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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 60844 ***

MEMORY’S STOREHOUSE UNLOCKED

TRUE STORIES

By John T. Bristow

Pioneer Days In Wetmore And Northeast Kansas

January — 1948

WETMORE, KANSAS and FRESNO, CALIFORNIA 1005 Ferger Avenue

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“The SPECTATOR FORCE”— In “GAY NINETIES” This book does not carry the
actual work of these pictured Associates—but it does bring them into the
writings. The Author owes much to them for helpful co-operation during
our newspaper regime—and maybe also, if the truth were known, they have
been, in a manner, quite helpful in the actual writing.

The book is dedicated to the memory of them.

INDEX “The SPECTATOR FORCE”—In “GAY NINETIES”

INDEX

SUNSHINE AND ROSES

Wetmore

The Mineral Spring

Wetmore in 1869-70

Our New Temporary Home

Roses The Girls Didn’t Get

LITTLE FILLERS

CONSIDERATE KID

THE BOY OF YESTERYEAR

CAREFUL PLANNING

RED RIFLEMEN

A TWOTIMER

TEXAS CATTLE AND RATTLESNAKES

WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE

DONE IN CALIFORNIA

THE OLD SWIMMING HOLE

MISS INTERPRETED

THE “CIRCUS” LAYOUT

Honesty—The Better Policy

INNOCENT FALSEHOOD

FATHER AND SONS

PLUGGING FOR HER DADDY

THE STRANGE CASE OF MR. HENRY, et al.

SMALLPOX PESTILENCE

CORRECT VISION

GRAPES—RIPENED ON FRIENDSHIP’S VINE

LOCAL “BOARD OF TRADE”

FAMILY AFFAIR

COMPLIMENTARY TO THE “KIDS”

ANOTHER BRIGHT LITTLE STAR

LLEWELLYN CASTLE

MORE ABOUT THE COLONY FOLK

HAPPY DAZE

ODD CHARACTERS—COLORFUL, PICTURESQUE

MY BEST INVESTMENT

THE VIGILANTES

MOUNT ERICKSON

TURNING BACK THE PAGES

WANTS INFORMATION

Fix me: MEMORY’S STOREHOUSE UNLOCKED

DESERT CHIVALRY

THE WIFE—AT GOODSPRINGS

MONEY MUSK

GONE WITH THE WIND

WHITE CHRISTMAS

UNCLE NICK’S BOOMERANG

SHORT CHANGED

SUNSHINE AND ROSES Because of World Unrest and conditions with the
Printing Fraternity what they are, this job has lain on the shelf for
over a year. Most of the articles are dated, and appear just as written
and published. Later unpublished articles remain as written at the time
of preparation. Except for 1 story, and a few “Notes” the issue bears
the date of January, 1948—and with situations running back into pioneer
times.

THE AUTHOR.

This foreword is being written in California—in the shadow of Campbell
mountain, a 1700-foot detachment from lofty Sierra Nevada range,
25 miles east of Fresno, on Christmas Day, 1947—six days before my
eighty-sixth birthday.

I am writing on an envelope—and a used one, at that—out in the open, in
Anna’s and Virginia Anne’s rose garden, at the ranch home of my nephew,
Sam Bristow, from whose orchard came the choice oranges sampled by our
Wetmore friends at Christmastimes.

I am writing in the rose garden for the same reason I Imagine Gray’s
Elegy was written in the Country Churchyard—for privacy. My nephew’s
home is filled with relatives, seventeen by actual count, waiting for
the call to a turkey dinner.

Then, too, I want to get in a word about this most unusual Christmas
Day—something seldom seen in my cold climate home state. As a rule
you just don’t write on a tab out in the open, nor pluck roses in the
wintertime, back home.

Though, on Christmas Day, 1937, I cut four lovely long-stemmed perfectly
developed Radiant Beauty (red) roses from a single unprotected plant,
the one blooming plant among hundreds, in my rose garden in Northeast
Kansas. And, to make it appear all the more unusual, Radiant Beauty
was brought out in 1934 as a hot-house rose. Also, I needed a little
data—and I got it from Sam in the rose garden. And this seemed the
opportune time to write a few lines.

It will not, of course, be a “White Christmas” here as is likely back
home—never is in the San Joaquin valley. Sunshine and Roses enhance the
beauty of the day here. But farther up—up in the high Sierras, up toward
Mount Whitney, the highest point in the United States, only a few hours
away, there will be snow aplenty today, tomorrow—and forever.

This book is not my memoirs. It is not a family tree. It is not a
complete history. But it is, sketchily, all of these things. The book is
not a connected narrative. The articles, each complete within timely as
of the date of the situation. Also, some of the characters depicted as
living at the time of the writings have since died—but the stories are
printed as originally written. And for clear understanding the articles
should be read consecutively, as they appear in the book.

These feature articles, pertaining mostly to Wetmore and Northeast
Kansas, have all been written—some by request—for the home papers since
my retirement from the newspaper field, in 1903. The first one, “The Boy
of Yesteryear” was printed in W. F. Turrentine’s Wetmore Spectator, May
29, 1931.

One or more of these articles have been printed in George and Dora
Adriance’s Seneca Courier-Tribune—and, later, in Jay Adriance’s
Courier-Tribune; General Charles H. Browne’s Horton Headlight; Will T.
Beck’s Holton Recorder: Ray T. Ingalls’ Goff Advance; Senator Arthur
Capper’s Topeka Daily Capital; and the Atchison Daily Globe. And all of
them, with twelve exceptions, have appeared in the Wetmore Spectator.
The twelve exceptions are recent writings—since the Spectator’s
demise—rounding out topics previously introduced.

Pictured with the writer in the forepart of this book are two of the
principals of the old Spectator force during o ur newspaper regime
through the “Gay Nineties.” While referred to often in the articles they
had no part in the writing thereof. Regretfully, they were both dead
before e beginning of these writings.

