Buck's Horse. (original) (raw)

Nothing�s perfect, but occasionally a good writer manages to arrange the literary building blocks we call words, sentences and paragraphs in such a way as to surprise and please the reader.

An excellent example is a 198-word item that appeared in the Meridian Tribune at some point in 1902 -- the month and day of publication were not given in a recent reprinting of the piece. While the old news story raises some unanswered questions, it�s hard to quarrel with the work of a clever wordsmith.

Interspersed with bracketed reactions readers likely had to the story 108 years ago, herewith a news snippet not in need of rewriting or paraphrase:

�Thursday afternoon as some boys were crossing the pasture belonging to Col. Ramsey Cox, they came across the dead body of one of Bosque County�s oldest residents.�

[Oh, my goodness! Who died?]

�The find was at once reported to the proper authorities and preparations were made to give the poor old fellow a decent burial.�

[So who died already?]

�He has quite a history, having been raised in this country since his early youth and has seen service in many bloody battles between the Indian and the white man.�

[Let�s see�I saw Mr. So-�n�-so just yesterday. Couldn�t have been him. Maybe it was old Mr�.Or possibly Mr�.He looked awful feeble last week in church.]

�He has been faithful and true to every trust, and his many friends will grieve to hear of his death.�

[Surely. Now tell us who died?]

�He took a quite prominent part in the Old Settlers Reunion at this place a few weeks ago and seemed to enjoy the day as much as anyone present.�

[OK, come to the point. Who from Bosque County went to his maker?]

�At a late hour in the afternoon sorrowing friends took the corpse up near the hill commonly known as Hat-Top, dug a grave and consigned to the dust the dead body of Sunday, that faithful old horse who has served our friend, Col. Buck Barry, for 40 long years. If we can get a biographical sketch of his life we will give some to our readers sometime in the future.�

To start at the bottom and work back up, James Buckner �Buck� Barry was one of Texas� best known frontiersmen. He had ridden as a Texas Ranger, and when he posed for a photographer in 1853, he unknowingly became the first true Ranger ever known to have his picture taken. Three years later he came to Bosque County and spent the rest of his long life there, dying in 1906.

While there�s plenty of information on Barry, his memoir does not mention a horse saddled with such an unusual name for a steed as Sunday or even make any reference to having a favorite mount. If the Meridian newspaper ever came up with a �biographical sketch� of Sunday, it hasn�t come to light.

There�s one likely boo-boo in the piece, at least as it was reprinted. The Web site www.mountainzone.com lists 36 high spots in hilly Bosque County, but no prominence called Hat-Top. That�s probably because whoever transcribed the article mistook Flat Top for Hat Top. Look at �Fl� just right and it could easily be misread for an �H.�

Actually, there are two Flat Tops in the county. One is a mountain that rises 1,178 feet above sea level 3.4 miles from Walnut Springs, which is Barry�s old stomping grounds, and the other is a 1,161-foot-above-sea-level feature located 3.6 miles from Cranfills Gap. If old Sunday is buried near either location, no reference to a marker appears on any Bosque County-related Web sites or in books dealing with the county�s colorful history.

Ramsey Cox was easier to find. In the spring of 1898, a Waco newspaper listed him as a traveling freight agent for the Texas Central Railroad. He continued to move up the management ladder and by 1911 had become assistant general manage of the line, working out of Waco.

To get back to Barry, he didn�t weigh more than 145 pounds, wore his hair long and liked to wear buckskin. An old Southerner full of energy and possessing what one contemporary described as a �militant, decisive bearing,� he was mighty tough on Indians. Over the years, he gave away scores of captive horses to those who had lost stock on Indians or Anglo rustlers.

�He could never tolerate theft, or cowardice, or attacks on the weak, and he believed in upholding the law, even in the absence of law,� the acquaintance recalled.

Ironically, his reputation and a pile of official paperwork sent to Washington never resulted in Barry getting any government compensation for all the horses he�d lost to Indians over the years. At least he held on to old Sunday.

� Mike Cox "Texas Tales"

March 4 , 2010 column