The Trail To Fort Worth

My journey to find my Serendipity began on a warm, sunny Saturday

morning, in early May of 1869. Josie and I; had rode the two miles

from the Larue ranch house on Marie my western mustang mare. Josie

had come with me to this beautiful eighty-acre hummock in the Florida

panhandle, to spend the day visiting with her Grand and Mister Joe.

I left my horse in Mister Joe’s small corral, and walked across

the hummock to the backwater swamps to check my fish traps, and

alligator lines. I was a good half-mile from Mister Joe’s cabin, when

Josie came running and screaming, “Jesse, come quick, their hanging

Granddad Joe and beating Grand.”

I did not take time to ask Josie any questions. I picked up my

single-shot fifty-two caliber Joslyn carbine, and started running as

fast as my thirteen-year-old legs would carry me. I came out of the

tall grass and brush fifty yards from Mister Joe’s cabin, and saw the

seven young men, climbing on their old ragged horses. They saw me and

begin acting like a bunch of scared rabbits; and begin cruelly

kicking their horses into a breakneck gallop. I dropped down on my

belly, cocked the hammer on my carbine, aimed at the bunched up

fleeing riders, and squeezed the trigger. I was breathing hard, and

consumed by blinding rage, for a few seconds I was not sure I had hit

anyone of the men, but as I stood up, I saw one of them fall from his

saddle.

Josie ran up beside me, and we slowly walked forward. We stopped a

few feet from the old oak tree, and I looked from the six

disappearing riders, and let my eyes begin to focus on what they had

done. The boys had tied the end of a rope, over a large limb of the

old Spanish moss covered oak tree that stood about twenty feet in

front of Mister Joe and Miz Lizzie’s cabin. Mister Joe was hanging by

his neck from the other end of that rope. Miz Lizzie was laying on

the ground, her head and face covered with blood; they had beaten her

to death.

I walked to where the young man I had shot was laying on the

ground and I saw that he was dead. Delbert Jeffers was only twenty

years old, and I had killed him. I turned and walked back to where

Miz Lizzie lay on the ground. Now my young mind begins to race, what

should I do first.