He was the manager of the old Dawson Ranch in the west part of Hamilton
County. (Mr. Williams says his name was Stroud. I had it in mind his name
was Hodges, believe he had it mixed or I was incorrect in writing it
down.) The ranch was somewhat southwest of Hoovers
Knobs. Joe Curtis, Tom Moore, brother of Sol Moore, and one Bruteh,
cowboys wee supposed to have robbed the post office at Pottsville.
Stroud (or Hodges) was at the time studying the detective business.
The other man worked there and stayed in the house, Stroud we will call
him. The one studying the detective profession, hearing of the alleged
post office holdup, felt like it was his duty as a detective to do
something about it. He entered into an investigation, and probably was
coming pretty close to a solution. He was sitting next to the wall in his
room with his hat so probably studying his lessons by the lamplight.
Hodges, we will say, hauled off with a shotgun from the hall and shot the
detective’s hat all to pieces. He left the county the next day. Old
Colonel Freeman defended Stroud and "nearly got him convicted."
(Mr. Williams told me not to say much about this. I didn’t old Uncle
Joe was a friend of mine, an old bachelor, about town, stayed at the old
Volentine frame hotel on the creek for a time, and helped wait tables in
the boarding house across the creek, related to the lady who ran it I
think. Told me he once shot a cow buffalo from a horse with a pistol in
the old days in West Texas.
On another sitting, Mr. Williams told how he and someone else called
Uncle Joe Curtis on the phone, the speaker disguised his voice, saying
over the telephone his name is Hodges and "I want to see you, have
been wanting to meet up with you for a long time." He said Uncle Joe
got pretty agitated.
(This reminds me of another post office rubbery, if not the same. As
small boys Tom Main and I often visited at our grandmother’s out at Shive.
Doctor Presley was practicing there at a time. Had two boys, Kelsey and
"Cute." The boys told Tom they had found a lot of nickels and
dimes, and other money in the woods near Shive, and if he wanted some he
could go out there too. The Presleys moved to Hamilton. I knew the boys in
school. Once they strapped with horse shoes on them and trampled on their
mother’s flower bed, to make her think the horse did it. They all moved
over into New Mexico. Kelsey was city marshal at Gallup. A pulp
magazine came out with a long story of one of his pursuits. (Don’t know
what became of "Cute."