COW HANDS -- TRAIL DRIVING

His brother, Hal Williams, was the best cowboy he ever knew. A top hand was one that had everything. Hal always took the lead (point) in driving a herd. He seemed to know what the cattle were thinking. A man could be a cowhand, reliable, like Perry White, who couldn’t rope. He was also good in the branding pen.

Mr. Williams himself always wanted to stand the middle watch, from twelve to two, liked it best. He could go to sleep any time. At the first watch they had to bed the cattle down and on the last one had to unbed. them. He again referred to the stampede of twelve hundred cattle down the road toward the river, which he showed us on the Sunday trip.

That the last such work he did was at the Spurlin feed pens about two miles southeast of town. (The place my father owned while I was small, where Uncle Marion Roddy and later the Bishops were tenants) Could handle thirty or forty in the coral very well. When cattle stampede they all seem to be up at once.

Mrs. J. H. Brown could tell about the Snows and others. They raised a Sharp boy, whose mother was a Snow. I believe it was Snell married a Martin(?) And Henry Fuller married a Martin. It was Henry Carter and Ault Ferguson that killed Parsons.

(Was out talking to Mrs. Brown after Mr. Brown passed away and the boys were gone. I don’t think I asked her about these people. Fine old lady. Spent the night there with Waldo, youngest boy, when we were in school, and had a wonderful time. Mr. Brown had a "wood lot", that it small track with trees down on the Leon River. Blue Ridge is a treeless country. Mr. Brown, one of the best men ever to have lived here.)

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