Besides these two capable assistants, our printing office had something
no other paper could boast. Our “itchyfoot” Devil—for a short time
only—was a personality of high adventure. Like Nellie Bly, of (National)
magazine fame, and Ed Howe of (Atchison) Daily Newspaper fame, Bert
Wilson, better known as “Spike” Wilson, went around the world. But
unlike Nellie, backed by a magazine in a race against time; and Ed,
teeming with newspaper dollars, our “Spike” bummed his way, with a
minimum of work—mostly dish-washing—all the twenty-five thousand miles
around the globe while still in his teens. “Spike” aspired to become a
printer for the advantage it would afford him in his desire to see the
world. A journeyman printer could always get a lift from any country
newspaper in those days. Old Busbee, Nationally known “tramp printer”
dropped in on us one time. He was given a day’s work—and a half-week’s
salary. He tried to discourage “Spike”—and maybe he did. But I think his
woe-begone looks was the greater influence. Busbee came this way three
times within my recollection. “Spike” Wilson was the stepson of “Mule”
Gibbons, who came here with his family from Corning in the early
90’s—and several years later moved to Holton.

President Grant’s Congress — 1876 —memorialized the state legislatures
to have County Histories written for the benefit of posterity. Nemaha
County has had three—but not one of them touched on the subjects covered
in this volume. Usually local histories are compiled for profit —
colored, biased; boosting individuals who are willing to pay for a
write-up.

There is no angling for profit in this work.

These stories are now printed in book form to preserve them for their
historic value. The book is not for sale. It is my gift to the home
folks.

The books are costing me about ten dollars a copy—and, naturally, I
won’t have enough of them to be passed out promiscuously. I shall place
them in the schools, and libraries, and with the newspapers in the
county—and with friends here and there, where all the home folks can
have the chance to read the book, should they so desire. I am sure that
I have more friends than I have copies of the book, and I trust that
those who do not receive a copy will not feel that, in my estimation,
they do not rate one.

Wetmore It was not an excess of water, as one might suppose, that gave
Wetmore its name. Nor was it, as some have been led to believe, because
a certain Captain Wetmore, with a number of soldiers during the Civil
War chanced to camp over night at our ever-flowing mineral spring. Art
Taylor says his grandmother told him that such was the case.

It has been generally understood all along that the town was named after
a New York official of the railroad which came through here in 1867.
Confirmed, this would seem to kill the Taylor version of it, by at least
two years. The matter, I believe, was settled for all time a couple of
summers back when a New York woman, returning by automobile from the
Pacific coast, called at the Wetmore post office to mail some letters.
She told Postmaster Jim Hanks that the town was named after her father,
who was an official of the railroad—and that she had driven a hundred
miles out of her way to have her letters bear the Wetmore postmark.

I have seen Wetmore grow—and slip. Compact at the time of my entry
seventy-nine years ago, occupying less than a half block, the town
spread out through the years to a space of one-half mile by nearly one
mile—not quite solid. The town became a City in 1884, with Dr. J.
W. Graham as first Mayor—and at its peak had a population 687. The
population at this time—1948—is 373.

There is not a person in this City today who was here when I came.
Gone, all gone now. And nearly all dead. Something more than a tinge of
sadness accompanies this thought. There is not a building of any kind
standing that was here when I came—not a tree but what has been planted
since that day. In truth, there is nothing, not a thing left, save the
eternal hills and the creek which flows through the south edge of the
City that antedates the time I came here.

Yet, I do not feel old. And should any of my friends choose to wish me
anything, let them wish with me that I never do grow old.

The Mineral Spring To enlarge a bit on our ever-flowing mineral spring!
It was—and is—near the creek in a natural grove of big trees at the
southwest limits of Wetmore. Nathaniel Morris, an early-day merchant,
had an analysis of the water made—and talked of developing the spring
into a health resort. The water was pronounced medicinally good — mostly
iron, I believe. But, beyond attracting large celebration crowds, his
dream was never realized. However, Morris induced the railroad to run
in an “excursion” train of flat-cars canopied with heavy-foliaged brush
against a blazing summer sun, on the occasion of one Fourth of July
celebration. Green leafed brush also covered some of the stands on the
south margin of the grove. Green brush was the standard picnic coverings
in those days.

Then, later, Charley Locknane, Jay W. Powers, and Jim Liebig, undertook
to popularize the spring—and incidentally, make some money for
themselves. They invested considerable money in improvements. Locknane
was a budding promoter with considerable nerve—and a pull with the
railroad. He caused a special excursion train to be run out from Kansas
City, $1.50 fare for the round trip. Also, Charley organized a Girl Band
of twenty pieces, which furnished music for the opening picnic—and many
occasion thereafter. The Girl Band gained national acclaim. Locknane was
State Deputy for the Modern Woodmen of America—and took his Girl Band to
the Head Camp at Colorado Springs in 1901, and to Minneapolis in 1902.
The members were: Dora Geyer, Mollie Neely, Nora Shuemaker, Mabel Geyer,
Phoena Liebig, Iva Hudson, Daisy Terry, Blanche Eley, Kate Searles,
Truda Berridge, Edith Lapham, Pearl Nance, Maude Cole, Jennie Scott,
Belle Searles, Grace Maxwell, Ruby Nance, Myrtle Graham, Mrs. Ella Rice
and Mrs. Carrie Glynn, of McLouth, Kansas, were numbers five and six
in the line-up as written on the back of an enlarged photograph now in
possession of Mrs. P. G. Worthy—formerly Myrtle Graham.

The dance pavilion was well patronized between celebrations—and the
town populace turned out of evenings for a stroll to the spring. It was
really popular. Then a flood, an unusually big flood, swept the park
clean of all improvements. The large frame dance-hall came to anchor on
a projection of land on the present Bill Winkler farm nearly a mile down
the creek. The town jester said that as the pavilion floated away the
piano was automatically playing “Over the Ocean Waves.”

The mineral spring is still here—but that’s all.

At one of the big celebrations about the turn of the century a farmer
brought his family to town in a spring wagon. He tied his team on the
town-side of the picnic grounds, leaving a three-year-old child asleep
in the wagon. When the parents returned after taking in the picnic,
the child was gone. Then the picnickers began a search which lasted
throughout the night. All roads were covered for four or five miles
out. One searching party went four miles west on the railroad track—then
turned back, believing a small child could not travel that far. The
section men out Wetmore found the mangled body of the child in a small
wash by the side of the railroad about a half-mile beyond the point
abandoned by the searchers. An early morning freight train had bumped
it off a low bridge. Then there was much speculation as to how a small
child could have traveled that far—even hints, unwarranted suspicion, of
foul help. Then there was a story afloat about the conductor whose train
had struck the child. When told of the killing, it was claimed, he cried
and said had he known a child was lost along the track he would have
walked ahead the train.

