Those Times and These

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Cobb Irvin Shrewsbury. Those Times and These

THOSE TIMES AND THESE

CHAPTER I. EX-FIGHTIN’ BILLY

CHAPTER II. AND THERE WAS LIGHT

CHAPTER III. MR. FELSBURG GETS EVEN

CHAPTER IV. THE GARB OF MEN

BOYS TO FIGHT WAR SOON

CHAPTER V. THE CURE FOR LONESOMENESS

CHAPTER VI. THE FAMILY TREE

CHAPTER VII. HARK! FROM THE TOMBS

CHAPTER VIII. CINNAMON SEED AND SANDY BOTTOM

CHAPTER IX. A KISS FOR KINDNESS

CHAPTER X. THE START OF A DREAM

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TO me and to those of my generation, Judge Priest was always Judge Priest. So he was also to most of the people of our town and our county and our judicial district. A few men of his own age – mainly men who had served with him in the Big War – called him Billy, right to his face, and yet a few others, men of greater age than these, spoke of him and to him as William, giving to the name that benignant and most paternal air which an octogenarian may employ in referring to one who is ten or fifteen years his junior.

I was a fairly sizable young person before ever I found out that once upon a time among his intimates the Judge had worn yet another title. Information upon this subject was imparted to me one summery afternoon by Sergeant Jimmy Bagby as we two perched in company upon the porch of the old boat-store.

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“And he repaid the compliment by not appearin’ to keer very deeply fur us strangers neither, but the women seemed to take to us, mightily. They’d come out to us frum their little dried mud cabins bringin’ us beans and them flat batter-cakes of their’n and even sometimes milk and butter. Also they gave us roughage fur our hosses and wouldn’t take pay fur none of it, indicatin’ by signs that it was all a free gift. Whut between the grazin’ they got and the dried fodder the women gave us, our hosses took on flesh and weren’t sech ga’nted crowbaits ez they had been.

“Seven days of traversin’ that miser’ble land and then, son, we ran smack into the Imperial scouts and found we’d arrived within less ‘en a day’s march of the city of Monterey. Purty soon out come a detachment of cavalry to meet us and inquire into our business and a most Godforsaken lookin’ bunch they were, but with ‘em they had half a dozen Confederates – Missoury boys, all of ‘em exceptin’ one, him bein’ frum Louisiana; and these here Missoury fellers told us some news. It seemed that after Shelby and Price and Hindman got to Monterey their little army had split in two, most of its members headin’ off toward the City of Mexico with no purticular object in view so fur ez anybody knowed but jest filled with a restless cravin’ to stay in the saddle and keep movin’, and the rest strikin’ Westward toward the Pacific Coast.

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