Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 September 1873 — OLD MATT GRIGSBY. [ARTICLE]

OLD MATT GRIGSBY.

FLAT BROKE WITH $19,000 OF A WIDOW’S MONEY IN HIS HANDS. Old Matt Grigsby was a thorough rancher, and one whose Texanship jlaled from Sam Houston’s' time and San Jacinto. Old Matt was in no sense of the 1 word an extraordinary naan, and lie certainly was a very ordinary Texan. Bom in one of the northern river counties of Kentucky, somewhere about 1816, he had-fol-lowed the inevitable bent of Kentucky youth of that day in a keel-boat voyage to New Orleans, somewhere early in the thirties. Then his restless disposition impelled him up Red River, where he stayed, variorously engaged as a field overseer, boatman unci so on, until 1836, when his wayward eye caught the glimmer of Sam Houston’s Lone Star, and it sealed his destiny. Texas has since then grown into a marvelous greatness, which, vast as it is, seems but the faintest dawn of its prosperity in view of tlie promise the present gives. But of those who contribute to her greatness now; those who nursed her tragic infancy, are left but here and there one, a scattered few. Men they are of iron frames and brave, stout hearts; men whose hair the northers of many winters and the searchings of many summers have bleached and laded, anil whose years are told now by scores thrice multiplied; but you can yet read in those bronzed and furrowed, visages, and in those eyes whose fire not age nor vicissitude has dimned, the legends of that heroism that blazed at San Jacinto, or was quenched in the red blood of the Alamo and Goliad; you can yet feel in the grip of the friendly hand-shake the brawn of the old arms that, when- they were young, rocked the cradle of a baby empire. AlI honor then to the TexanS of Thirty - six. They are few and getting fewer. The few that ate left, you may find scattered along the Mexican Border, freighting from Camargo; mining, may be, in Sonora, or tending cattle upon the verge of the Comanche range. Well, one of these pioneers was Matt Grigsby. He had seen service. San Jacinto was only a baptism for him; for after that he had snuffed the sulphur of Palo Alto and Resaea, Buena Vista and Monterey, Contreras and El Molinb del Rey, Cluirubusco and Chepui tepee. Then lie had gone back to his saddle, his mustangs and his cattle, and had kept them congenial fellowship till the drums of Sixty-one and the summons of Ben McCullough had called him to wav again. Out of this last and greatest struggle Matt had come in Sixty-five, old, gray, poor, alone, and disfranchised in the* State he helped to make. The day after the surrender at Shreveport, old Matt wandered about the streets listlessly. Just half a century old; almost penniless; friendless; file comrades he had marched with and fought side of for four years were dispersing and going each his mournful way, to face the uncertain and gloomy future as best he might. If somewhere out in Texas there bad been an “old woman” waiting for Matt in a cabin that, however lowly, bore the badge of “home” on its out-hanging latch-string, it would have been a comfort. But of this there was none for old Matt. Nobody bore liis name nor claimed his love. So he merely sauntered about aimlessly, and mused upon the past, content to let the future look out for itself. He was conscious of having fought his lights well, and made his retreats and his surrender sullenly and stoically. And when this consciousness was perfect in the rugged old brain that worked underneath his frizzly scalp-lock, he _ liad no -self-con-einmng to do. He may have gone away back to" the olden time when lie trudged through tlie Kenton County wooils to the little log school house where he had learned all lie knew of yore. He may have recalled the cheery-faced Kentucky matron he called mother, am] a moist glisten may have overcast his eye for her sake: but if all this happened no one saw it, because each had enough of his own concerns to think of. While this veteran ’of three wars was keeping company with his solitude, in this way, sitting astride a disused ord-nance-box, whose pine sides lie was aim-, lessly hacking with his Arkansas toothpick, a voice young and full of cheer saluted him: “Hello, Reb, what ’er yer dreamin’ about?” Old Matt looked up quick. In front of him stood a stalwart young Illinoisan, in blue. . . - .' “Ob, nutb’n much, Yank; what’s the news?” “Well, tlier ain’t no news to speak on, ’cept. the war’s over.” - “Y'ou-recknu she's over,- done, sureHL qtiericd old Matt, resuming his whittling. “She is’s fur’s I’m concerned, anyhow,” -rejoined t]ie Illinoisian. “My time’s bin out two weeks, but I’ve just been bangin' “on to see the thing through.” ’“Wail, mister, I reckon you niougbt be kerrect; leastways I ain’t minded to differ with you. I reckon I’ve liearn about enough of gunpowder iu my time to last me the balance of my days." Then the Illinoisan, whose name was George Adams, and w ho had just finished three years sendee in a cavalry regiment, sat down on the box beside old Matt and they