A Texas Matchmaker

A Texas Matchmaker

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Title: A Texas Matchmaker
Author: Andy Adams
Release Date: July 16, 2004 [eBook #12919]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A TEXAS
MATCHMAKER***
E-text prepared by Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders

A TEXAS MATCHMAKER
by
ANDY ADAMS
Author of 'The Log of a Cowboy'
ILLUSTRATED BY E. BOYD SMITH
1904

[Illustration: ROLLING THE BULL OVER LIKE A HOOP (page
207)]

TO
FRANK H. EARNEST
MOUNTED INSPECTOR U.S. CUSTOMS SERVICE
LAREDO, TEXAS

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I. LANCE LOVELACE
II. SHEPHERD'S FERRY
III. LAS PALOMAS
IV. CHRISTMAS
V. A PIGEON HUNT
VI. SPRING OF '76
VII. SAN JACINTO DAY
VIII. A CAT HUNT ON THE FRIO
IX. THE ROSE AND ITS THORN
X. AFTERMATH
XI. A TURKEY BAKE
XII. SUMMER OF '77
XIII. HIDE HUNTING
XIV. A TWO YEARS' DROUTH
XV. IN COMMEMORATION
XVI. MATCHMAKING
XVII. WINTER AT LAS PALOMAS
XVIII. AN INDIAN SCARE

XIX. HORSE BRANDS
XX. SHADOWS
XXI. INTERLOCUTORY PROCEEDINGS
XXII. SUNSET

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ROLLING THE BULL OVER LIKE A HOOP
WE GOT THE AMBULANCE OFF BEFORE SUNRISE
FLASHED A MESSAGE BACK
GAVE THE WILDEST HORSES THEIR HEADS
HE SPED DOWN THE COURSE
UTTERING A SINGLE PIERCING SNORT

CHAPTER I
LANCE LOVELACE
When I first found employment with Lance Lovelace, a Texas cowman,
I had not yet attained my majority, while he was over sixty. Though not
a native of Texas, "Uncle Lance" was entitled to be classed among its
pioneers, his parents having emigrated from Tennessee along with a
party of Stephen F. Austin's colonists in 1821. The colony with which
his people reached the state landed at Quintana, at the mouth of the
Brazos River, and shared the various hardships that befell all the early
Texan settlers, moving inland later to a more healthy locality. Thus the
education of young Lovelace was one of privation. Like other boys in
pioneer families, he became in turn a hewer of wood or drawer of water,
as the necessities of the household required, in reclaiming the
wilderness. When Austin hoisted the new-born Lone Star flag, and
called upon the sturdy pioneers to defend it, the adventurous settlers
came from every quarter of the territory, and among the first who
responded to the call to arms was young Lance Lovelace. After San
Jacinto, when the fighting was over and the victory won, he laid down

his arms, and returned to ranching with the same zeal and energy. The
first legislature assembled voted to those who had borne arms in behalf
of the new republic, lands in payment for their services. With this land
scrip for his pay, young Lovelace, in company with others, set out for
the territory lying south of the Nueces. They were a band of daring
spirits. The country was primitive and fascinated them, and they
remained. Some settled on the Frio River, though the majority crossed
the Nueces, many going as far south as the Rio Grande. The country
was as large as the men were daring, and there was elbow room for all
and to spare. Lance Lovelace located a ranch a few miles south of the
Nueces River, and, from the cooing of the doves in the encinal, named
it Las Palomas.
"When I first settled here in 1838," said Uncle Lance to me one
morning, as we rode out across the range, "my nearest neighbor lived
forty miles up the river at Fort Ewell. Of course there were some
Mexican families nearer, north on the Frio, but they don't count. Say,
Tom, but she was a purty country then! Why, from those hills yonder,
any morning you could see a thousand antelope in a band going into the
river to drink. And wild turkeys? Well, the first few years we lived here,
whole flocks roosted every night in that farther point of the encinal.
And in the winter these prairies were just flooded with geese and brant.
If you wanted venison, all you had to do was to ride through those
mesquite thickets north of the river to jump a hundred deer in a
morning's ride. Oh, I tell you she was a land of plenty."
The pioneers of Texas belong to a day and generation which has almost
gone. If strong arms and daring spirits were required to conquer the
wilderness, Nature seemed generous in the supply; for nearly all were
stalwart types of the inland viking. Lance Lovelace, when I first met
him, would have passed