Wyandot County Republican. [volume] (Upper Sandusky, Ohio) 1869-1903, 1872-07-18
A Great Scare.
BY RALPH KELLER,

BY RALPH KELLER.
The cattle-men of Brighton have often
to wait half hour for the horse cars.
which take them out of Boston. They wait
at what is known as the Cambridge Car
office" They have a ruddy, bovine look,
as general thing; but you will be surest
TO know them by way they have of
which they also pick their teeth at inter
vals Theirs is species of Yankee dia-
lect cosmopolitaniZed by travel on stock
trains, and refined by current slang. 1t
was not so very long ago that one of these
fellows caused me to miss the Cambridge
car by getting me interested in story he
was telling to friend, who likewise
seemed to be in the cattle business.
"We had," said my story-teller, "a great
scare up to Shirkshire t'other night; we
seen a ghostI' Then the drover paused,
thrust his broad-brimmed felt hat on the
back of his head, shifted the straw from
one corner of his mouth to the other,
stroked his long whiskers, and bent his
merry bright eyes inquiringly upon the
face of his companion-just as if they had
begun bargain" over a halfd dozen
steers. This was, of course, only a bid
for his friends curiosity.
Seen ghost?" asked his friend.
And thus the preliminary bargain being
struck, the drover shifted the straw back
to the other side of his mouth once more,
and continued: Eyes, stree, a ghost, all
in white, goin' about on all fours, like a
ragin' lion, seein' who he could devour,
with deuce of a noise. The hull of
Shirkshire was reused as one man, an es-
pecially the women. The tarnal thing
'peared to take partic'lar spite agin cat
tie, for it chased cow bellerin' down the
hull length the village street. The cow
raised its tail in the moonlight an run
more'n two mile. Wall, it Kicked up a
deuce of fuss round in them parts. Did
ever tell you of old Deacon Ranshead?
Wall, old Deacon Ranshead an his wife
is about the meanest folks we've got up to
Shirkshire. They're always got their
noses in everybody else's business, and
the all-firedst, pesky liars anywhere. Now
it was about their house this we're ghost
was fust seen. Fact is, Jim ellison and
some other jokers got the hull thing up.
Better'n two weeks ago, when the hull
village was sound asleep, Jim and the
boys takes the deacon's calf away from
his cow, an goes to Mrs. Deacon's clothes
line and gifts one of the deacon's shirts
an pair o. drawers from it.
Then they drawed the shirt over
the fore-legs and the drawers over
the hind-legs of the calf, cuttin' of its
tail from sight for the time bein', lappin'
the two garmints over each other an tyin'
'em round the calf's middle with piece
of surcingle. Then they took an put tine
calf quiet-like, an not hurtin' of him, in
the deacon's kitchen. Wall, course, the
calf begin promenadin' up an down the
kitchen, upsettin' of the milk-pans an
gettin' confused with the gridi'rns an sich.
This kinder stirred up Mrs. Deacon, and
the deacon, too, and they was both pow
erful scarf. Mrs. Deacon thought the
deacon d better go down an see what
was in the kitchen. The deacon didn't
move. They both listened awhile, an
the pans an gridirn's ratified louder'n ever.
The deacon, very nervous-like, said he
didn't calclate there was anything THAR
but, if his wife felt anxious about hel
milk-pans, she'd better go down an look
arter 'em. Then there came rumblin
an clatter that sounded like the slowed
started up to visit 'em, an got lazy an
rolled down stairs agin. Mrs. Deacon, q
tremblin' all over, said she 'sposed the
noise warn't in the house at all ; but 8
shutter'd got loose onto the front stoop
an she guessed the deacon ought to &c
down an fix il.
"That's the kind of folks these is,
continued the drover "that's the way
they lie even to themselves. You ought
to see 'em skin an average character
Why, wouldn't take common saint, a
the price of his hide and taller, after he z
went through their slaughter-house IT,
by siftin' their lies about one another, "
see, that we afterward got all the circum
stances how scarf they was"
AT this point the arrival of two cars or
the heels of each other absorbed the at
tention of both drovers, and they became
! separated in the crowd. This event als'
} had the effect of bringing my Thoughts
back from Shirkshire, just in time to SCI