Page:06-24-1920 -The Story of the Jones County Calf Case.pdf/9

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THE JONES COUNTY CALF CASE

coming back with a little herd of calves. Potter had been down near Big Rock and picked up some calves, and was coming back, and he sent word to Bob that he would meet him on a certain hill on the highway, a hill called Porter's hill, and if he had any calves to bring them down. So Bob went down to the Hines pasture and he saw three of the Smith calves—there were other cattle in the Hines pasture, but Bob saw three of the Smith calves, and he found a fourth calf running with them that answered the description Smith had given him—and so he took the four calves and drove them down to Porter's hill and delivered them to Potter. When Bob got down to the Porter hill with the Smith calves—and remember, gentlemen, that the Smith calves were dark colored, all of them dark—(you know the identity of a calf makes more trouble than the question of whether the soul is immortal or not)—and so, when Bob got down there to the Porter hill where Potter was with his herd of calves, he found a man by the name of Pete Onstott there with Potter. He had lost some calves and was hunting them, and he came to Potter's herd before Bob got there with his calves, and Pete testified for a quarter of a century, more or less, that when he got to Potter's herd before Bob got there with his dark colored calves, that he noticed four light colored calves in Potter's herd, pretty good ones. Pete Onstott asked Potter where the got those four light calves, and Potter said that he got them from So-and-So (the name has now escaped me). Peter remained there talking with Potter until Bob came. Bob delivered his four Smith calves, dark colored calves, to Potter there in Pete's presence. Potter went on west to Greene County with his herd of calves.

About this same time a man by the name of John Foreman lost four light colored calves—light colored now mind you—and he looked the neighborhood over and he could not find them. And finally he heard that Potter had been down there and picked up a herd of calves, and so Mr. Foreman who had lost the four light colored calves went out to Greene County and found his four light colored calves in the Potter herd which Potter had brought back from Jones County. He asked Potter where he got those four light colored calves, and Potter said that he bought them of Bob Johnson.