The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Texas Matchmaker, by Andy Adams

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: A Texas Matchmaker

Author: Andy Adams

Release Date: July 16, 2004 [eBook #12919]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***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
wat