True stories of old Houston and Houstonians: historical and personal sketches / by S. O. Young. Page: 25

HOUSTON AND HOUSTONIANS 25
his manly form. Slowly they wended their way back and when
within long earshot they were startled by an unearthly rapping
and kicking, mingled with smothered oaths and maledictions.
There could be no mistake about that voice. It was that of their
captain and he was very much alive and evidently very much
enraged. They hurried round the house and found to their
amazement that the sounds came from the inside of an immense
wooden cistern. Yes, their captain was safe and not a mangled
corpse as they feared. He was very much alive though a prisoner.
They fished him out after a great deal of trouble and then
learned the truth. He had gone to the second story to get a
good view of the gulf and had incautiously crawled out on what
he thought was a shed but which proved to be the top of a cistern.
This being old and decayed had given way with the great
crash that had stampeded the company, and he had been precipitated
to the bottom. Fortunately there was no water in the
cistern so the consequences were by no means disastrous.
About ten days later a train of dilapidated cars, drawn by a
squawking engine, drew into Houston from Brazoria. After all
the passengers had gone, the captain of the great independent
company of Texas rangers and two or three comrades slipped
off the step of the last coach and sneaked down a side street.
The next evening other members of the company did the same
thing and within a week they were all back and following their
usual vocations just as though nothing out of the ordinary had
ever happened.
How the judge ever explained Magruder's not issuing that
order, the fear of which had caused the gamblers to fall such
easy victims, was never known. The fact that every member
of the company was strictly on the defensive no doubt helped
him out of the difficulty.
, , $
AN ENCOUNTER WITH A CAMEL.
M vONDAY when the circus was here I saw an old
horse hitched to a buggy making a fool of himself
because there were two or three elephants marching
up Main Street. Now if it had been camels instead
of elephants there might have been some excuse for that
old horse, for, as everybody knows, horses dread camels
as the devil dreads holy water. An explanation of this fact
is given in an old story to the effect that when God made animals
He made a horse among the last. He told the horse that he
should be man's servant and be a beast of burden. At that the
horse thought he would make some suggestions and said that if