McClish Memories In 1993 I put together a book consisting of McClish family memories called From the Highlands of Scotland to the Hill Country of Texas. James Lane McClish, born April 7, 1858, was the son of John Porter McClish and Mariah Washington French. John Porter McClish received a land grant in Texas in 1839 in Red River County. He then proceeded to Bastrop County and then to Smithwick in Burnet County in 1856. James Lane McClish was a prolific writer under this own name as well as using the pseudonym of G. F. Hunter, for the Burnet Bulletin. The following is a narrative he told to his son, Claude Lane McClish, in his later years, after hed lost his eyesight. AN INDIAN FIGHT IN BURNET COUNTY One crisp January night in the winter of 1869, way back yonder when I was just a kid of a boy, I decided the night was just perfect for a coon hunt. Reaching down my old muzzle-loading shotgun and strapping my hunting knife on, I called the hounds with a short note on the hunting horn and we were off, while the stars glittered coldly in the black sky overhead. Along around 1:30 a.m. that night, having caught two coons and a bobcat, I started for home. A couple of blasts on the horn brought the hounds to me and taking a short cut through the hills I had gone some two miles when three of the younger hounds opened up on a hot trail. Being satisfied, after listening to them for about five minutes, that it was a deer as I failed to hear the musical notes of my old lead hounds, Trailer and Old Rock, I climbed out of the canyon onto the point of a rocky ridge to begin an overture on the horn for them to abandon the chase, when they abruptly left the trail of their own accord and a few minutes later were sneaking shamefacedly in, one at a time, each of them trying to create the impression that he had been there all along. This action of theirs in voluntarily leaving the trail puzzled me! Thinking and mulling over this as I approached a cluster of Spanish Oak trees close to our house, where father and I always staked our saddle horses, I noticed the horses were gone. Knowing something was amiss, I hurried on to the house, woke father, and told him our horses were missing. Without a word he was out of bed and dressed in a flash. Grabbing up his old Spencer rifle he stopped at the door just long enough to fling at me, Go down the spring branch into the canyon and on down to Andrew Jacksons and tell him the Comanches have stolen us out. Ill go to Bill Boultinghouses and get him and well meet you and Andrew back here. Hurry now and well run these skunks down. Pacing off the six long miles to Andrew Jacksons house, I arrived there a much excited and thoroughly winded boy. Ma Jackson insisted on stirring up the fire and fixing me a hot cup of coffee while Andrew was catching up and saddling two fast horses for us. Gulping down Ma Jacksons black coffee, while the small Jackson children gathered round in their homespun nighties and listened wide-eyed to the talk of Indians, Andrew and I then leaped into our saddles and flew back down the trail to our home, where we found father and Bill Boultinghouse already ahead of us. By this time it was getting daybreak, and picking up the Comanches trail at the place where our horses had been staked, we followed it on down below the house to where they had torn down the rail fence and taken not only our saddle horses, but our work stock as well, and run the whole works off. We found evidence where they had held quite a herd of horses stolen from other ranches, in a little arroyo back in the hills while they silently gathered up our stock and ran them in with the bunch. Here also was the explanation of why my three hounds had left the deer trail of the night before. The Indians were holding this herd of horses right smack dab on top of the trail the hounds had been following. The signs showed also that one of the Indians had been crouched behind a log waiting to pot me in case I was following the hounds as they approached the Escondrijo. Partaking of a hearty breakfast, which mother had prepared for us, we took up the trail, which was as easily followed as a wagon road on account of the large herd of horses they were driving, and followed it across the hills and through the cedar brakes, until late in the afternoon we began to see signs that we were catching up with them. Shortly after this the trail we were following divided itself into two trails; the Indians, realizing they were being crowded, had broken the drive into two parts, one going on north, the direction we had been going all day, following the ridges and general contour of the hills, and the other cutting across the hills at right angles, to the west. It was a toss-up as to which band to follow, so as the signs showed the larger band had bone on straight ahead we determined to follow that. We now proceeded to push our horses at a fast pace, and just as the winter sun was setting in a blood red sky we cornered six of them with a large bunch of horses in a little boxed canyon with steeply sloping sides. You and me will slip down on the side of them from this slope, father said to me. Softly now! Dont shoot til you see something to shoot at, and keep yourself covered by those trees. Owing partly to the deepening twilight and partly to nervous excitement I couldnt see a thing but those horses milling around down there below us. Finally, becoming convinced that the Indians had slipped away and left the horses there, I stuck my head boldly out from behind my tree, and boom! went an old Sharps rifle, and zing-g-g-g-! went a bullet past my ear. Up to now that tree had seemed a great big tree with a huge trunk that I couldnt reach around but after that bullet sang its song to me that tree trunk shrank up til I didnt believe a fishing pole could have been concealed behind it. In spite of all I could do it seemed to me that I must be plainly visible to the Indians. By this time Jackson and Boultinghouse had established themselves, one across on the opposite slope and the other at the mouth of the little canyon, and were both taking pot shots at the Indians, which distracted their attention from our post and father whispered to me to keep right behind him and started crawling, or rather wriggling flat on the ground, towards the shelter of a large boulder further down the slope. Wriggling along behind him, and watching the ground in front of me to keep from wriggling on to a prickly pear, and trying to keep as close to this good earth as possible for one constructed in three dimensions, I kept wriggling and wriggling til it at last struck me to look up and see how much further I had to go. Imagine my dismay to find I had missed the straight line and had wriggled on past father and the boulder and was way down close to where the Indians were concealed! Well, I couldnt do this wriggling thing backwards and uphill, so I had to make the best of it. Studying the cluster of trees and big boulders just in front and to the left of me, where the Comanches were hidden, I suddenly made out the head and shoulders of one of them right before me, and so close as to make my heart pound like a war drum. I felt sure hed hear it. The hair on the nape of my neck stood up like a dogs ruff, my scalp felt tight and tingly and my throat and mouth were dry as sand. I thought at first he was looking directly at me and expected a bullet every second but discovered that instead of looking at me he was intently watching the place where Jackson had taken cover and was firing in that direction at slow intervals. It eventually occurred to me that I was here to fight these men, not just watch them, so pushing my rifle slowly and carefully out in front of me I drew a bead on the side of his head just above his left ear where I could see some of his coarse black hair that had worked its way out from under the wreck of a hat that he was wearing and was sticking straight out over his ear. Lining my sights up on this tuft of hair I breathlessly squeezed the trigger. It was suddenly and horrifyingly brought home to me that an Indian is not just some sort of wild animal, an Indian is a human being; at the terrific impact of that bullet, at point blank range, his brick red face was instantly drained of color, leaving a ghastly wax-like effect against which is coal black eyebrows looked artificial, as thought they were painted on. I saw his body stiffen rigidly, his mouth open wide - as though seeking the breath to scream - a thin trickle of blood welled up to his lips and out on his chin as he slowly and with mighty effort stood half erect, then pitched forward on his face in the underbrush where I could see the brush shaking furiously with his struggles. And I was suddenly and very violently sick. In the meantime, as I found out afterward, Jackson had wounded another of the band, and the remaining four had taken their wounded comrade and silently vanished in the darkness that had now settled down. We drove the herd of horses back home during the night and found that while none of ours were among them we were at least able to return them all to their proper owners. That was my one and only Indian fight and my first and thank God, my last time to take a human life.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 18:26:39 +0000
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