Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 August 1896 — WAITING FOR VICTIMS. [ARTICLE]

WAITING FOR VICTIMS.

How Texans Made Money Out of a Poor Road. I remember traveling once in one of the counties north of here, ft week or two after a somewhat protracted spell of hot weather. The country was rolling prairie and the rouds were beautiful except at the small wet weather streams in a few of the larger hollows, and these were only from ten to thirty feet in width and could have been bridged for about $25 apiece. Yet I found a team bogged up In almoct every other one in a whole day’s drive. They seemed to be almost bottomless, und, although I hud u good, strong puir of ponies and a very light buggy, It was with the greatest difficulty that I got through several of them myself. In one of the worst of the boggy holes I found a wagon containing a woman, four or five children and a few light household goods aud with four very good horses attached. The owner of the team had waded across and stood, the very personification of dejection, on the other side. On a hill about 300 yards distant stood a Hue farm house and one of lesser pretentious on the opposite side of the road. The ownerof the team told me that the owner of the former house who was working on a fence near by had offered to pull him out for sl, but when told he had no dollar, was coldly told that he would have to get one before he got out of that hole. “I have got just $3,” suid the poor fellow, “but I have over 150 miles to go uml am out of provisions.” I had two long stake ropes and by hitching them to the end of the wagon tongue, getting the poor horses out on solid ground and hitching my team in the lead we got the wagon out. I stopped and tried for a subscription from the man at the fence who had cooly watched the whole proceedings, but of couse didn’t get it. A little further on I learned that he was a road overseer and that he andhlsson, who lived opposite, took turns day about keeping a yoke of oxen in the lot ready to pull teams out of that hole at $1 apiece, and that made from $3 to $5 per day for from one to three weeks after every wet spell.—San Antonio (Texas) Express.