Wetmore in 1869-70 There were only eleven buildings and thirty-four
people Wetmore when I came here with my parents from our Wolfley Creek
farm home in the fall of 1869.

There was one general store owned by Morris Brothers. Uliam Morris, with
his wife Eliza and daughter Nannie, and his brother Nathaniel, lived
over the store. Kirk Wood had a blacksmith shop, a small home, his wife
Euphemia and two children, Riley and Jay. Kirk’s brother Jay lived with
the family. M. P. M. Cassity, lawyer, owned his home and rental house,
had a wife—off and on—and a son, George. Martin Peter Moses Cassity’s
second marriage with his Griselle (Wheeler), the birth of Eddie, and the
final parting, were after we came.

James Neville, section foreman, had a residence, his wife Sarah, and
five children—William, George, Mary Ann, Jo Ann, and Mahlen. Dominic
Norton, section hand, had six motherless children — Anna, Kate, Bridget,
Ellen, Mollie, and Michael. Mike Smith, a plasterer, lived with the
Nortons in the section house. Ursula Maxwell, a widow, with her son
Granville and daughter Lizzie, lived in her own home. Ursula’s daughter
Maggie, married to Jim Cardwell, was also temporarily in her home at
this time. Samuel Slossen was building a hotel. He had a wife and a son,
George. And there was a railroad station, and an agent named Catlin.
Also a school house, and a teacher—John Burr.

The family of Peter Isaacson, deceased, in a farm home separated from
the town by a street, were considered as town folk. Here lived the
mother (married to A. Anderson) and four of her children—Andy, Edward,
Irving, and Matilda. Anderson had two children, Oscar and Emily, living
in the home. William and Alma were born later.

Matilda Isaacson, a very pretty girl, later, married Alfred Hazeltine.
By reason of his living in a farm home on the opposite side of town,
Alfred was also considered as belonging. Well, in fact, Alfred did live
in town several years prior to his marriage. We roomed together at the
Overland Hotel when he was engaged in business, partner in the Buzan,
Hazeltine & Hough Lumber Company, and I was clerking in Than
Morris’ store. Our family was then — ten years after first coming to
Wetmore—doing a three-year stretch on a portion of the Charley Hazeltine
farm west of Alfred’s place, beyond the timber on the south side of the
creek. And I was working out a store bill. Father still worked at his
trade in town, but he could go home before dark; and, anyway, he wasn’t
afraid of Erickson’s ghost—nor panthers. More about Erickson’s ghost and
the panthers, later. My work kept me in the store until 10 o’clock, at
night. After marrying, Alfred Hazeltine built a home in town, the house
now owned by Adam Ingalls. And later he bought the Charley Hazeltine
120-acres adjoining his farm, and moved back to the country. His brother
Charley and family went to Payette, Idaho. Alfred Hazeltine was a fine
man. He was deacon in the Baptist Church. One time when a protracted
meeting was in progress, he said to me, “By-damn, You, you ought to join
the Church.”

Andrew J. Maxwell, with his wife Lizzie and two children, Demmy and
May, and, at this time, the estranged wife of Elisha Maxwell, lived on
a homestead adjoining town-and, like the Isaacsons and Andersons and
Alfred Hazeltine, were regarded as town folk. Elisha Maxwell, brother
of Andy, lived part time with his mother in town, as did also his
wife. Elisha’s wife was the daughter of Matt Randall, then living near
Ontario, seven miles south-west of Wetmore. There was much in common
between the town folk and those borderites. Let it be a picnic or a
dog-fight they were all on hand. Altogether they made one big-shall I
say—happy family. This, however, strictly speaking, would not be quite
right. Gus Mayer built the first residence in Wetmore—the Neville
dwelling on the corner where the First National Bank now stands. His
daughter Lillie (Mrs. Peter Cassity) was the first child born in the
town—though Irving Isaacson was born earlier in a temporary shack near
the present depot before the town was established.


There was a one-room school house on the site of the present City hall,
with one teacher, John Burr—in 1869. I was nearly eight years old
then, and my brother Charley was a little over nine. This was to be our
first—and last — school. Charley died at the age of eighteen; and I was
out of school—not graduated, not expelled, but out—before the shift to
the present location on the hilltop.


While our home was being built in Wetmore on the lot where Hart’s locker
is now, the family found shelter in a one-room, up-and-down rough
pine board shanty in hollow west of the graveyard, on the Andy Maxwell
homestead—the farm now owned and occupied by Orville Bryant. This little
“cubbyhole” was originally built to house Andy ’ s brother Elisha—known
here as “The Little Man” — and his bride.

Charley and I followed a cow-path through all prairie grass all the way
from the shack — about a half mile — to the school house. And during
that first winter, after the path had been obliterated by a big snow
which drifted and packed solidly over the board fence enclosing the
school grounds, bearing up pupils — even horses and sleighs zoomed over
the drifted in fence—we skimmed over the white in a direct air line to
the school, with not a thing in the way.

Our parents were from the deep South, and on the farm Charley and I had
no playmates other than our younger brothers, Sam, Dave, and Nick—even
the hired hand on the Wolfley Creek farm, Ben Summers, was a Tennessean
— hence we brought into a school already seven-ways-to-the-bad, in
language, just one more type of bad English.

Many of the other pupils were children of immigrants — from Germany,
England, Ireland, Wales, and the three Scandinavian countries — whose
picked-up English was maybe not so good as our own. In those days
we learned from our associates rather than from books—that is,
unconsciously became imitators—and the result, in most cases, was not
promising. My mentor was a Swede girl several years my senior. “Tilda”
Isaacson was neat, sweet, and sincerity compounded. She would tell
me, “You youst don’t say it that way here, my leetle Yonnie.” This, of
course, was the first runoff. In time, our Wetmore school was to rank
with the best. And for all I know maybe it did then.

The old Wetmore school made history — history of a kind. An incident of
those eventful years having decidedly bad-English flavor occurred after
John Burr had been succeeded by D. B. Mercer, who came to us from a
homestead up in the Abbey neighborhood between here and Seneca. Mercer
gave one of his pupils a well-earned whipping one forenoon. At the
noon hour, the boy’s older brother danced up and down the aisle in
the school-room, singing, “Goodie, goodie, popper’s goin’ to lick the
teacher.”

