ON THE FRINGE 329 



plenty of country to ride over,' remarked an old 

 Ranger whom I met that year, ' and we used to hev 

 some shootin' at times. Had a straight up-and-down 

 chance of being scalped not so long ago. First it was 

 hide-and-seek, rough-and-tumble with them derned 

 Indians Kiowas and Comanches. At last, in '74, we 

 knocked the stuffin' out of them ; and now it's the 

 white men we've got to keep in order. Texas was 

 a pretty tough place, and don't you forget it,' he 

 concluded, 'when Sam Huston organized us Texas 

 Rangers.' 



From this man I heard the story of the suppression 

 of the last Indian rising in Texas. It happened in 

 this way: News had been brought in the autumn 

 of 1874 of a contemplated Indian raid. A party of 

 Indians in war-paint had been seen in the neighbour- 

 hood of the Canadian River, hi the Panhandle, where 

 there was a small white settlement. A force of 

 mounted Rangers was accordingly despatched in haste 

 to the valley in question ; but before they got there 

 the danger was over. 



That very morning one of the settlers, an old Ranger, 

 walked out of his cabin in time to see an Indian in full 

 war-dress, standing, distinctly outlined in the clear 

 Texas air, on a steep bluff about a mile from his door. 



The ex-Ranger knew full w r ell the deadly meaning 

 of the eagle-feathered fringe, plainly visible even at 

 that distance, that adorned the red savage from his 

 crown to his heels. It meant that a party of Red- 

 skins were out on the warpath, and that possibly ere 

 night the blackened roof- trees of the log-hut settle- 

 ment and the scalpless bodies of its white people 

 might alone be left to mark yet another attempt 

 of the original owners of the soil to keep their own. 



