| Show loquacious SQUATTERS to ev folks 0 one aleeth while traveling 0 over stretches of prairie J journeying ourn eying across the prairie in whichever way the road runs we at length overtake the strangest looking cavalcade imaginable a dilapidated wa wagon g on with a dirty rag ragged va cover drawn by an ill as aborted e team of a very small horse and an oversized mule long iong since fit subjects ecat s fo for r t the h boneyard bone yard the driver is ia a dirt b be e g grimed rim ed tobacco stained low man while his wife and in d family which last is ia much too numerous n ume rous for even a wealthy man are if anything more dirty more ragged and more disheveled than himself on a tall gaunt mule rides the eldest son and heir driving before him a herd of two cows a calf one sheep a goat and an old blind lame horse while two mangy mongrel curs cura trot in the rear as if only too fully fall aware of their miserable e existence li stence occasionally the jaded team essays essaya to move out of a walk alk but as quickly relapses into the tha pace which for many weary has baa been its accustomed gait As we rode up the following dialogue dialo gua ensued ll howdy howdy traveling 4 Tr Tra velm avelin rite smart e come Co mefir far I 1 come from the bottom lands of old Mi missoury Miss onry at which point there la Is a lull I 1 in the th conversation during which each surreys ys the other suddenly the knight of t th he tobacco quid turns interrogators say stranger what might yer name let at this an insane desire takes posse sion eion of us to reply like the schoolboy it might be jones but it aint bute but we tell id him our name after which the way is open S f for r an endless string of inquiries the 0 first t of f which are invariably what might your business be where mere be you yon gow you yon come from hows cro crops s there this sort ortez of thing I 1 is bad enough togo to go through beigh once but alifa one passes a dozen such each day in week weak with sach each of whom hoin he ha is expected to go through the same performance it becomes a terror by day alay and a nightmare in our dreams moreover one is expected to stop and go through lt it and ana I 1 have bavo more than once heard bard myself characterized a as aa 11 too high toned to talk to common folks and merely because I 1 had no time to stop and talk with them the absurdity of this is at once apparent to those here in in the east where to mind eind ones own business is the universal custom As a matter of fact a live energetic man has no tuna time to talk or fool with people by the wa way y it matters not a picayune whom ho he meets meats what their business is where they are going or anything t else concerning them at night we camp at tho only water hole holb we have seen been during the day and are am soon n joined by three hands bands of movers presently as aa many fires are b burning I 1 I 1 and ana as the darkness gathers the scene cone is is by no means children are playing about women are cooking the tha men are tending the horses and st staking a k them out for the night while t the h e flickering of the campfires camp fires the harsh talk and coarse laughter of the men lend a certain something hard to describe we possess is not borrowed by our neighbors we are lucky even to provisions which last of course are borrowed with the mental understand i ti aldu gaoa A that evAro r ff tint n t tn ha returned supper over arte the siege begins baegl visitors pour in from all sides rifles mostly from the male element and for hours hour we are entertained wili wih a complete history of each we cannot nok mak them to so go for are they not gentlemen and as good as we so go there we sit until finally one by one they drop off and leave us to ourselves atis is a fair sample of a ride over texas tessa roads roada and the samo same may bo be repeated every day in the year in fact it was during daring my s stay until I 1 hated the eight bight af pf of a wagon on the same road post |
