History

A Very Personal Ghost in Williamson County

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Tony Maples Photography

 

A Very Personal Ghost in Williamson County
Photo: Annika Klahn

That’s when the horse lost it! I’m glad I had him tight-reined, because if he’d been able to get his head down he’d have unloaded me and headed for the barn at a dead run. As it was, he crow-hopped over about two acres before I could get him fully pulled in. His crow-hopping lost me my cob pipe, a pouch of tobacco, and about $3 in change from my shirt pockets.

Thing was, he’d never bucked before in his life–not even when being saddle-broke. The horse trainer said “I never let him find out he could buck.” I finally got him to stand still. I put the pistol back in the holster and strapped it down, then pulled my hat down firmly on my head. Then I eased up on the reins.

He was gone like he’d been shot from a gun! It was nearly a mile from where we had the encounter to our front gate and that horse covered it at a dead run. When we got to the gate he even acted like he wanted to jump it–while carrying forty pounds of stock saddle and about 150 pounds of cowboy. I got him pulled in, but he was so nervous I couldn’t lean out of the saddle to open the gate. I had to dismount and lead him through. I led him the quarter mile or so from the gate to the corral, put him in the dry side so he couldn’t founder himself, unsaddled him, pulled off the bridle, and put about half a coffee-can full of grain in the trough for him.

He approached the trough, looked in it, snorted–and, of course, the grain flew up when he snorted into it. That horse jumped backward halfway across the corral! I was so mad I could have chewed horseshoes and spit bullets! That crazy woman, walking across that pasture at past 10 PM, had frightened my horse half to death. I was still grumbling about it when I got to the house. Dad gave me a funny look.

“Woman?” he said. “What’s a woman doin’ walkin’ in a pasture nine miles from the nearest town, near on two miles from the nearest house, at ten o’clock at night?” I had no answer, but I knew what I’d seen.

The next week Dad was in a feed store in Georgetown–one where a lot of the old-timers hung out. He told about this ‘cock-and-bull’ tale his son came up with about seeing a woman in the pasture in the middle of the night. He got a reaction he didn’t expect–“So the boy’s seen her too, has he?”