That dancing boy was Clifford Ashton.

Soon after school had taken up in the afternoon, Mr. Ashton, late of
London, walked in unannounced. He was moderately docile in presenting
his grievance and the teacher, not to be outdone by this green
Englishman, treated his caller civilly. The trouble seemed to be
amicably settled. But the teacher’s mild manner had emboldened the
Englishman. As a parting stab, in an acrimonious monotone without
stopping for breath or punctuation, Ashton delivered the ultimatum: “But
if you ever w’ip one of my children again sir I shall surely ’ ave to
w’ip you.”

This was a mistake — a real “John Bull” blunder, Mercer was a large,
muscular man. With a single pass he knocked the Englishman cold right
there in the school room. Ashton fell almost at my feet. When he
had come up out o f his stupor, still blinking and grimacing, Ashton
bellowed, “I shall see a solicitor about this!”

“See him and bedamned,” bawled Mercer. “Now get out!”

After he had become seasoned, Ashton was really a fine fellow, rather
above the average of his countrymen in intelligence. And he reared a
fine family of boys and girls — Clifford, Anna, Eva, Stanley, Horace,
and Vincent. Ashton was a carpenter.

At another time, James Neville rushed unceremoniously into the
schoolroom and hurled a big rock at Mercer’s head, barely missing. The
rock tore a big hole in the blackboard back of the teacher. Neville was
a powerful man. Just what the grievance was, and how a lively fight was
averted, has slipped my memory—though I rather suspect Neville did not
tarry long after he had failed to make a hit with the rock.

These two infractions, and many more, passed as being only by-plays
incidental to a good school, as interpreted by those pristine patrons.

Andy Maxwell’s home was on the hill west of the shack. But Andy did not
live there long after we came—in fact, he was off the place for keeps
even before our house in town was ready for occupancy. Mary Massey,
unmarried sister of Mrs. Maxwell, as well as the estranged wife of
Elisha Maxwell, was at this time in the home—altogether too many Women
to be in one man’s home. Mary, a close observer, had said she’d see a
man of her’s and that other woman both in h — l before she’d play second
fiddle in her own home.

“Second fiddle” in this sense was of course a figurative term having
dire implications. Then, too, Lou Hazeltine, a sister-in-law by reason
of a first marriage with a brother of the Massey sisters, had her say.
It was critical.

It occurs to me that I have seen in print a recent version of an old
quotation or saying, often expressed then, which, in line with Mary’s
blow-off, defined the situation admirably. It read: “Hell hath no
music like a woman playing second fiddle.” For the text of the original
quotation, ask any oldtimer—or you may substitute “fury” for music, and
“scorned” for playing second fiddle, and you will have it.

These facts were gleaned while spending the day with my mother in Lou
Hazeltine’s home. Lou had said to my mother, as was customary at the
time, “Bring the children and stay all day.” So we were duly scrubbed
and dressed up for the occasion. I think Lou wanted to unburden herself.
But how she could have thought the children would be interested in such
topic of conversation is beyond me. True, there was her daughter Lizzie
Massey, about my age, for company—but Lizzie behaved as though she
thought she might miss something, and paid no attention to her mother’s
frequent admonitions, “You children run along outside and play.” I think
Lou was unduly worked-up over the matter. She would look at us children,
and then put her hand up to the side of her mouth, come down momentarily
off her “high-horse” almost to a whisper, and channel the choice bits to
mother. I think my mother would have been satisfied with less than was
said—and certainly, as a newcomer in town, she did not want to be
the one to spread gossip. However, she repeated it all, with apparent
relish, to my father, adopting Lou’s adept manner of, shielding it from
the children with her hand.

The Massey women decided that Andy’s sympathies for his estranged
sister-in-law were simply “outlandish”—and Mrs. Andy invoked the law on
him.

Constable Lon Huff started to take him to Seneca, but when they came
to the creek crossing, a ford, in my Uncle Nick Bristow’s timber, Andy
slipped off his shackled boots, jumped out of the buggy and made his
getaway, barefooted, over the snow-covered ground. My cousin, Burrel
Bristow, followed Andy’s barefoot tracks through the woods and counted
the trees barked by the constable’s gun.

That Alonzo—he was the shrewd one. Shot up the trees, he did—and brought
home Andy’s shackled boots.

I liked Andy—and, though I was never to see him again, as glad that he
had gotten away from the constable. I think that nearly all the other
people here were glad it, too. And, moreover, I’ll bet Andy did not
travel far without foot-protection.

You may be sure Andy did not come home to his wife. Lou Hazeltine told
my mother that the arrest was big mistake. Charley Hazeltine, Lou’s
Swede husband, said “The vimens was yust yumpin at collusions.” Elisha’s
wife and Andy’s daughter May left Wetmore soon thereafter. Demmy
remained here with his grandmother for several years—then went to
his father at Spearfish, South Dakota, from which place Andy was then
operating a stage line to Deadwood.

With Ursula Maxwell and Charley Hazeltine as long-range intermediaries,
Andy Maxwell waived claim to farm equipment, livestock, and all other
belongings, in favor of Lizzie Maxwell. All Andy asked—and received—were
his children, and the promise of no contest in two divorces, Lizzie
Massey Maxwell remained here. She sold the farm improvements to Dr. W.
F. Troughton for $50. Troughton filed on the homestead in 1872.

In the meantime Andy, with his daughter May and Mrs. Elisha, traveling
out of Miles City, Montana, in covered wagons, with four other men,
were attacked by Sioux and Nez Perce Indians—the siege lasting for three
days. The newspapers said at the time, it was the hardest-fought Indian
battle of all times.

A three-column account of that Indian attack, written reminiscently by
a correspondent of the Chicago Times seventeen years after it had taken
place, found its way by mere chance into the Wetmore Spectator—right
back to the old home of the defenders — through the medium of the
Western Newspaper Union, Kansas City, Mo., from which auxiliary the
Spectator then got its inside pages ready-printed. It was a hair-raising
story—one that could be read with interest again and again.

Incidentally, Andy Maxwell had Indian blood in his own veins. His mother
told me she was a quarter-breed. She had Indian features.

