

E-text prepared by Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders



A TEXAS MATCHMAKER

by

ANDY ADAMS

Author of 'The Log of a Cowboy'

ILLUSTRATED BY E. BOYD SMITH

1904







[Illustration: ROLLING THE BULL OVER LIKE A HOOP (page 207)]




TO

FRANK H. EARNEST

MOUNTED INSPECTOR U.S. CUSTOMS SERVICE

LAREDO, TEXAS




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

    I. LANCE LOVELACE

   II. SHEPHERD'S FERRY

  III. LAS PALOMAS

   IV. CHRISTMAS

    V. A PIGEON HUNT

   VI. SPRING OF '76

  VII. SAN JACINTO DAY

 VIII. A CAT HUNT ON THE FRIO

   IX. THE ROSE AND ITS THORN

    X. AFTERMATH

   XI. A TURKEY BAKE

  XII. SUMMER OF '77

 XIII. HIDE HUNTING

  XIV. A TWO YEARS' DROUTH

   XV. IN COMMEMORATION

  XVI. MATCHMAKING

 XVII. WINTER AT LAS PALOMAS

XVIII. AN INDIAN SCARE

  XIX. HORSE BRANDS

   XX. SHADOWS

  XXI. INTERLOCUTORY PROCEEDINGS

 XXII. SUNSET





LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


ROLLING THE BULL OVER LIKE A HOOP

WE GOT THE AMBULANCE OFF BEFORE SUNRISE

FLASHED A MESSAGE BACK

GAVE THE WILDEST HORSES THEIR HEADS

HE SPED DOWN THE COURSE

UTTERING A SINGLE PIERCING SNORT





CHAPTER I

LANCE LOVELACE


When I first found employment with Lance Lovelace, a Texas cowman, I
had not yet attained my majority, while he was over sixty. Though not
a native of Texas, "Uncle Lance" was entitled to be classed among its
pioneers, his parents having emigrated from Tennessee along with a party
of Stephen F. Austin's colonists in 1821. The colony with which his
people reached the state landed at Quintana, at the mouth of the Brazos
River, and shared the various hardships that befell all the early Texan
settlers, moving inland later to a more healthy locality. Thus the
education of young Lovelace was one of privation. Like other boys in
pioneer families, he became in turn a hewer of wood or drawer of
water, as the necessities of the household required, in reclaiming the
wilderness. When Austin hoisted the new-born Lone Star flag, and called
upon the sturdy pioneers to defend it, the adventurous settlers came
from every quarter of the territory, and among the first who responded
to the call to arms was young Lance Lovelace. After San Jacinto, when
the fighting was over and the victory won, he laid down his arms,
and returned to ranching with the same zeal and energy. The first
legislature assembled voted to those who had borne arms in behalf of the
new republic, lands in payment for their services. With this land scrip
for his pay, young Lovelace, in company with others, set out for the
territory lying south of the Nueces. They were a band of daring spirits.
The country was primitive and fascinated them, and they remained. Some
settled on the Frio River, though the majority crossed the Nueces, many
going as far south as the Rio Grande. The country was as large as the
men were daring, and there was elbow room for all and to spare. Lance
Lovelace located a ranch a few miles south of the Nueces River, and,
from the cooing of the doves in the encinal, named it Las Palomas.

"When I first settled here in 1838," said Uncle Lance to me one morning,
as we rode out across the range, "my nearest neighbor lived forty miles
up the river at Fort Ewell. Of course there were some Mexican families
nearer, north on the Frio, but they don't count. Say, Tom, but she was a
purty country then! Why, from those hills yonder, any morning you could
see a thousand antelope in a band going into the river to drink. And
wild turkeys? Well, the first few years we lived here, whole flocks
roosted every night in that farther point of the encinal. And in the
winter these prairies were just flooded with geese and brant. If you
wanted venison, all you had to do was to ride through those mesquite
thickets north of the river to jump a hundred deer in a morning's ride.
Oh, I tell you she was a land of plenty."

The pioneers of Texas belong to a day and generation which has almost
gone. If strong arms and daring spirits were required to