Texan Through and Through

[Subdeacon Joe]

Traces of Texas

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The Texas Quote of the Day is a description of the notorious outlaw-turned-rancher King Fisher, who was apparently quite the dandy in his day:

"King Fisher and his followers stole the settlers' livestock; robbed their corn cribs; and murdered those who opposed them.

Fisher was then [the late 1870s] about twenty-five years old, and a perfect specimen of frontier dandy. He was tall and exceedingly handsome. He wore the finest clothes procurable, and of the picturesque, dime-novel type. His white, broad-brimmed sombrero was ornamented with gold and silver lace and had a golden snake for a band. His Mexican short jacket of fine buckskin was heavily embroidered with gold. His sheer, expensive shirt was worn open at the throat, with a silk handkerchief knotted about its wide collar. A crimson silk sash was wound about his waist. His chaperejos, or "chaps," were made of a royal Bengal tiger, ornamented down the seams with gold fringe. The tiger's skin had been procured at a circus in Northern Texas. He and some of his fellows had literally captured the circus, killed the tiger and skinned it, just because the desperado chief fancied he'd like to have a pair of tiger skin "chaps." He wore high-heel boots of costly leather, and silver spurs ornamented with little silver bells. He rode the best horses he could steal in Texas and Mexico."

----- N.W. Jennings, "A Texas Ranger," 1930