THE CAVALCADE COME IN

The next day Mr. Williams went out and met them coming in, down beyond the Blansit place on the creek, I think, he said. The three Terrell boys from Bosque County had come over, who were relatives of Snell, and fighters all. And Mr. Pool from Bosque was a first cousin to Mr. Williams’ mother, and a cool man. Evidently he had held these Terrell boys in check. Otherwise there would have been plenty of trouble, likely general battle and shooting.

They brought the boys, Kemp, and Hysaugh, on in and put them in jail. This was the old plank jail over in back of the saloon row. (I can remember it in the alley, then used for ice storage. The same prison, I am sure which Mr. Williams tried to hold when they came in and got Garrison, the horse thief out and hung him down near the old grave yard).

This must have been January 12th, 1880. There were about fifty men coming on horseback when Pierson was bringing them in. They had all gathered in when the news was noised around. They were coming up the old road toward town from the Leon River country.

(In the early twenties I rode with Uncle Tom Pierson, the tax assessor, out to West Texas. He was on his way to see his son Ocran who was homesteading after the War out in New Mexico. It was an interesting experience. Men would know Mr. Pierson on the road. He pointed out to me Martin’s Gap through which marauding Indians came in the old days. We spent a night in the hotel at Ballinger, I believe, and parted in Big Spring, then a smallish town. He had his trip precisely timed. At Big Spring I sat on a bench in front of the courthouse with a little sharp bearded man who told me he was the county surveyor. Said he came from down in my country, said he was a Langford, from the Evant country. Very possibly a son of Old Man Asa Langford. Glad I didn’t start telling how hard I had hears some of them were out in that country. There was another Langford, Henry, I believe, about whom Stanley Walker wrote in "Back Home to Texas," a courtly and courteous man to his wife _andall. Walker told me he was a son of Old Man Asa Langford, a suave and courtly gentleman)

(The Terrals above mentioned were as I understood related to the McLendons, for whom the county was named. Some years ago I was reporting a civil case in Meridian in which some of these Terrell, or rather descendants, were involved. They were very dynamic by reputation and the situation people thought could have been explosive.