were soon “well acquainted.” They talked a good while. Adams told Matt about his old mother and his two little - , sisters up in Illinois, and old Matt told him fragmentary reminiscences of his wild life, and 'finally the two strolled away to camp to get some coffee, for it was near sundown. Matt’s stories of Texas had excited the spirit of adventure in young Adams’ bosom, and Adams had conceived a sudden liking for the quiet, pleasant old man. And so, after a fewmore days sis loitering about Shreveport and long talks about Texas and the cattle range. Adams wrote a letter to his old 'mother,telling her she must do without him for another year or two, as he was going to see if lie couldn’t make some moneyln.Texas. Old Matt had “sort o’ tuk to the youngster,” as he said, and they had agreed to go straight out on the Lampases Range and try and start a herd. It didn’t take a great deal of moncyto handle stock witli in Texas in Sixty-five; and so tliese-iwo had but little difficulty in finding a man, after they had got as far as Austin, who'was willing, to sell.out his “brand” for the three hundred dollars which fprrned the joint gash capital of the firm. / Now the pujtfiase of a cattle brand may seem to civilized people a good deal like buying a pig in the bag. Lnderordlnary circumstances it is as common place a transaction as tlie purchase of any other vested title in property. The laws fit Texas provide for the right of brand as a title to stock, as definitely as they do for the title to real estate by warranty

deed. This.man-, ofi.whom. the fim-nf Grigsby & Adams had purchased his brand, had been forced by the war to neglect his stock, which he had left in Sixtythree, and had not been back to the ranclie since to even corral and brand the caivesT- Tbcir-Jhe Comanclies and Kiowas had been rusticating about there for two or three summers, quite at their ease, and the presence of Comanclies and Kiowas always affect the value of stock brands, precisely as an earthquake causes real estate to fluctuate in price and otherwise. And besides, -his„_.,cattle was on the outermost range, and he had a family, and bachelors get along better in Indian neighborhoods than married men do; so he was glad enough to sell his brand out for three hundred dollars, hard cash, which he undoubtedly ' invested in “fixtures” and entered into the great Southwestern industry of keeping a saloon. But for old Matt the Comanclies had no terrors. If there was anything, in fact, that he was afraid of, he had singularly failed to come upon it, though he had been hunting danger well on to forty years. And there was a similar absence of caution in the composition of young Adams, though it probably was crowded out by his youthful recklessness, rather than shut out altogether by the hardihood of his nature, as was the case with his mild-voiced, taciturn old partner. Thus these two made an admirable pair to go out on the verge of the Comanche range to “pick up a neglected brand.” And they turned their horses’ heads towards the Staked Plain, and Austin saw them no more. There is obviously a poverty of romance and a lack of chivalry in the business of herding stock. One would naturally exnect that a race of men whose lives are spent in the monotonous round of twelve hours “on” and twelve hours “off” watch, ing a herd of grazing cattle, varied only by an occasional stampede, would be of all men the tamest and least interesting. Maybe they are. But try one of them with an insult or indignity, and you .will presently discover that you have struck the most vividly interesting customer you have ever met. Taking the class of Texas cattle men in the aggregate, and it will be found as an unvarying characteristic that they afford more net fighting weight to the pound gross, and a greater combative capacity to the superficial square inch than any other class of men on the face of the earth. It makes no difference to him what may be the status, color or circumstances of the enemy, so only he is aggressive; whether lie be Comanche, Kiowa, liorse-thief, sharper or claimjumper; the Texan’s means of redress is always slung conveniently on his right hip, and his sense of justice is measured by the surest eye, the suddenost nerve and the quickest finger. But fortune smiled on the firm of Grigsby & Adams. And when fall came they had gathered from all thepvild range north of Sail Antonio several hundred head of cattle —mostly two-year olds—bearing on their haunches the cauterized scar they had bought for three hundred dollars. A 3 time wore on they were still successful. Their cattle wintered well. No norther came to them to blast with its icy breath tlie fruits of their venturesome toil and sturdy patience; no Kiowa came hustling across the trackless pampas with his scalp-lock quaking in the breeze and liis war-whoop splitting the air, to stampede their herds or give the herders sepulture by the cotton-woods, with the buzzards aud coyotes for mourners. And as the summer and the wintercame and went again, old Matt and young Adams, found