MARION GRAVES

(The following is from one of the White brothers and not related by Mr. Williams. It was in his file. Marion Graves was in a Ranger company during the War. They had a fight out there somewhere and Marion killed an Indian got his scalp. When they gave him a furlough to come home and he brought the scalp tied to his saddle. Our mother said to him - it was still fresh- "didn’t you feel bad when you were peeling that scalp off." He said, "No, aunt, and you wouldn’t either if you will look at it right good."

There was a wisp of hair about that long tied to it, a plait of hair, and the Indian had had a gold ring on his finger, and he had cut off the end of the finger to get it, and the ring had initials on it. Now, there had been a young lady killed by them in San Saba County about a year before that. She had fought so they couldn’t carry her off. They killed and scalped her.

Captain Collet was the captain and he told him that it might be that theat was her hair and her ring. And Marion advertised it. I never did think to ask him whether anybody ever claimed it or not. They thought the hair was hers and the ring too. The Indians thought that was a great honor to have a wisp of a white man or woman’s hair.

Marion was two years older than I.  My father and mother took him when he was just three days old. He never did seem to be like a cousin, seemed to be like a brother. There was something strange about Marion. Some people blamed him mighty bad about drinking. I said, "If you had been like him maybe you would get to drinking too." I never blamed him for drinking. There was stills all over the county, there was three within a quarter of a mile of us. People would have their spare fruit distilled. He told me many a time when they were raising up, "I wouldn’t take a t\drop for anything." and he wouldn’t take a dram at all. But when he went to Old Mexico and stayed out there with his cattle - that was before he married - he stayed out there three years - and he developed a kind of lung trouble, and when he came back he was coughing something awful.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~