I think it was the summer of either “38” or “39”. All the area families attended the Camp Ben McCulloch Confederate Reunion every year. We all had ancestors who fought in that great war of Northern Aggression and in my family, all four of my g-grandfathers fought for the Confederacy. They had gone off for a few months which turned into 5 years to fight in the most noble cause known to mankind to protect our state, our homes and our honor for everything we considered holy. But that’s another story.
That summer when the reunion was getting ready to start, me and my daddy saddled up our horses from our ranch about 5 miles down Onion Creek to the SE and rode over to get set up early. Daddy had hitched up the mules to the wagon for Mama that morning, cause she was gonna bring the big tent and all the supplies over later that day that we needed to camp for the week. Daddy was the head fiddle player and he liked to get an early start so he could pick his camp spot close to the creek and do a little practicing with the boys before all the other bunches showed up. But that’s another story.
Anyway, we’d been there a couple of days and by that time all the other neighbors had showed up and there was a ton of kids, including the Felps’s. Now the Felps’s was an interesting bunch. Seems like there was about 12 kids in that group, all born in a little bitty log cabin about a mile SW of here where Gatling Creek enters Onion. My daddy said they were pretty wild, never went to school and of course, none of them could read nor write. He told me one time he caught two of the older boys, about 16 or 17 years old, over in our ranch messing around and in daddy’s words, said “they was wilder than two shit-house rats” which I always figured must be just about as wild as one could get. Daddy said if you ever got close to one of them, they’d rock the hell out of you before you could think. Said, hell, by the time the first rock came singing by, at least 8 more where in the air headed your way. Anyway, when he came up on them and survived the first big “chunking” daddy unlimbered his roping rope and took to them on his big black stud horse to see if could catch “one of um”. He said he run one about a quarter of a mile before he finally got a good loop on him. Said he drug him around a bit to try and get him to quit snarling and snapping his teeth and he finally drug him enough that he shut up. Daddy’s astute observation at the time was: “them Felps’s was a pretty feral bunch”. But that’s another story.
Anyway, as I mentioned, we’d been at the reunion for a couple of days and all us little kids, I was probably 6 or 7 at the time, were down wading in the creek right at dark. I remember that I left about sundown cause Mama was gonna cook cheese grits that night for supper, she always put them little bitty bacon bits in it too, and I sure wasn’t gonna miss the fixings. We hadn’t gather’d up any time at all when all of a sudden there was this big screaming and yelling and hollering coming from down in the creek. The little kids came bustin out of there like bobwhites jumping out of a bush. In just a minute or so someone finally started hollering, “Panther!! There’s a panther down there” and needless to say all hell broke loose around the camp. Daddy ran to get his rifle out of the wagon and everyone followed suit.
Now those of you who don’t know the difference, there’s mountain lions, cougars and “panthers”. They are really all the same. Now an old mama lion will have several cubs and every now and then she’ll throw a black one. Just as black as tar! Now my daddy told me, “they was different”! He said a panther only hunted at night and only during the full moon, which I always thought was pretty scary when you put your mind to it, but that’s another story.
When the panther jumped off in the creek bottom to snatch one of the kids, who should be down there with us, but little Jimmy Ed Felps. Now Jimmy Ed was a little slow, seems he was the runt of the Felp’s litter and had a hard time coming into this world. His head was just a teeny bit lopsided and he was real goggle-eyed. I mean his right eye looked up at about a 45 degree angle and his other eye kinda wandered. Made you wonder which eye you were supposed to look at when you spoke to him but none of us kids really cared one way or another. And on top of that he had this real big red spot on his left ear that looked like a big blood blister which was a birth mark from the tough time he had getting here in the first place.
Well, as luck will have it, when the other kids scattered, little Jimmy Ed stood there like a deer in the headlights in the shallow water wondering what all the fuss was about. The cat never broke stride, he grabbed little Jimmy Ed by the legs and commenced to drag him quickly down the creek. I remember that part well, cause the next day I went down to see what had happened and you could still see where little Jimmy Ed had dug his fingers in the wet sand trying to hold on and as he was drug over the roots of one of the big ole cypress trees on the edge of the water, you could still see his fingernail scratches. The last time I was down at the “reunion grounds” that ole cypress tree was still standing right where I remembered it. But that’s another story.