themselves getting well to do in the world. They sold some stock into a big drove, and put the money where it would do most good—in a reinforcement of young calves. And so they wrought and Watched and waited for four years, until the brand they had bought for three hundred dollars became rated among the thousands. Grigsby & Adams were getting rich. But young Adams was getting restless. His aged mother, whose only boy he was, worried about him. Someone ■who lived over across the Illinois prairie from his home, was getting anxious too, for it was now seven years since slie had given her troth to the beardless volunteer, and she thought she had waited long enough. All this came to Adams in long letters at such intervals as horseback journeys could be made from the range to the post-office eighty miles away, and he wanted to sell out and go home and settle down. But Matt demurred. He thought tilej'were'’ doing powerful well, arid it was better to hang on another year and double their pile. Finally one day old Matt came back to the camp from a long trip. He had been -dear to Austin.In Austin he hail met a man from Kaintuck, and this man had told him that his mother, eighty, almost blind, with no one left to lean upon as she passed down to the river a litle way beyond, found an apology for a home with some distant kindred who were patiently waiting for her to die. Matt was moodier and more taciturn than ever now. The next day he mounted his mustang, and when he came hack in the course of three days lie knew just what the firm of Grigsby Adams was worth. He -was ready to yield to Adams and sell out. It was not difficult to find a purchaser then, for it had begun to be noised abroad that there was money, mints of it, in Texas cattle. So there was activity for a few days on the Grigsby & Adams range. The cattle were corralled, the steers that were fit to drive were picked out aud driven away out on the range. The stock cattle, cows, calves, yearlings, etc., representing the brand, were sold to a couple ol ranchers for twenty thousand dollars. And old Matt and young Adams took the Chisholm trail with twelve hundred head of steers for the Kansas City market. ~7 As they moved ptdwly northward with their hoofed and horned wealth in front of them, and the proceeds of the" sale of their brand in their saddle-bags, each husTed hTs braih with Iris own day-dream of the near-future. Young Adams’ dream had in it the comely image of a buxom Illinois girl in the lore-ground, who had been waiting for him these seven years, since he had gone away iu blue in Sixtytwo. And liis mother and little sisters, in their poor little home on the prairie, ’waiting too. When he got home with a cool twenty thousand in his pocket, wouldn't he open people's eyes in that hum-drum, spring-wheat-raising country? Wouldn’t he buy a nice farm that he had in his mind’s eye, and fix up the house in line shape, and make a neat home for his mother and sisters, and for Ms girl, who had waited so long and so true? Old .Matt’s dreams had in it no such spice of romance,. but it was just as sweet to him for all that. For he was going-pack to Kentucky to see her who had loved and nurtured him fifty years ago, and whose few remaining years it should be his mission to fill with that enjoyment with

which her bumble life had been, perhaps, all too unfamiliar. “So the old lady’s just stayin’ with folks that ’re waitin’ for her to die, is she?” mused Matt. “Well, I reckon I’ll relieve both parties by goin’ thar to take car on her. I don’t seem to be much good in the world nohow, but I mought do the old lady a heap o’ good while she stays, an’ that’ll make up for a power o’ triflin’.” And so they moved along.” It takes a long time to get tomarke with Texas cattle. But the beauty of the thing is, that they gain in flesh and value as they go, so there is a compensation and no time is lost. The trail leads through the territory of the Choctaws, Chickasaws and Cherokees. And, under the treaty laws, these Indians are entitled to a certain toll for the privilege of driving stock through their lands. Now it is easy enough to get along with the fhll-blood Choctaws. They are civil, hospitable—as far as their means of hospitality go—good-natured, lazy; and for the most part just comfortably shiftless or shiftlessly comfortable, as you like, and they never quarrel with the cattle men or anybody else if they can.help it. But the Choctaw half-breeds are a different species of animal altogether. The offspring, generally of a most infernally vicious class of white men, they combine all the cursedness of the two races that are mingled in them, to such repletion that there is no room for any of 'the virtues of either. About the enly similitude they bear to the full-bloods in the matter of disposition, is their deepseated antipathy to work of any kind. But their cupidity is by no means as passive as their laziness is incurable; and thus it sometimes happens that they seek to levy extortionate toll upon the passing herds. Now the Texan .pays this toll none too