Then there was another Indian story having Wetmore connections. I have
in my newspaper files Catherine German-Swerdfeger’s own story — nearly
a full page written for the Spectator — of the slaying by the Indians
of her father and mother, a brother and two sisters; and the capture of
herself and three sisters—Sophie, Julia, and Addie. John German, from
Blue Ridge, Georgia, with his family, was traveling by ox-team and
covered wagon, through Kansas on the way to Colorado at the time of the
attack.

Catherine’s description of the abandonment of her two little sisters,
aged five and six, after two weeks on the move by the roving band of
Indians, on the then uninhabited plains somewhere between southwestern
Kansas and the main Cheyenne camp in Texas, in the midst of a big herd
of buffalo, where, after following on foot until well nigh exhausted,
as mounted Indians forced the two older girls on ponies away from the
scene, the little girls lived—no, existed—for six weeks, in October
and November weather, with no shelter other than a clay bank, on the
leavings of soldiers, (cracker crumbs, scattered grains of corn, and
hackberries), in a deserted camp, by a creek, would wring your heart.

Catherine’s personal explanation to me was that the little girls, when
down to the last morsel of edible scrapings, had difficulty in deciding
which one should eat it. The little one thought the older one should
have it—that it might enable her to live to get away. It would appear
that the little one had already resigned herself to her fate. The older
one decided it rightly belonged to the baby. And neither of them ate it.
It was only a dirty kernel of corn, Catherine said in her article: “God
had a hand in that work, and I believe you will agree with me when I say
He wrought a miracle.”

And I, for one, certainly do agree.

Several inaccurate accounts of the fate of this unfortunate family have
been written—one by a professor, who evidently did not have the full
facts, as text for the Wichita schools. And another one, as told to
a reporter for the Kansas City Journal by “Uncle” Jimmy Cannon, an
interpreter on Government pay-rolls, stationed in Kansas (the rider of
“Little Gray Johnny”) in which he himself, in a daring dash on a band of
Indians, rescued one of the little girls — which, in fact, he didn’t do
at all, according to Catherine.

Actually, it was this story of “Uncle” Jimmy’s that caused Catherine
to write the true story of the massacre and of their captivity, for my
paper. Catherine said it was soldiers under Lieutenant Baldwin of the
Fifth Infantry who found her little sisters, sick, emaciated, on the
verge of starvation, in that same deserted camp, which was really
no camp at all—only an overnight camp site. And though soldiers were
constantly on the trail of the Indians, there was no spectacular dash
by the military in the rescue the two older girls. When first taken into
the main Cheyenne camp, in Texas, Chief Stonecalf told Catherine, who
was then nearly eighteen years old, that he was grieved know that his
people would do such a deed; that he would, Soon as possible, deliver
them to the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Agency—and that he did. Catherine
had much praise for Chief Stonecalf, and General Nelson A. Miles, their
efforts in liberating them. Under Indian custom, girls were regarded as
loot, and had to be bought from their captors.

Jim Smith, now living in the west part of Wetmore, went to school — at
the Porter school house on Wolfley-creek—with the two younger German
girls. Pat Corney, living on a farm adjacent to the J. P. Smith farm,
was guardian of the girls.

Addie—Mrs. Frank Andrews—is still living, or was a few years ago, at
Berwick in Nemaha county. A few years back, Mrs. Andrews was invited to
appear on a radio program in New York, with all expenses paid—but
she did not go. Amos Swerdfeger, husband of Catherine—and son of Adam
Swerdfeger, who was among the first settlers here—died at Atascadero,
California, Nov. 12, 1921, age 73. Catherine died in 1932, age 75.

These two Indian stories would make good reading now—and while they are
in line with my endeavor to give a true picture of the old days, they
are not included in this volume. Nothing but my own writings, since
my retirement from the newspaper field appears in this book. However,
slight reference to those two Indian attacks were made in my more
recently published stories, which are reproduced in this book—just as
they were written at the time. Many changes have taken place in the
meantime.

After it became generally known here that the defenders of that fiercely
fought Indian battle in Montana were former Wetmore citizens, many of
our people came in from time to time to read the story. That page of the
old files is pretty well thumbed.

About fifty years ago, a family by the name of Cummings came here and
lived for a short while in the northwest part of town. Mrs. Cummings
said she was the daughter of Andy Maxwell. I did not learn her given
name, but supposed she was May. She called at the Spectator office, and
read the story.

Then, in February, 1939, Mrs. Nettie E. Rachford, Westwood, California,
wrote the Spectator asking for a copy of the story, saying she was the
daughter of Andy Maxwell. I then copied the story from my files, and W.
F. Turrentine printed it again in the Spectator, February 1939.

This reprint of the Maxwell story caused Dr. LeVere Anderson, born and
reared on a farm five miles southwest of Wetmore—now established in
Miles City, Montana—to bring the matter of that Indian fight to the
attention of the Miles City Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber was at
that very time sponsoring a homecoming jubilee—and after an exchange
of letters between Miles City and Wetmore, Andy Maxwell, then living in
Santa Ana, California, was invited to be the Chamber’s honored guest—but
he was unable to make the trip. Andy Maxwell died at Santa Ana in 1941,
at the age of ninety-nine.

Our New Temporary Home Earlier in this writing I mentioned the fact
that our family had three years on the Hazeltine farm. My older brother,
Charley, contracted “quick consumption.” There was a prevailing notion
that the scent of new pine lumber and fresh country air would be helpful
in effecting a cure. So my father made a contract with Charley Hazeltine
for the erection of a new house under the cottonwoods on the hill near
the old log-house which had been the home of father of the Hazeltine
brothers—with a three-year lease on 40 acres of farm land.


The new house had plenty of exposed pine lumber and fresh air all right.
It was a box-house made of barn-boards, unplastered, with sleeping
quarters in the loft, comparable to the hay-mow in a barn, reached by
a ladder from one corner of the ground-floor room. On occasions, snow
sifted through the cracks in the loft, covering my bed completely. The
lower room was more closely built, which was living room, kitchen, and
sleeping quarters for my parents—and the babies. There was a standard
sized bed, and a trundle bed—the latter shoved under the regular bed in
the daytime, and pulled out to the middle of the room at night. It was
a replica of many another home of that day, only the others could have
added protection of plastered walls. Then too, it was Dr. Thomas Milam’s
belief that Charley would show improvement in the new home with the
coming of spring. But, come time for the swelling of the buds of those
old cottonwoods in the spring of 1879, the “Grim Reaper” beat the
carpenters to the finish. Charley had died before the new house was
ready for occupancy. And that made long lonesome hours for me on the
farm. Charley had an enviable record as an exemplary boy—and, try as I
might, I have not been able to follow wholly in his foot-steps. But I am
sure that my memory of him has helped to make me what I am.

