Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-04-13

For the Gazette.
l told you last week about some of the
"reminiscences that were exchanged be-
tween Baldwin Bragg, the ex-sheriff OF
Tom Green county, Texas, and myself
regarding matters and things that oc-
Cured during the years when he was sher-
if and l was county judge of Tom Green
1 have been entertaining the ex-sheriff
in New York during the last week n he
has cut quite a figure in the metropolis.
He has never been East before, and he is
as much a tenderfoot in New York as q
New Yorker would be in the wild West,
but I shall keep his metropolitan adven-
lures for another letter.
We had a little Bohemian gathering up
on Broadway, and Sheriff Bragg, after
diluting his internal economy with some
New York beverages, became quite To-
quacious n reminiscent. He told q
number of stories that were very enter
tanning to the gentlemen around the
table, but which owing to my regard for,
and appreciation of, the sacred truth, I
decline to Publish. One of the peculiar
ties of Bragg IS that when speaking at
q social meeting, he invariably addresses
Il person as if there was nc ether in the
room.
'Wen, Knox, dod-gast it, you re-
member the time when that same Gin
ciunati tenderfoot that 1 was talking to
you about yesterday came along with a
letter of Introduction to you? You were
living then out on the ranch near Austin
and had a hellsmInt of horses and dogs.
McCOrkle was his name, | remember.
10 -oe N - %ho-,- lid cf Toa%o,, Col
lers that come along, not to say a dude
exactly, you know, but kind of a tender
foot that always knows something better
than you do, and way back where be
lives is acquainted with faster horses,
finer dogs and more expert shooters, Than
you ever heard of. Well, you know how
we used to lay for them fellers.. If he
was a whole-souled, genial Guss, an
took things as they went, we were with
him and nothing was too good for him,
but if he was the other kind-well!
''McCorkle, he ses to- me, he ses you
and me is going out to Knnx's ranch and
he's going to give us q big layout on
hunting wolves Tomorrow. l have
hunted foxes in WestchesteT county, New
York, and l suppose this wolf hunting
business is the same thing. But I'm
used to good horses, and L want no buck-
ing bronchos in mine, so I ses, I'll see
that you get a Jim Dandy horse. Next
morning, when we started on the hunt,
l got your man to put him on
Puss, an English horse that
was no bucker, but one that no
man had ever before been able to per-
suade to go in any direction but what
suited herself. She was an eccentric
brute, but never cut up in any way nor
acted any different from any other horse
until the dogs gave tongue and started
after the varmints. McCorkle was ike
up in a lot of store clothes hat they use
when they hunt foxes, or anise seed bags,
in York state, and he was a holy show, I
tell you. But nobody said nothing. Soon
the dogs got scent. Away we went. All
out McCOrkle were proceedln' at a rapid
rate in the direction of Alaska. Nc
Corkle, he was holdin' on to a mare that
was making tracks for Guatemala or Rio
Janeiro. She was the hardest mouthed
brute that was ever known III that coun-
try and when we found her and Nc
Gorkle that night about sundown,
eleven miles away from where we start
ed, he had got her into a plowed field and
was swinging her aroun the fence, as if
he was trying to reach the judges stand
first in q race.
''You talk about absent minded m5n,
but McCorkle was the most absent-mind-
eldest 1 ever met. Isthink he was the
original Teller that tied a knot in his
Observation-Disclosures before he went to
bed so that he wouldn't forget TO wake
up III time to catch the 3 O'Clock train.
The day after the wolf hunt we took him
out to shoot prairie chickens. In Texassa
-z.- N.-z- 80 11r--- a. $50, - LAAE
prairie chicken shooting oil horseback.
McCorkle, at his own request, hadSbeen&
furnished with a guaranteed non-bu6kiRKl
horse. We were scattered all over me-
prairie aud were-bagging game faster than
we could stow them away, when l saw Nc
Corkle's gun go off and he himself violat-
ing the law of gravity by shooting up
about twenty feet into the atmosphere,
and then as the mustang .sc0oted from
under him he hit the surface of the
States in an enthusiastic and ex-
temporaueous manner that I've never
seen, excepting on the variety stage. He
had just got to his feet when I rode up
to him. He said that the first time h6s
fired from the back Of the horse the brute
jumped and bucked him nearly off, TAT
this time he thought he bad the
deadwood on the animal. He had thrown
the reins on its neck INC allowed it to eat
grass, thinking it was so absorbed in its
lunch that il would not notice the dis
charge of the tgun he had fired at thea
prairie chicken; but when we saw nph
first the air was full of gun barrels, eaA
fridge belts, ham sandwiches, pocket
and private correspondence tina
the shock and conclusion had separated
from him.
"Well, we'll, wasn't McCorkle a tepE4I
from way back! That night We
were so far away that we couldn t reaeh
the ranch before dark and we stopped at
Simpson 8. Remember Simpson? Hes
only had a one-roomed jacket. Mac and
l occupied one bunk, and during the
a cold norther blew up, and as thesI
jacket was simply a lot of poles with mud
plastered between them and being full af
holes ,jtwas ~'tarnally cold. McCorkM
up some time in the night and dis
close by his head a hole where \
the norther was pouring in cold enoughsA
TO freeze holes in the equator.
che reached out and got his troussFai
and stuffed them into the hole. Unfof-
tunately for Mac q stray COW came along
in the night AND munched about two feet |
off one of the legs of his trousers, and L
you, gentlemen give YOU nv