A Frontier Doctor Page: 11
xv, 260 p. : ill., ports. ; 22 cm.View a full description of this book.
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MARKING THE BOUNDARY
fully say I was never beaten but once on this expedition,
although I raced many times.
One day a bunch of our British neighbors came over
and announced that they had heard we had a runner in
our camp. If that was so they had a race to propose.
They declared they had a man who would carry any one
in our camp on his back and run with him fifty yards to
our sprinter's one hundred. As we had a man weighing
over two hundred pounds, our boys were all keen for the
contest.
I consented readily enough to run, but strongly ad-
vised my friends not to wager anything on me, as I had
never heard of any such race and had no idea what might
be the outcome. The course was measured off, the pre-
liminaries arranged, and we took our places. Anatom-
ically my opponent was a freak. He was about five feet
in height, with shoulders and chest very broad, body and
arms very long, legs very short, body and limbs very
hairy. In fact, as I looked at him fifty yards away, he
seemed more like an animal than a human. Later I
learned he was a Welshman, born and brought up in the
coal district of Wales.
Our big boy mounted his back, the pistol cracked, and
away we went. This was many, many years ago, but I
can still visualize him as if it were but yesterday. His
short legs worked with the rapidity of one of these modern
movie stunts where the policeman is chasing a victim,
only this was real, not reel.
I was in splendid form, never ran better in my life, but
I was beaten by a few inches.
An opportunity soon presented itself, however, to get
even with our British brethren. McCarthy, our champion
mule skinner, had a joke he used to spring on any
'sucker' who would bite. He would place a coin on top of
a tent pin sticking loosely in the sand or soft earth and atII
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Hoyt, Henry Franklin. A Frontier Doctor, book, 1929; Boston, Massachusetts. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth143532/m1/33/?rotate=270: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting University of Texas Health Science Center Libraries.