330 MY SPORTING HOLIDAYS 



But the ex- Ranger possessed not only a stout heart, 

 but also a trained and skilful hand and eye. He 

 happened to be a particularly fine rifle-shot, and knew 

 the range of the bluff on which the Indian stood 

 to a yard. Sitting down on his own doorstep, he 

 raised the full-distance sight of his army rifle, and, 

 taking a careful aim at the far-away figure sharply 

 silhouetted on the skyline, pressed the trigger. 



The savage fell dead on the spot, shot through the 

 heart at a distance, afterwards measured, of 1,700 

 yards. It was a lucky shot, no doubt, and has been 

 handed down in local history as the one single shot 

 that stopped the last Indian rising in the Panhandle 

 of Texas ; for the red war-party whose leader and chief 

 had thus been killed before the raid had well begun, 

 promptly returned to their reservation in superstitious 

 dread of the white men who could kill them a mile off. 



The business that took me to the Panhandle in the 

 year of 1887 was an interest that I possessed in the 

 Capitol Ranch. 



Texas, as we have seen, by the wit of its first 

 Governor, retained the full control and disposal of its 

 public lands by the terms of the bargain of 1868, 

 under which it re-entered the Union. Here in our 

 little crowded island of Great Britain, the density 

 of whose population (in England) is over 600 to the 

 square mile, it is perhaps difficult to realize what the 

 aforesaid control and disposal of public lands in its 

 future development may ultimately mean to the people 

 of Texas ; and also how free and lavish the State 

 authorities were able to be in their first distribution 

 of this public domain in the days when virgin acres 

 were so plentiful and men too few. 



So comparatively late as 1880 land was being freely 



