March 6, 1943

MR. DAVE TERRY

It was there at the cure at Lampasas that Mr. Williams made the acquaintance of Mr. Dave Terry. He was the brother of the one killed in the courthouse at Galveston, perhaps the last episode in the Jaybird-Woodpecker Feud in Richmond, culminating in the wild knife-fight or the stairs of the courthouse. Believe it was Kyle Terry who was killed in Galveston. Terry told Mr. Williams all about it, and it accorded with the story that Mr. Ira Aten told us at Elcentro, he having been the state Ranger there at the time of the street battle in Richmond. He said further that after the shooting in Richmond, the Woodpeckers and Jaybirds got into this knife fight. The wound that Terry received caused him to take up morphine, and it was in an attempt to cure this habit that he went to the Lampasas sanitarium.

Terry had a fast team of small bays and a buggy and drove them at tandem, one in front of the other. There was hardly room for more than one on this sulky, but they, he and Mr. Williams, when they were recuperating, would go at a rapid rate over the rock roads about Lampasas.

They were related to Judge W. W. Terry at Galveston, for many years head attorney for the Santa Fe, who had known my father kin the Legislature, and with whom I had lunch once at Galveston in the early Twenties, an able old-time lawyer. That there was another Terry lawyer in California, who he said killed a United Senator in that state, and was himself later killed by the body guard of a judge with whom he had some trouble. That time they were all descended from or related to the Terry of the famous Terry’s Rangers in the Confederate Army.

(The story Mr. Williams told of this adventure at Lampasas may not be in the file. He was unhappily in pretty bad state from drinking. When he awoke one morning he felt sure that the Mexicans had been shooting up the town. He even rather hesitated to go up for breakfast, felt he could be mistaken. He sat down at a table and had a glass of water. He said looking into it he saw a snake, the hallucination, and recoiled suddenly. Mr. Terry saw him and knew exactly what was the matter and quickly took charge of him.)

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