936

INDIAN TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES.

At the click of a trigger the Indians turned around, and two of them fired, the bullets just missing Potter's right arm. The latter again attempted to fire   this time with success, the ball breaking the arm of one of the Indians. The other two savages were unarmed. They at once seized their wounded companion and hurried away. The white man might have killed them all, but his gun was rusty and he was afraid to fire.

Returning to the ambulance, he got in, and drove rapidly across the country. Reaching a dense thicket, he halted, cleaned his gun, and was reloading it when, looking'upward at the top of a neighboring mountain, his quick eye detected two Indians taking aim at him. He jumped aside just in time to save himself, and returned the fire. The Indians, however, dodged behind a rock, and were seen no more. Potter lost no time in getting out of the region, and reached his little cabin in the mountains in safety.

With this incident our incomplete sketch of the Fighting Parson must terminate. He is, no doubt, the greatest living representative of a class of men who have been found ever on our frontiers; brave in beating back the savages; dauntless in rebuking the border ruffians; zealous and successful in planting the seeds of law and order, of civilization and religion, in the wild soil of the pioneer heart. The greater part of this man's career, his encounters with ruffians at revival meetings, his sermons in desperate neighborhoods, with a pair of huge revolvers lying before him on his pulpit, his eloquent addresses, his pure religious zeal, lie outside of the scope of this work. He is still living in Boerne, Western Texas, ardently engaged in his sacred calling. The days of fights are long since over. At the age of fifty-three, he is enabled to devote all his energies to the gospel of peace.