almost face to face with these four redskins. He saw there was going to be a fight and, seizing his Winchester, he leaped out of his ambulance and securely tied his mules to a sapling and then, under cover of a thicket, he reached a slight elevation, where he could better command a full view of the enemy. Getting in a good position, the parson took good aim and pulled the trigger, but the gun failed to fire and the "click" of the hammer revealed his whereabouts. Two Indians had citizen rifles and blazed away at him, but without effect. The parson fired at the same instant, wounding one of the Indians and knocking the gun out of his hands. The wounded Indian was taken up by his comrades and carried off.

Potter might have killed all four before they got out of reach, but he was afraid to risk his cartridges, as they had been on hand some time. Returning to his ambulance, he drove off some distance from the road and came to the foot of a mountain and drove into a dense thicket. He knew there were more than four Indians around, and that they were likely to lay in ambush somewhere ahead. When he had secured his team in the thicket he carefully cleaned his gun, selected the best cartridges, got his pistol in fighting trim, and began to look around. He discovered two Indians watching for him from the summit of the hill above him and when they saw that he had seen them, they blazed away, but missed their mark. Mr. Potter pumped several shots at them as they scampered over the hill out of sight. He then re-entered his vehicle and drove away without seeing that bunch of redskins again.

One instance out of many, will give the reader an idea of the person, the men and the times of which we write. While on this frontier work, late one evening he reached a military outpost. It might have been Fort Clark. The soldiers had just been paid off and the little village near the post was crowded with gamblers, sharp

ers, crooks and other disreputable characters. Many of these knew Mr. Potter and when he rode up they set up a shout, "Here comes the fighting parson!" "Hold up, there, old pardner! Can't you give us a gospel song an' dance tonight?" When told he would preach to them if they would provide a place, one sang out, "Sure, Parson, we'll make way for ye, if we have to rent the saloon!" A saloon gallery was provided with rude seats, kegs, barrels and a few chairs from dwellings nearby, and as the word had gone abroad that a strange preacher was in town, people began to assemble early. One man who was the worse for drink, insisted on acting the part of usher and town crier. He mounted a barrel and for some time kept up the cry, "O yes. O yes. O yes! There is going to be some hellfired racket here, right here on this gallery by fightin' Parson Potter, a reformed gambler, but now a regular gospel shark. The jig will begin now in fifteen minutes, and you old whiskey soaks and card sharpers, come over and learn how to mend your ways, or the devil will get you quicker'n hell can scorch a feather."

A great crowd assembled-one of the hardest looking sets of human beings Potter had ever preached to, but they kept good order, and when service concluded they wanted to "set 'em up" to the parson, but when he declined that mark of their respect they passed an empty cigar box and all "chipped in." He preached the next day and was pressed by those rude Western men to come again and come often.

In 1878 or 1879 Mr. Potter began his labors at Fort Concho. San Angelo was a small frontier village and, like all post towns along the border, had a record not the best along the lines of morality. The saloons and gambling halls were popular resorts. They were open day and night, and every man went heavily armed. Mr. Potter visited the families, preached to the gamblers,

soldiers and plainsmen.

In 1883 Mr. Potter moved his family to San Angelo, but continued his ministerial work wherever assigned.

In 1894 he was sent to the Lockhart circuit. Here it was on this same circuit that he began his ministry. On October 21, 1895, he preached his last sermon prior to going to conference. It was the close of his year's work, and proved to be the closing scene of his life work. This was at Tilden, and while delivering his peroration with uplifted hands with the words, "I believe," he fell in the pulpit and when tender hands lifted the limp form the great soul had gone home to the Father who gave it. To the writer who knew him and loved him as a brother for many years, he had expressed a wish to die in harness, in the pulpit.

As has been stated, no man who ever lived in Southwest Texas was more widely known than A. J. Potter. That he acquired the title of the "fighting parson" was in no wise derogatory to his character as a man, a Christian gentleman or a preacher. He was a man absolutely without fear. He was never the aggressor, and when a difficulty was forced upon him he always acted on the defensive and vanquished his assailant. His personal combats with Indians and desperadoes would fill a volume. It is a notable fact that when he had overcame an assailant in a fist fight or otherwise, if he chanced to be a white man, he always gave him fatherly counsel and offered him his hand.

It was said of him that he knew every road, trail and landscape throughout all West Texas. He had visited nearly every home in all this vast region, administered to the sick, officiated at weddings and funerals, and received a frontier welcome everywhere.

THE CHISHOLM TRAIL

By Fred Sutton of Oklahoma City, Okla.

The meeting of "The Old Time Trail Drivers' Association," of which the writer is a charter member, held at Houston, Texas, calls to mind many interesting bits of history of the early-day cow business and of the drives made over the romantic and historic Chisholm Trail. And I wonder what has become of all of those good boys who blazed the way from San Antonio to where it crossed the Red River near Gainesville, thence through what is now Love, Carter, Garvin, Grady, Canadian, Kingfisher, Garfield and Grant Counties in Oklahoma.

This trail was started in 1868 by John Chisholm, for whom the trail was named. One of the principal watering places was at what was called the government spring, and which is now a beautiful park in the city of Enid. In 1872 the terminus was shifted to Ellsworth, Kansas, and in that year the Santa Fé built into the Great Bend country and Dodge City was laid out as a townsite, and in 1874 the head of the drive was located at that point. From 1874 to 1884 Dodge City was headquarters for all cowmen from Oklahoma and Texas. During that ten years it was the toughest spot on the American continent and much history has been written of it and of the men who tamed the population and who turned the wide-open town with its Indian fighters, buffalo hunters, cowboys, dance halls, honkytonks and gambling houses, into the modern city of today, where a beautiful high school building ornaments the summit of the notorious Boot Hill, where many a mother's boy who left the East so suddenly that he forgot to take his name with him was laid away by the followers of the Chisholm Trail.

It was in the year 1881 that the writer made his first drive over the trail for Jesse Evans, one of the cattle kings of that day. He was accompanied by some twenty