Roses The Girls Didn’t Get Reference has been made to my Rose Garden.
I have grown them, you might say, as a hobby—and for the pleasure of
giving the flowers to my friends. Bushels of them have gone in the
past to the Cemetery on Memorial Day, and not a few to sick rooms, to
churches, and to local society functions.

The fame of my Rose Garden has traveled far—to California and to
Florida. Proof: The two little girls of Shady Mitchell, a Tennessean,
who conducted a general store in Wetmore some years back and lived
across the street west from the school grounds in the house now owned
and occupied by Prof. Howard V. Bixby—in their school work at their new
home in Orlando, Florida, wrote in collaboration a theme, beginning:
“There was a man living in our town in Kansas who grew roses just to
give them away to his friends—” This is the extent of the essay which
has been relayed to me—but I’ve no doubt that Verda Bess and Marjorie
Lou acknowledged having been the recipient of roses from my garden. I
don’t think I ever permitted a little girl—nor a big one either, for
that matter—who stopped by to admire my roses, to go away without a
bouquet.


And particularly have I been pleased to supply the girl graduates of our
splendid Wetmore High School at Commencement time. Last year—spring of
1947—the garden did not show promise of early bloom of quality flowers,
and I got the girl graduates some beautiful long-stemmed “Better Times”
red roses, ($7.85 per doz.), from Rock’s in Kansas City. I planned to
make this an annual contribution, whether at home or away, as a sort of
commemoration of the fine Rose Garden I once owned. The garden is now
owned by Raymond and Marjorie McDaniel.

Before leaving in the fall for California, I told the girls I would send
them roses by air mail—but, through an oversight of someone, I was not
apprised of the date of the 1948 Commencement. And this was one time
when the girls, through no fault of their own, (except possibly trusting
another than a member of the class to do the notifying), missed getting
some really high-class graduation roses—roses grow to perfection in
California—which I think was more of a disappointment to me than
perhaps to anyone else, unless it should have been my niece, Alice
Bristow-Tavares, who was to have supplied two dozen extremely beautiful
long-stemmed Etoile de Hollande red roses from her climbers. A Fresno
florist had been engaged to pack them for mailing.

LITTLE FILLERS In this volume will be found several “Little
Fillers”—sayings of children, which have no connection with the various
articles. They have been prepared to fill out the pages where the ending
of a story leaves unused space—so that all articles may have a top-page
heading.

CONSIDERATE KID Having bought little three-year-old Karen McDaniel a
5-cent cone, and also one for her to take home to her little brother
Harry, I laid a couple of nickels on the counter at the restaurant; and
then put down a dime, and picked up the two nickels—this twenty-cents
representing the sum total of my cash as of the moment. Karen said,
“What you do that for?” I told her that I was going to purchase a 5-cent
lead-pencil from Charley Shaffer at the drug store, and that I wanted
to keep the nickels, as it would save time of waiting to get back the
nickel in change, were I to keep the dime. She said, brightly, “He might
not have a nickel.” I said, “That’s just it.” Not realizing the risk
which I myself was cooking up at the moment, I said, “It’s never wise
to take a risk when it can just as easily be avoided.” Placing the two
nickels beside the little dime, I told her the dime was worth as much
as the two bigger nickels. Thinking to see if she had caught on, I
said, (rather badly stated), “Now, what you think—which would you rather
have?” She smiled, almost saucily grinned, and reaching for the dime,
said, “I’ll take the little one—you want to keep the big ones.”

THE BOY OF YESTERYEAR Published in Wetmore Spectator

May 29, 1931

By John T. Bristow

It was a lazy October afternoon. The woods were still in full leaf and
the tops of the trees, touched by early frost, had turned to reddish
brown and golden yellow. It was a fine day for squirrel hunting. But
this is not strictly a hunting story.

There were six in the party—three men of widely varying ages and, as the
college youth would say, three skirts — but, for convenience, all wore
trousers that afternoon. It was a sort of boarding-house party out for
recreation and game. They were: Mrs. Edna Weaver, Miss Genevieve Weaver,
Miss Thelma Sullivan, Milton Mayer, Raymond Weaver and the writer.

Our wanderings carried us into the heavily wooded section near the head
of Wolfley creek. I had no hunter’s license and, being a law-loving
citizen, carried no gun. The hunters, alert for game, went deep into
the woods. And I trailed along, not noticing, not caring, where we were
going. Having passed the stage of life when one normally gives a whoop
where he is or what he does, to me, one place was as good as another.

And then, of a sudden, I became tremendously alert. We were now
coming near to my father’s old farm—the home he had blazed out of the
wilderness, so to speak, on first coming to Kansas—oh, so many years
ago. That farm is now owned by Mrs. Worley.

A few of the many letters commenting on my published stories are printed
in this volume—in all cases, blocked in the story to which the letter
refers. They help to attest the authenticity and worthiness of the
article. It’s most stimulating to have one’s friends write in and say,
“I know that to be true.” It’s like the “Amen” to a fervent prayer.

The regret is that so few of the old ones are left.

For sentimental reasons I wanted to hunt that old place — to live,
briefly, again the days of my youth. As we came to the line fence
between the Worley farm and the Brock pasture lands on the east, my
companions balked at wire—wanted to turn back. My suggestion that we go
on was regarded as “idiotic.” The Worley timber was un-inviting. There
were lots of weeds over on that side, and probably snakes, too. I know
rattlesnakes infested that place when I lived there as a boy.

I climbed over the fence, anyway, and was soon racing toward a mammoth
elm tree—a tree that had budded and leaves more than sixty times since
the day I last saw that place. The hunters came over on the bound. “It
went up this tree,” I lied. There was no squirrel. I was in truth a boy
again—a very small boy—resorting to childish subterfuges.

