“The pious people who were averse to horse-racing would generally pitch horseshoes and sometimes end the day in a big game of draw poker. There was not much money in circulation, and the betting on a horse race was commonly a sack of flour, a side of bacon or a shotgun.
“No, we never hung the horsethieves on Christmas. Those festivities were held until the new year, so as to start the community off with good resolutions.
“A premonition of danger warned me once of lurking hostile Indians on Cottonwood Creek on the morning of December 26, 1868, resulting in a preparation for battle that probably saved my life.
“It was the day after Christmas. I was in the employ of the Beatty Brothers Cattle Company and was looking up some stray cattle near the head of the Cottonwood Creek, twenty miles north of Colorado City.
“I had been riding through the timber and was about to emerge into the open when a premonition of danger came over me. The feeling was so strong that I loosened my Henri rifle from the saddle holster and looked to the two heavy Colt revolvers I carried about me.
“Half an hour passed and while I had not yet seen anything, I could not shake off the feeling of approaching danger. Twenty minutes more and sure enough, from out of a ravine came about sixty Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians in their war paint, riding rapidly toward me.
“I instantly wheeled my horse and rode for a rocky butte about half a mile distant. My horse climbed the butte almost with the agility of a goat. As the bullets tore up the ground about us I led him behind some big rocks and then paid my respects to the advancing war party.
“My Henri rifle carried eighteen shots. The repeating rifle being then unheard of by these Indians, was the greatest surprise they ever met. My first shot emptied a saddle, and then when they thought to rush me, two or three more went down. They could not understand the rapidity of my fire, and by the time I had emptied my rifle I had them on the run and out of range.
“They advanced two or three times during the day and I became amused and allowed them to come within easy range, when I would turn loose as fast as I could work the rifle, and scatter them.
“Late in the afternoon they gave me up as bad medicine and rode away toward Gomer’s hill, where they killed a Mexican boy. They then swung back toward Palmer Lake and killed Mrs. Teeterman, who chanced to be alone on a ranch near the headwaters of Plumb Creek.