People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 November 1894 — A LONE STAR WEDDING. [ARTICLE]

A LONE STAR WEDDING.

The Bride’s Father Furnished Music by Shooting at the Groom. All the old residents of Montague county, Tex., remember Uncle Henry Harris, the preacher ferryman, of Red river, during the latter part of the eighties. There have been many greater men in this part of the state, and many more intellectual ones, but there have been few who were so universally loved or who were so widely mourned for after their death. Uncle Henry was a one-legged man, and the wooden stump which supplied the place of his missing member was a primitive affair. It was joined to the ■tump of his leg by a strap, which could be removed in a few momenta Calvin Dubbs, a half-breed Choctaw Indian, courted his daughter, May Harris. Uncle Henry was opposed to the suit of Dubbs, because of his ungodliness and bad character. One afternoon Calvin Dubbs rode up to the ferry, and, as the river was high, asked to be ferried over. The old man and Tobe started to take him across, but no sooner did they reach the middle of the river when their passenger whipped out a bowie knife and in a few passes severed the longer of the two ropes that bound them to the trolley. The boat immediately swung around in the current and remained stationary irt midriver. “What’s that?” cried Uncle Henry, in alarm. “Don’t you know we can’t get across now?”

“Don’t know about you. I kin make it all right myself.” Calvin sprang to the saddle, urged his pony over the side of the boat into the water, and struck out for shore. The two captives on the boat watched ■him helplessly until he gained the shore they had just left As he did so May came out of the cabin, arrayed in her Sunday best, and two men on horseback rode out from their concealment back of the bluff. The object of the stratagem gradually dawned on the old man’s mind. “There’s goin’ to be a weddin’/* J r elled Calvin from the bank. “We’ll etyou attend as a witness.” “Whar's yore license,” shrieked the father, “and whar’s yore preacher?” “Hcr’es the license,” yelled Dubbs, ■waving a legal-looking document; “can you read it from there? And this man here’s the preacher.” The couple took their places, and the alleged preacher began the ceremony. Uncle Henry began pleading and expostulating, but all in vain. Suddenly he grabbed the Winchester he carried In the bottom of his boat and drew a bead on his prospective son-in-law. “Stop that tom-foolery, or I’ll shoot.” “Shoot, and be hanged!” yelled Cal■vin. “Go on, parson!” This latter remark was addressed to the preacher on shore. Whatever might be said against Calvin’s morals, nobody ever doubted his nerve. “Crack!” sounded the Winchester from the boat, and with a thud a bullet buried itself in the horn of the “bridegroom’s saddle. Calvin made a quick motion toward his own gun, but May caught his arm. , “Don’t!” she cried. “Pa won’t hurt you. If he’d wanted to he’d bored you the first crack.” The ceremony was a brief one, but every few moments Uncle Henry would blaze away, just close enough to the bridegroom to be unpleasant. When it was all over the party rode •way, with many tantalizing adieux to the captives on the boat.—St. Louis Globe-Democrat.