E D WOODBURN

Lawyer

HOLTON, KANSAS

October 19, 1931

Mr. John Bristow, Wetmore, Kansas

Dear John:--

I want to express to you my appreciation for the opportunity of reading
your article, “The Boy of Yesteryear” published in the Wetmore Spectator
May 29, 1931.

I have never understood and have always regretted the fact that you quit
the newspaper field. It has always seemed to me that with your ability
to write, you could have been useful as a newspaper man. You have the
happy faculty of getting and holding one’s attention from beginning to
end.

Yours very truly,

E D WOODBURN

But my “idiotic” idea wasn’t so bad. The hunters a got a nice bag of
squirrels on that side of the fence and in passing the spot again an
hour later one of party thought she saw my mythical squirrel go into a
hole in one of the top-most branches of that old monarch of the woods.
So that was that. Kindly forget the ethics involved. We hunted the
timber the full length of that place Dad’s old farm. Now there were big
trees—and some tall trees. As I remember, there were big tall trees on
that place when we lived there more than a half century ago. My father
split rails from that timber to fence the farm, And as ex-woodsman
he was he was inordinately proud of that rail fence, of his excellent
craftsmanship. In his native state, with the straight-splitting
birch and poplars, it would have been a simple matter. Here it was an
accomplishment.

In that day there were two kinds of rail fences in general use. The
“leaner” fence was constructed with posts set on top the ground in a
leaning position and supported by stakes on the under side, with the
rails nailed onto the posts. The “stake and rider” fence, also sometimes
called the “worm” fence, was made by laying the end of one rail on top
of another, in zigzag fashion, at an angle of about twenty-five degrees,
so that the ends would lap, with a ground chunk under each section,
and when built up to the desired height — usually seven rails—two
cross-stakes were set in the ground at the junction of the panels, with
another rail on top the cross-stake. My father’s fence was of the latter
type. It took a lot of rails.

Also I recall seeing my father shoot a squirrel out of the top of a very
tall tree with his Colt’s revolver. That six-shooter was presented to
him by Federal officers during the Civil War for protecting himself
against a band of guerrillas. More about the guerrillas later.

And on this October day I saw the spot where the old house stood on the
south flank of that woodland—the house around which I played with my
brothers as a care-free child, and where my mother almost cried her
heart out because of loneliness. Also, it was here where my mother told
me a story one day—a story of my father, of herself, of why we had left
our home in the Southland. Our tears mingled over the telling of that
story then. And there was sadness in my heart that October afternoon as
I paused, reverently, for a moment in passing.

Although I was born in the sunny South where magnolias bloom and
mockingbirds sing all winter long, my first vivid recollection of life
was upon this bleak Kansas farm, hot and wind-swept in summer, cold and
desolate in winter. The rigid climate of this new plains country home
was in such marked contrast to the mild and even temperature of my
mother’s native heavily timbered state as to her long to go back to her
old home.

It was eight wilderness miles to Powhattan, the post-office; five miles
to Granada, the trading post; and one mile to the nearest neighbors—Rube
and Anne Wolfley.

The mill that made our sorghum molasses—nearly every farmer grew a patch
of cane for making molasses to go with corn-bread, the staple diet—one
mile off from Powhattan, was owned by Charley Smith, the same Charley
Smith who had in earlier days, been keeper of a station (his home ) on
the old John Brown “underground railroad,” where runaway Negro slaves,
being transported to Canada, were in hiding through the day. I know it
was the Charley Smith place, for Ben Summers, our hired man, said it
still smelled of “niggers.” But of course it didn’t. That was Ben ’
s way of opening a sizeable tale about Mr. Brown and his underground
railroad.

And I wouldn’t know how far it was to the mill that ground our
corn-meal, but I do know there was one—for we had no bread other than
cornbread for months on end. Only on rare occasions would we have
“lightbread”—made of wheat flower, of course. The cornbread my mother
usually made was not the cornpone customary in the South. Cracklin ’
bread and seasoned cornbread was much better—that is, for most palates.
I wish I could have some of it now. But there was one traveling
salesman, Hugh Graham, who preferred the cornpone. He would wire the
hotel here of his expected arrival, which meant that for breakfast,
dinner, or supper, he wanted cornpone. I think the cornpone was made of
cornmeal, salt, and water.

I recall that Ben Summers had gone “acourtin” Betsy Porter that evening,
when my parents were shelling corn, by candle-light, on a sheet spread
upon the kitchen floor, to take to the mill—probably the Reiderer mill
east of Holton — when a big bullsnake which had crept in through a
displaced chink in the log house, slithered across the sheet,
gliding over the corn, and out an open door. The matter was debated,
seriously—then it was decided the hogs should have that corn.

My father and mother, with their three small children, came to Kansas
from Nashville, Tennessee, in 1865. They came by steamboat on the
Cumberland, the Mississippi and Missouri rivers to Atchison. The family
was met there by my uncle Nick, father’s only brother, with an ox-team,
taking most of two days to drive us to his home on Wolfley creek. That
farm is now owned by William Mast.

On the way out from Atchison, as we were nearing home, we ran into one
of those fierce prairie fires that so often menaced life and property of
the early settlers. I was very young then and cannot say positively that
what I am about to relate here is from actual memory, although I have
always believed that I retained a mental picture of that prairie fire.
Details are now a bit hazy—and, you know, with the very young there is
always a borderland not any too well defined between what you may have
actually seen and what you may have heard others recount.

Anyway, there was a prairie fire. And its sinister red flames—a long
snake-like line of crackling, blazing hell — overhung with an ominous
pall of thick black smoke, sent a spasm of fear surging through my uncle
and my parents.

That prairie fire was on one of the big creek bottoms — probably on the
old Overland Trail — somewhere between Granada and Wetmore, only there
was no Wetmore then. We had just forded a stream and were well out in a
big bottom where the slough grass was as tall as the oxen, when the fire
was sighted coming over the hills towards us, and fanned by a brisk wind
it was traveling at terrific speed.

My uncle, who was driving, ran up along side his oxen and yelled,
“Whoa-haw-Buck! Jerry!” The oxen seemed to sense danger and the wagon
was turned around in no time. Just then a man on horseback came running
up. Without stopping to say a word the man jumped off his horse and
touched a lighted match to the tall dead grass in front of the outfit.
An effort was made by the man to beat out the fire on the windward side.
The man then excitedly commanded my uncle to drive across the thin line
of back-fire into the newly burned space. It looked like the rider had
come out of that blazing inferno especially to warn us. And as the wagon
moved away he yelled loudly so as to be heard above the roar of the
encroaching flames from behind, “For God’s sake, man, follow it up as
fast as you can.”

