Aunt Mallie rocking on her front porch saw the dogs and heard the mighty mule music and thought some scripture had surely come to pass. With the dogs in hot pursuit, Tandy approached the bridge in the dark. The bridge tender, who, incidentally was running unopposed for a congressional seat, heard the sound of the horn and thought a boat was coming up the river. The candidate jumped straight up, ran to the gears and levers and raised the bridge. Tandy ran up the span and fell into the river below and drowned.
News gets around fast.
By the time election day came everyone knew what had happened. The bridge tender got only fifteen votes, and those from his kin folks. The rest voted for a write-in candidate. Political philosophers speculated that any man who didn't know the difference between the sound of a boat coming up the river and a mule with a bugle in his behind wasn't smart enough to be in congress. And that's the news, if not necessarily the truth, from Horned Toad, Texas.