starting on such a trip in the dress
you have on.”
(He was dressed in a stove-pipe hat,
light cloth coat and pantaloons, and
patent leather gaiter shoes. Just think
of a fellow, will you, in that costume,
among the chaparals on the head wa
ters of the Gaudalupe rivet, one of the
roughest little scopes of country in all
the borders of Texas.)
“ Why,” said he, looking down at
himself, in an admiring sort of way,
“ what is the matter with my dress?”
“ Oh, nothing now,” I replied, “ but
by the time you get through the first
chaparal on the way, you will not have
a rag on you big enough to patch a bul
let with, and besides,” I continued,
“you ought, by all means, to have your
‘implements’ with you,” (meaning, of
course, a rifle and revolver.
“Oh, I have got them,” he said,
hauling out of his pocket a portable
ink stand aud a memorandum book, “I
always carry them with me.”
I could not, to save my life, help
laughing right out in the fellow’s face.
It was too ridiculous to think of a man
starting out on the “ war path ” without
a gun or a pistol, or even a butcher
knife —with nothing, in fact, except an
‘ink bottle’ and a memorandum book.
“ My friend,” I said, “ if you are de
termined to go on this trip, take my ad
vice, and go back to San Antonio, and
get you a gun and pistol, and a buckskin
suit of clothes, and then join us at my
ranch on the Medina, where we shall
remain until to-morrow evening.”
“Captain,” he replied, “I reckon you
are right, and I will go back into town
and ‘ fix up ’ as you advise, and then
meet you at your ‘ ranch ’ at the time
appointed, provided I can find my way
out there.”
“Oh, there will be no trouble about
that,” I said, and then gave him the
necessary directions to enable him to
find the road.
“ Well, good bye, Captain,” he said
“you may look for me to a certainty,
for 1 am resolved to go along with you,
and pick up all the information I can on
the subjects I shall treat of in my great
novel of the ‘ Wayworn Wanderer of
the Western Wilds.’ ”
“ Ail right, Mr. Author,” I replied,
“and I have no doubt you will be able
to pick up a good deal before you get
back,” and with that, he turned his pony
and cantered off towards town. I was
rather anxious that the fellow should go
with us, for it struck me there was con
siderable fun to be had out of him, if
he was rightly ‘ handled,’ and I hoped
what I had told him of the dangers and
hardships of the trip, would not prevent
him from meeting us as he had prom
ised.
There can hardly be a more enrich
ing and fruitful treasure, (it must be a
gift from heaven, never refused to hum
ble prayer,) than the mind that is sensi
ble of a prompt and decisive recoil from
sentiments that would sap the founda
tions of its Christian faith.