cheerfully under any circumstances. He cherishes a deep-seated conviction that “the Government is a fool, and does a heap ’o triflin with the redskins.” And he thinks whereas the brains of the Vincent Colvers and the Freedman’s Bureau Howards, and that ilk of humanitarians, have been exercised from time out of mind to solve the Indian problem; he could solve it quite readily if the Government would just stand out of the way for a year or two. It occasionally happens that there is a half-breed funeral not long after an attempt has been made to levy double toll. But it must not be imagined that the funeral business is all on the half-breed side of the account; for many a Texan has found a bloody burial along the Chisholm trail. Whatever may be the half breed’s vices, there is no lack of fight in him. Thus when he and the Texan come together, with no sentimental affection to overcome at the start, it is quite like introducing a red-hot iron into a keg of powder. Wellman attempt was made, near the Canadian, to levy double toll on the herd of Grigsby & Adams. When it was over —and it was over soon—the firm of Grigsby & Adams lacked a junior partner, and out of the five half-breeds, one had gotten away alive, to say nothing of a “Greaser” or two who- had been helping on the drive. This was no new experience for old Matt. He sorrowfully buried his dead partner, put gum plasters on two or three slight gashes where close bullets had raked his own skin in the scrimmage, and resumed liis drive as though nothing had happened. Poor Adams had made no sign except a little convulsive quiver after he fell. Not a last word or message for his mother or his betrothed, who was waiting for him. Not even a last dying smile for old Matt, who loved him as he might have loved his own son. The fight had been of that quick sharp sort, where no time is wasted in the sentimental. “i knowed that boy was game when 1 first sot mv eyes on him at Shreveport,” said old Matt to himself, satisfiedly. Having said this much he had exhausted the Texan vocabulary of eulogium. It is grand to die admirably. Poor George Adams did enjoy the opportunity, he went so quick. The half-breed’s bullet that crashed through his brain calmed his hot wrath in the sudden freezing of death, and there was nothing to show that he died game, more than that a ball-hole was in his forehead. But that, together with the fact that it took force to discharge his pistol butt from the dead fingers, and that two of the dead half-breeds lay close to the dead Illinoisan, satisfied Matt; and so the poor boy found a place in Matt’s memory alongside of the hundreds of his old comrades who were embalmed in his rugged admiration for having “died game.” The list of Matt’s heroes was headed by the name of Fannin. And the old man would warm up with the blood of Thirty.six that the reminiscences of Goliad brought back to his veins again when he spoke of that bloody morning away back in the childhood of Texas, when the Lone Star glimmered in the forefront of her struggles for freedom. “That Fannin was yer clean pattern of what’s called a fearless man,” he would say. “I think I kin see him now, lookin’ into the bell-muzzles of them Greasers’ escopetas, just like he might have looked into a gal’s eye that he liked.” Old Matt had heard a full description of Fannin’s death from a Mexican who was present at the massacre. The Mexican told the story in Camargo long after the war, and fifteen years after Goliad, he told it to an admiringgroup of fellow-Greasers, with the grim Thirty-sixer for a casual listener. And old Matt used to add sometimes that that Mexican, shortly after he told of his share in that butchery, suddenly lost his appetite for pulque, and’quit talkin’ about Fannin. “The fact is,” said Matt, “he quit things generally.” So old Matt conferred upon his deacf partner the apotheosis of a place in his memory by the side of Fannin’ and drove his steers on up through the Nation and across Southern Kansas to Abilene, and thence by rail to Kansas City. Matt sold his herd, paid up all the ex-. penses of shipping, yarding, etc., and sat down to count his pile. With the proceeds of the sale of the brand in the range, and the sum received for the drove of steers, it figured up thirty-eight thousand dollars. A pretty good five year’s work rfrom a start with three hundred. So Matt took the money and put it in the bank in two separate one ordinary, and a special package. 1 The first was to the credit of Matt Grigsby. The last was labeled “Deposited bv Matt Grigsby for George Adams.” There was nineteen thousand dollars in each deposit. Then old Matt went out about town with all the serenity of a man who has a large balance in bank. Ho bought a fine gold watch and chain, and the latter contrasted quaintly enough in its new glitter with the rasty hue of his old dbrduroys. He ’lowed to stay around a day or two and .sort ’o git used to things, and then | lie would go back to Kentucky and make his old, blind, dying mother comfortable, i He was going back to her after forty yean.

