Some Texas Rangers (Part 2)

Tom Burney
Groesbeck Journal
Thursday, December 30, 1909

(By One of Shannon's Scouts)

If I remember right, we were in Scriven County when I left off in my last--where the Yankees were choking that old fellow who ran his people off to keep them from cooking for us, but we paid him off by leaving him those six fellows to bury. We did not have much fighting that day, but had good luck in taking stragglers, and taking horses and mules; burned a few wagons, and so on. Along late in the evening things began to get pretty hot in the way of fire. There were several gins, barns, dwellings, and one mill burned. We came very near being captured. We had to cross a bad swamp, and they were burning a house and barn. Just on the other side of this bad bottom, after getting across, we had five bridges to cross, and we did not know what was behind us and we were all mixed up.

We captured several men and one negro, who was driving a mule to an old buggy loaded with chickens and turkeys and three demijohns of wine, in all about 15 gallons of as good blackberry wine as you ever tasted in all your life; home-made, I know it was, for the old lady where we camped knew the demijohns. And a nice lot of silk dresses we found in an old-fashioned carpet bag, which we left here to be sent back to the young lady to home it belonged, and a few days later we got a nice letter thanking us for them. She said it was all the dresses she had left; that they had taken all her other clothes. This buggy had a four-horse load on it, but we disposed of a fine lot of the edibles that night. I think we had three turkeys and a ham or two cooked that night--enough to do us all the next day.

The next morning most of the boys felt bad--like they had taken too much of the home-made wine. But we went back across those same bridges and found more Yankees there looking after their wounded and burying one we shot the evening before. We had a little skirmish with them and they left and we started back across the bridges. Just in the edge of the swamp we met about thirty men who had been looking for us all the morning--and they found us. We had a lively time for a few minutes, but we finally got them started on the run; and men are a good deal like sheep--when you get them started there is no stopping them, and here I killed my first man--one I knew that I did it all by myself. There were some funny scenes here. I saw one man fall off his horse and his foot hung in the stirrup and the horse ran off with the saddle dragging after him and an old sorrel mare with a tail full of cockleburs following right behind him as far as I could see or hear. So for fear there were more behind, we hurried on across the swamp but didn't meet any more, and we turned off that road to another, for we had them stirred up just like yellow jackets. they were looking for us everywhere. So we looked for another road where they were not being molested and not expecting to be troubled, and crossed a big creek over to our right and found thousands of them. We were doing good work, and they began to hear of us over on that road. We had about thirty prisoners and it began to rain late in the evening and we had to take to the woods until night so we could get out. They had men looking for us everywhere, and while we were sitting on our horses out in the woods, some of our prisoners got pretty noisy, and Captain Shannon told them that he would have to kill them if they did not keep quiet. It was nearly dark and they were camped on all sides of us and we couldn't get out at all without going through a camp, so we started to get out if we could, and were doing finely. We were getting along nearly through the camps (one on each side of us about fifty yards distance) when our noisy prisoner jumped off his horse and ran right into camp. He knew we could not afford to shoot, so when he got among his people he was safe and gave the alarm, and they began shooting in every direction. Drums were beating, bugles blowing and thins were looking pretty squally. We could hear men talking in every direction, but it was cloudy and dark as Egypt. We rode up to a house and called them up, but as we rode up in the back yard a squad of Yankees rode out of the front. They had made inquiries of the man, and had told him that if he poked his head out of the door that night they would shoot it off, and they also told him if he didn't show us the way out that we would kill him. So he was in a bad fix anyway he could look at it, but he took us down through the field and showed us the road, and we crossed that bad creek and were safe. We gave this man the horse the prisoner jumped off of to pay him for his trouble.

We rode on about a mile and saw a house all lighted up, and we rode up very cautiously. They were not looking for us but were looking for the Yankees, and we could hardy make them believe we were southern men until we carried some of the prisoners in and showed him the difference. They had been cooking for three or four days--not for us, but for the other fellows, and we had all we could eat, and left, thinking we were in too close to camp, so we went on five or six miles and ran up on a picket, and we were agreeably surprised. They were a scouting party from the Rangers. We got them to take charge of our prisoners and as it was about midnight, we fed our horses and laid down to sleep awhile. The scout from the Rangers left and took our prisoners. This was at a cross-roads store, and they made us pay $5.00 a drink for Peach & Honey. We thought it was pretty high, but didn't say much for fear they would cut us off entirely. But by sun-up we felt good, and just as the sun was rising we saw four or five citizens coming down the road under whip. One of them said, "Yo fellows had better be getting away from here; they are coming." How many, God knows I thought there were a thousand. The road was full of them. We tied to get the citizens to stop and help us out but they appeared to be in a hurry and could not be induced to stop. We looked up the road and saw the enemy coming, and mounted and went to meet them with about thirty men. They demanded a surrender, and we asked them, "Who are you?". They proved to be Kilpatrick's scouts and asked, "Who are you?" We told them that we were Shannon's scouts and didn't propose to surrender without a fight, and we went at it and it was not long before we had them running. We killed five or six and captured about a dozen and went back to the store and Peach and Honey had gone done to nothing. They rolled a barrel out and knocked the head in and set some tin cups by it, so we could be sociable. We got a pig and dressed it and carried it down in the timber and stayed all day. We had bread cooked at the Inn and one of the prisoners had an old-fashioned carpet bag with a partition in it; on one side it had parched coffee and on the other crushed sugar and we ______________[could not read] of coffee, so that we could have hot coffee all day by keeping a little fire around the pot.

We got a good days rest and slept as much as we could under the circumstances, and got some of Gen. Fresno's men to take what prisoners we had, so we were ready to go next morning to try another day with nothing to trouble us. Our horses were feeling good, and we were too. So we lit out with light hearts, but we didn't go very far before we found ourselves right in among them again. We rode up to a house not far from the road and there were about 18 or 20 feeding their horses and themselves, and they thought we belonged to their command and never knew any better until we had captured them by riding between them and their guns. Their guns were lying around promiscuously, and after they had surrendered one of them picked up his gun, a double-barrel shot-gun, and began cursing one of the boys. I never found out what it was about but we got the gun away from him and thought it was over, but he kept cursing unity our man got tired of it and told him if he didn't stop it he would shoot him with his own gun but this made him worse than ever and he dared our man to shoot him. He raised the gun and shot him in the face and I believe you could have heard him yelling a mile; he was the worse whipped man I ever saw. He was shot square in his face, but it didn't hurt his eyes, and he never cursed anyone after that. We left here and had gone about a couple of miles and met another bunch, about fifteen. They broke to run as soon as they saw us. We singled out a man; I gave a race of about of about half a mile and I snapped my pistol fifty times and that fellow and I couldn't get them to fire, but he didn't know that for he was too excited. when we started he was smoking a clay pipe with a clay stem, but when I caught him he had lost his pipe. I knew I had to do something as my pistol wouldn't fire so I yelled at him and told him if he didn't stop I would have to shoot him, and he turned around and gave me his pistols, and I was sure glad to get hold of them. I felt much safer than when he had them on.

We did a pretty good days work, made some money, and got several horses. We camped near here that night and rested all night.

Provided by , Tom Burney's great great grandson.