Anyway, took the men about 30 minutes to get all their horses saddled and dogs turned loose and they commenced to track that ole panther down the creek. Seems like they hadn’t gone a mile in the dark when the dogs set up a big howl and when the men jumped off their horses to see what is was, they came upon this big reddish brown stain on the ground where the cat had possibly “et” little Jimmy Ed. But, there was nothing there, nothing at all! Just the stain on the ground and little Jimmy Ed’s good luck belt-buckle that his great grand-daddy Tom Ed Felps had “give” him. Seems the ole man had “wore it” through the whole war and it had three big dents in it that he swore were from 3 musket balls that hit it instead of him in the great battle of Shiloh in the spring of “63”. But that’s another story.
Now an ole lion will cover about 50 to 75 miles in his territory. An this one was no different. By the time the men picked up his trail again he was half way to Hays City. They ran him all night and around Hays City he turned back west. The men and horses were all wore out by then so some of the fellers went over to ole man Joe Cruze’s house nearby and got some fresh horses and dogs. By the time they picked up the trail again, they were all the way over on Gatlin Creek about where it crosses RR 12 today. So they ran him all that day and right at dusk, the panther had made it all the way back to his home in one of our grottos, which is right here on this ranch that we now call Onion Creek ranch. But that is another story.
Anyway, durn if they weren’t able to tree him in the middle grotto over on our west side and when they finally got their light on him, all they could see was his big yellow eyes. My daddy said he was as black as the inside of Mama’s milk cow, what ever that meant. The men got a good light on him and my daddy shot him out of the tree and he was dead when he hit the ground. They commenced to cut him open to see if they could find any part of little Jimmy Ed and sure enough they did. Daddy said all they found was some of the toes off his right foot and his left ear with that red birthmark.
Turns out the Baptist preacher over at Driftwood, a Mr. Hall I think, was also the owner/publisher of the Driftwood Daily Bugle and the headlines that first day was “Panther kidnaps Child at Reunion while grownups play the fiddle”, or something like that. The next day the headlines read; “Panther runs off with little Jimmy Ed Felps”. Well, since Mrs. Felps hadn’t been to the reunion, Mr. Preacher-man took it upon himself to go and present her the awful truth. He saddled up and rode over about a mile NW of Driftwood til he got down to Gatlin Creek where he rode up on the cabin. Now mind you, one had to be very careful in this undertaking, because if you didn’t holler “hello” real loud, the whole bunch would either run off or commence to rock the hell out of you. So he did all that and as he got close, he finally convinced Mrs. Felps to come to the front door, such as it was. As he got real close, he could just see her left eye peeking around the corner of the door. He hollered, “Mrs Felps?” “Yeah?” “Is that you?” “Yeah”. “I’ve got some bad news” “SO”? “Little Jimmy Ed got et by a panther down along Onion Creek”. Silence!
“Well,” she said, “the little Fucker shoulda run” and with that she closed to door. But that is another story.
Needless to say, Mr. Preacher-man wasn’t about to print that in his Baptist family daily paper. I wouldn’t have never heard the real tale if daddy hadn’t gotten drunk a lot in his latter years and go to howling about all the pretty ladies around Driftwood he’d known and reminded me about the time the Panther ate little Jimmy Ed Felps and how funny he thought that was. At the time I couldn’t see much humor in little Jimmy Ed getting Panther-et but I guess as time went by it got funnier.
Two or three days after the affair, the community held a burial service over at the Driftwood Cemetery. Daddy went. Since there wasn’t much left of little Jimmy Ed to bury, daddy told me the family came out of the church carrying his remains in an ole Maxwell House coffee can. And in it, he said, were little Jimmy Ed’s toes, his left ear and his belt buckle that his g-grand daddy Tom Ed Felps had “give” him for “good luck”. You can drive by the cemetery today and see some of the Felps headstones up near the road. If you go in and look real close, you will see a small child’s stone that still has the name Jim Ed Felps scratched on it with a nail, and says: “Kilt by a Panther in 39”. But that is another story.
And to think of it, after nearly 70 years, we have our own real live mountain lion living right back here where they have always lived. Durn! Where is little Jimmy Ed when we need him? I’m sure if any of you are interested, you could probably pull it all up on Google. But that is another story.
This and other wonderful stories about being raised in early Texas to follow-soon.
