JAMES M. RICE
Old Man Jim Rice was always
right and well liked. That he thought the story that old man Paige
Massingill told Felix and me about what Old Gabe Smith said about his
leaving them, after the ranging company came back from a patrol, out in a
snowstorm, as he walked straight backed into the warm lighted house, was
rather because they sort of had it in for Rice. Mr. Rice shot and killed a
man once in his grocery store on the east side where the Dr. Baker
building is. Nothing came of it, or was said about it. Just an Irishman
came in drunk and abusive and found there shot to death.
(Mr. Rice went on a wagon trip to Galveston for goods and did not come
back. Considered he died in the yellow fever epidemic there at the time.
His old house still stands at the edge of town on the hill to the house,
vacant now, set true north and south, not N. 18 degrees S. My mother used to take me as an infant to see the fine old Mrs. Elizabeth
Rice, widow).