He wondered how he would find her? whether she would know him? if his mother comd detect in the voice that had been hushed to her for forty years, the accents of her boy who went away while yet his cheeks were smooth and red, and his hair untouched by the iron grey of time and tempests? And then he would stop on his way to Illinois, where Mrs. Adams lived, ana tell her as gently as he could how he had buried her boy with his boots on beside the cattle trail, and render unto her the means of comfort for her old age that he had died in winning. George Adams had made no will. None was needed. The firm Of Grigsby & Adams had no terms of agreement beyond a verbal proposition to do and a verbal response “I’ll do er,” with a mutual “shake” and “lets liquor” to bind the bargain. Still, old Matt never dreamed of taking out letters of administration, nor of probate proceedings. He could divide 38,000 by two, and he knew where his dead partner’s mother lived. To his rude, uncivilized mind that was all the administration that was needed upon the estate of George Adams. So he said nothing to anybody about the matter. But Matt was not a saint. And a painted siren who waited to ensnare, near the Kansas City Levee, found this out. The fact was that Matt got on a terrible bender. Texans frequently do. He drank champagne. He rode about town in a hack. He leased for himself and his friends a whole house, including its fixtures, and the rental was exorbitant. This was v6iy unseemly behavior in a man of his age. Then he toyed with the tiger, and that playful animal bereaved him of many a dollar. This spree lasted two weeks, closing up with a protracted and desperate encounter with a faro bank, and old Matt’s little fortune of nineteen thousand dollars was gone where all the other little fortunes he had made had preceded it. Matt had bet his last white chip and got up and walked away from the table. He went over and sat down on the win-dow-sill, folded his arms and benthishead forward on his breast. But he did not murmur. A gentlemanly “capper” approached him and asked him to take a drink. They went up to the side-board, and while they stood there the latter said: “Yon are in bad luck.” “Yes,” said Matt. “How much are you loser?” “Flat broke,” said Matt. i== But the fellow seemed to know all about Matt’s affairs. “The dickens yon are,” he said; “how can a man be flat broke when he has twenty thousand to his credit in the bank?” “Spose it b’long to somebody else!” queried old Matt, eyeing the fellow curiously. “Well, what’s to hinder you taking a couple of thousand out of it and paying losses back again?” “Thar’s a big sight to hendcr.” “What? yod might keep it all for that matter and nobody’d be wiser for it.” “You reckin?” “Why, of course; why not ?” Matt slowly straightened np to his full height, rested his two hands on his hips and looked the fellow square in the eye, while his own glittered with ugly sparkles. “I’ll tell you why not,” he answered huskily; “that money b’longs to an old widder over in Illinois; leastwa>4the boy that it b’longed to b’longed to her, and I reckon she needs it powerfully, now he’s gone.” “What of that ?” “Look a here, mister, I reckin you don’t know me, do you? You advise me to rob a poor old winder and couple of little gals jist because things is so sitiwated thet I kin do it and not get hauled up? Do you take me for that sort of a man ? Now es you do, why all I’ve got to say is, jist pull your iron and step your steps, for nobody ever called me a thief before! And I’ll be hanged es you shell do it and git away!” Old Matt’s indignation fairly blazed. The fellow slunk away apologizing and laughing, but glad to change the subject and the customer. Then Matt walked out and went away to his hotel. The next morning he geft up and the first thing he did was to go and send nineteen thousand dollars, by Express, to George Adams’ old mother, in Illinois. Then he sat down and wrote in his cramped, rough scrawl, a letter, telling Mrsi Adams how her boy slept in his shroudless sepulchre by the cattle trail, and that he had sent her what had belonged to him, with the charges paid. “This is all I can do,” he wrote at the close; “1 wish I could send your boy along with it but I can’t. But if it’s any satisfaction to you to know it, my dear madam, he died as gam# as ever was.” ~ When he had mailed that letter, he thought of his own mother, lingering ..through her last years in old Kentucky. “ I can’t go to her now,” he said Vo himself, “ cause I’m broke! I’ll go back to the range and see es I can’t make another raise. Mebbe God ’ll spare the old lady a few years longer, and I’ll git to see her once more after all." Then he drew the sleeve of his coat across his eyes and turned away to go down to the stock yards, and see if he couldn’t strike something in the way of a job. He sold his new watch to pay his hotel bill and then started back to the old cattle trail again and that was the end of five years.’ hard, patient work. With nineteen .thousand dollars of a widow's money in his hands, old Matt Grigsby had been flat broke. But then, he was only a Texas cattle man.— Aa.uae Magazine. One of those people who consider horse-cars as spittoons recently entered a Boston car, and inadvertently bestowed his attention upon a gentleman’s boot No sooner had the boot felt the indignity than it seemed endowed with sudden vitality. It attacked the expectoratoruntil he madly volunteered to give it satisfaction if it would accompany him out of the car for -a few minutes. The challenger and the boot departed: the spectators saw hats flying, and arms ind legs spinning about with so much velocity that it was impossible to tell who owned them. After a breathless time the outraged boot 4 was avenged and departed triumphantly. Now comes another awful warning to tobacco chewers, all the way from San Francisco, too. A doating wife of that city, and a pink of neatness had a husband who chewed, and always carried the evidences of his servitude on his shirt front She remonstrated, but it was of no use. A couple of weeks ago he donned his clean linen, and within five minutes the wife discovered tobacco stains on it She thereupon “went for” her husband with a rolling-pin. He may recover, but there will be no more biscuits in that flusily till another rolling-pin is procured.