A cattle thief and moonshiner…

Doc. Crunk was a Texas outlaw behind the walls of the Kansas prison. The author wrote his words: The way our moonshiner’s nest was found out is very romantic. A young woman came into the district, and tried to get up a school, seemingly, but failed. I guess she did not try very hard to get scholars. At any rate she remained with a family in the neighbourhood for some time, whom she claimed were her relatives. One of my men fell desperately in love with this young woman. He would be out riding with her, and, as none of us suspected anything, he would at times bring her over to our camp, and we taught her how to make whisky. She seemed deeply interested in the business. I told the boys several times that I was a little afraid of that ‘gal,‘  but they laughed at me, and so I said, ‘I can stand it if the rest of you can.’ She even went so far as to become familiarly acquainted with all of us. We all got to thinking that she was a nice young woman, and her lover simply thought he had secured the finest prize in the world. But alas! At the proper time she fixed our camp. She proved to be a female detective from New York City. She gave away our fellows. And soon we were surrounded by a posse of U.S. marshals and their deputies. Her lover was captured and is now in the Texas penitentiary. Several of our boys were killed or wounded, and those of us who escaped made up our minds to go back to the old cattle trade.”

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