The adventures of Big-Foot Wallace, the Texas ranger and hunter Page: 79 of 323
xv, 309 p. : ill. ; 20 cm.View a full description of this book.
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BIG-FOOT WALLACE
In the fall of '42, the Indians were worse on the
frontiers than they had ever been before, or since. You
could n't stake a horse out at night with any expectation
of finding him the next morning, and a fellow's
scalp was n't safe on his head five minutes, outside of
his own shanty. The people on the frontiers at last
came to the conclusion that something had to be done,
or else they would be compelled to fall back on the
"settlements," which you know would have been reversing
the natural order of things. So we collected
together by agreement at my ranch, organized a company
of about forty men, and the next time the Indians
came down from the mountains (and we had n't
long to wait for them) we took the trail, determined
to follow it as long as our horses would hold out.
The trail led us up toward the head-waters of the
Llano, and the third day out, I noticed a great many
"signal smokes" rising up a long ways off in the direction
we were travelling. These "signal smokes"
are very curious things anyhow. You will see them rise
up in a straight column, no matter how hard the wind
may be blowing, and after reaching a great height,
they will spread out at the top like an umbrella, and
then, in a minute or so, puff! they are all gone in the
twinkling of an eye. How the Indians make them, I
never could learn, and I have often asked old frontiersmen
if they could tell me, but none of them could
ever give me any information on the subject. Even
the white men who have been captured by the Indians,
and lived with them for years, never learned how
these "signal smokes" were made.
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Duval, John C. The adventures of Big-Foot Wallace, the Texas ranger and hunter, book, 1870; [Macon, Ga.]. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth5831/m1/79/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .