Old Man Tom Ross would fight or shoot. There was a horse race out on he
Cow House and he had an altercation with Ault Ferguson and snapped a
pistol three times right in his chest. It was an old cap-and-ball and it
didn’t go off. This is the same Ferguson that killed Tetric down at Rock
House. Ross’s Crossing on the Cow House, named after Tom Ross. He said
that Ross ran for sheriff but didn’t get many votes. That crossing was
up the stream from the Highway 281 bridge.
(The name Cow House Creek was always a puzzle. Sounded as if a house or
shelter for cattle. An appealing theory was that it was from a corruption
of the Spanish for a small horse, a cayuse. However, some years ago at
Belton the county auditor told me he had worked in the Comptroller’s
office or Land Office, and saw an ancient map covering the area at the
junction of the Leon with the Cowhouse. Squares on the map showed houses
of different individuals. One was the house of Mr. P. Cow, and marked Cow’s
House. It was where the Cow House flowed into the Leon, place of the
present lake. This obviously was the origin of the name, not a Spanish as
were the other streams. Several times in the West when I told old-timers I
was from Hamilton County, they said "Cow House Creek" and
laughed. It was a famous creek, and more so when Camp Hood was established
for a different reason.) Sloneker Springs was named for an old gentleman I
knew later after he moved to the Plains. My father and my uncle first
lived in a log cabin across the creek there, when they ran cattle. Can
remember the old structure in the edge of the woods.)
On the same day as the above incident, Dave Smith brought in two
fellows named Jenkins, pleasant fellows, handcuffed them and took them to
the old Eagle Saloon (Not sure I have this name right.) The little fellows
asked them to look and see how they could pull their hands out of the
handcuffs and they did it easily. He did not know where these young
fellows came from.