.MTAwNg.NjYxNzM

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cowardice and kept out of contact of [strike] with Victorio and his warriors is a willful lie and my friend forgot when he made the statement, that he was making it to quite a number of colored ex-soldiers of your city who would not fail to deny the accusation. The colored troops have exhibited the noblest courage on more than one occasion and the taunt of cowardice illy suits a class of men who generally expose themselves unnecessarily to the fire of the enemy.

    As to the beautiful Mexican ladies my fellow townsman mentions, I think he must have become enamored with the "Yellow Rose of Texas", for I confess during my many years of service on the frontier I have never seen a beautiful Mexican woman.  I have met with a few fair looking ones, but the larger majority of those you meet out here are greasy, sallow complected, jaundiced looking specimens of humanity, half starved and with a chronic expression of liver complaint.  If my friend admired this class of women, I wont quarrel with him over a little matter of taste.
  And now in conclusion let me contradict my friend once more by stating there has not been a settlement in Western Texas molested by Victorio and his marauders, for the simple reason that the Indians were compelled by General Grierson to confine their movements to a limited ares of the most God-forsaken, desolate country in the United States, and when any other description of the