University of Virginia Library

BILL DEAN, THE TEXAN RANGER.

Rare wags may be found among the Texas Volunteers,
yet the funniest fellow of all is a happy-go-lucky chap
named Bill Dean, one of Chevallier's spy company, and
said to be one of the best "seven-up" players in all Texas.
While at Corpus Christi, a lot of us were sitting out on
the stoop of the Kinney House, early one morning, when
along came Bill Dean. He did not know a single soul
in the crowd, although he knew we were all bound for
the Rio Grande; yet the fact that the regular formalities
of an introduction had not been gone through with, did
not prevent his stopping short in his walk and accosting
us. His speech, or harangue, or whatever it may be
termed, will lose much in the telling, yet I will endeavour
to put it upon paper in as good shape as possible.

"Oh, yes," said he, with a knowing leer of the eye:
"oh, yes; all going down among the robbers on the Rio
Grande, are you? Fine times you'll have, over the
left. I've been there myself, and done what a great
many of you won't do—I come back: but if I did'nt
see nateral h—ll,—in August at that,—I am a teapot.
Lived eight days on one poor hawk and three blackberries—couldn't

kill a prairie rat on the whole route to
save us from starvation. The ninth day come, and we
struck a small streak of good luck—a horse give out and
broke down, plumb out in the centre of an open prairie
—not a stick big enough to tickle a rattlesnake with,
let alone killing him. Just had time to save the critter
by shootin' him, and that was all, for in three minutes
longer he'd have died a nateral death. It didn't take
us long to butcher him, nor to cut off some chunks of
meat and stick 'em on our ramrods; but the cookin'
was another matter. I piled up a heap of prairie grass,
for it was high and dry, and sot it on fire; but it flashed
up like powder, and went out as quick. But—"

"But," put in one of his hearers, "but how did you
cook your horse-meat after that?"

"How?"

"Yes, how?"

"Why, the fire caught the high grass close by, and
the wind carried the flames streakin' across the prairie.
I followed up the fire, holding my chunk of meat directly
over the blaze, and the way we went it was a caution
to any thing short of locomotive doin's. Once in a while
a little flurry of wind would come along, and the fire
would get a few yards the start; but I'd brush upon
her, lap her with my chunk, and then we'd have it
again, nip and chuck. You never seed such a tight
race—it was beautiful."

"Very, we've no doubt," ejaculated one of the
listeners, interrupting the mad wag just in season to
give him a little breath: "but did you cook your meat
in the end?"

"Not bad I did'nt. I chased that d—d fire a

mile and a half, the almightiest hardest race you ever
heer'd tell on, and never give it up until I run her right
plump into a wet marsh: there the fire and chunk of
horse-meat came out even—a dead heat, especially the
meat."

"But wasn't it cooked?" put in another one of the
listeners.

"Cooked!—no!—just crusted over a little. You
don't cook broken-down horse-flesh very easy, no how;
but when it comes to chasing up a prairie fire with a
chunk of it, I don't know which is the toughest, the
meat or the job. You'd have laughed to split yourself
to have seen me in that race—to see the fire leave me
at times and then to see me bruslin' up on her agin,
humpin' and movin' myself as though I was runnin
agin' some of those big ten mile an hour Gildersleeves
in the old States. But I'm a goin over to Jack Haynes's
to get a cocktail and some breakfast—I'll see you all
down among the robbers on the Rio Grande."