Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1893 — Is the Colonel Veracious? [ARTICLE]

Is the Colonel Veracious?

"I fought a battle once with wooden cannon, and I won it. too, ” said Col. J. C. Gailor, at the Laclede. “It was during thi Mexican war. I was sent out from Santa Fe with a scouting party of twenty-four men, and we were headed off near the Mexican line by 200 of the most villainous-looking greasers that ever cut a throat or shot a brave man in the back. We got into a wooded gorge and threw up a breastwork of loose rocks and earth across the mouth of it. I felt sure the Mexican*/would make a rush for us that nightiunder cover of the darkness, and decided to fix up a surprise for them. We carried a small chest x>l tool with us. and in the outfit was a long-stemmed two-inch augur. We felled six tough oak trees, sawed off a section of tho stems and transformed them into cannon. We loaded them with pistol balls and flint gravel, mounted them and waited. 'Just before daylight the Mexicans came. We waited until they were within fifty yards, then opened on them with our battery. You never saw such a htistling for tall timber in your life. Artillery was the last thing they expected to encounter, and when those wooden cannon opened on them they scattered like sheep.”— Globe-Democrat,