That young man was Fred Liebig.

Boyhood impressions stick like the bark on a tree, while later events
are submerged in the whirlpool of life and are forgotten. One of the
outstanding incidents of my young life took place upon this Wolfley
creek farm. I remember it as distinctly as if it occurred only
yesterday. It was my first—and last—alcoholic debauch.

I have already told you that rattlesnakes infested that place way back
in the distant past. One of them—a fat, seven-button specimen—took a
whack at me one summer day, its fangs loaded with deadly green fluid
sinking deep the top of my right foot. It was August — dogdays — and of
course I was barefoot. The children of pioneer settlers didn ’ t wear
shoes, except in cold weather, even when their fathers were excellent
shoemakers, a distinction my father enjoyed at that time.

My father was over at Granada. A neighbor was sent after him — and for
whiskey, the then universal remedy for snakebite. Finding no whiskey at
Granada, the courier, on horseback, came on to Wetmore, which town was
just starting then, and failing again, pushed on the Seneca, stopping on
the way long enough to change horses. The round trip approximately sixty
miles and eight hours had elapsed when the rider returned with whiskey.
He brought a generous supply.


In the meantime my mother had dumped a package of baking soda into a
basin of warm water. She bade me put my foot in it — and two little
fountains of green came oozing up through the soda-whitened water. And
she gave me tea made from yard plantain—why, I wouldn’t know.

Also my Uncle Nick had arrived by the time the rider returned with the
whisky. I didn’t like the taste of the nasty stuff and, boy-like, set
up a howl about having to drink it. And my Uncle, desirous of helping in
every possible way, said, soothingly, “Johnny, take a little, and Uncle
take a little.” We both passed out about the same time.

I don’t mean to infer by this that my Uncle was a drunkard. He was not.
And, mind you, he grew up in a country at a time when you could buy good
old Bourbon at any crossroads grocery store as you would buy a jug of
vinegar—and almost as cheaply.

My Uncle Nick was a soldier in the Mexican war of 1848. And he was
a soldier in the Civil war—an adventurer, and in a way a “soldier of
fortune.” He prospected for gold, and hunted mountain lions—with the
long rifle—in the Rockies, just as he and my father had hunted panthers
in Tennessee.

This ferocious beast, if you don’t know, is the big cat with four names.
In the South and East—extinct in most sections now—he is the dreaded
panther. In the Rockies he is the mountain lion. Farther west, in
Arizona and the Sierras, he is the cougar. Somewhere he is called the
puma. And everywhere he is “the killer.”

Two strangers stopped at our home just after I had passed out—that
is, after I had become limp, unable to stand, unable to talk, from the
effects of the whisky. But I could understand as well as ever what was
said. One of the men suggested that if they could find the snake and cut
it open and bind the parts to my foot that it would draw the poison
out. I knew that Jim Barnes had killed that snake, and the stranger’s
suggestion gave me a mental spasm. I could not speak out and tell’ them
that I had had about all of that snake that I could stand.

The earthquake of 1868 — or thereabout — greatly frightened my mother.
It was her first experience with quakes. And, woman-like, with a
perpetual grudge against the erratic Kansas weather changes, she laid
this shakeup in climate, which, it seemed, she never could become
accustomed to. And when the house trembled and the dishes cupboard
began to rattle, she rushed out into the yard, where my father and the
children were, and said, “If we must all go to the devil I would just as
soon walk as ride.”

Also Indians from the Kickapoo reservation, while harmless enough at the
time, had a habit of prowling about over the country, and a band of them
nearly scared the wits out of my mother one hot summer day. She saw
the blanketed red skins, on ponies, coming down the road, single-file.
Gathering her youngsters, much as a hen gathers her brood the approach
of danger—and much as my mother had once before taken her children
under her protecting arms and saved their lives, as you shall see
presently—she hid in the cornfield until the rovers had left our farm.

And now another prairie fire. If there could be any question about the
youngster having retained with photographic accuracy the horrors of
the one earlier mentioned, there can be no doubt about this later one,
which, whipped by the ever-present wind, stole in upon us in the night,
My father’s much prized rail fence was laid low, and only by heroic
efforts was the house saved. These dreaded prairie fires and other
subjected frights incident to the new country seemed to place a mark
upon my mother.

“William,” she said one day to my father, “we might as well have
remained in Tennessee and taken our chances on being killed by guerillas
as to come all the way out to this God-for-saken country only to be
burned to death by prairie fires, or shaken to pieces by earthquakes, or
frightened to death by Indians.” And I am sure that if the Kansas
cyclone had then enjoyed the widespread reputation that it does in this
year of grace, my mother would have included that also.

In Tennessee, my father was a shoemaker and tanner by trade. And, by the
grace of a kind Providence—and some quick shooting—he was a live Union
“sympathizer” in a Rebel stronghold. The great conflict—the Civil
War—between the North and the South was then on. My father had not, at
this time, joined the fighting forces on either side. He was content
to ply his trade, make leather and shoes, both of which were very much
needed at the time. But my father made the almost fatal mistake of
“exercising his rights as a free-born citizen,” in having his say.

The South was not quite solid for Confederacy. Sometimes even families
were divided. In my mother’s family two of her brothers favored the
North and two were for the South—”rank rebels,” my mother said. None of
them went to war. They worked in a powder mill—more dangerous, by far.
Twice the mill blew up, and each time one of my Uncles was blown into
fragments. Also one of my mother’s acquired relatives hid in a cave for
the duration of the war.

The guerilla element was composed of Southerners, not in colors — and
they made life miserable for any o ne who dared to express an opinion,
on the aspects of the war, contrary to their views.

The hush of a November night lay upon the forest, in the thick of which
was located my father’s home, his tan-yard, his shoeshop. The night’s
stillness was broken by a volley of bullets from the guerilla guns
crashing through the windows and doors of the log house.

My mother—herself only a girl in her teens—took her two babies and crept
under the bed, which, luckily, had been moved to another part of the
house that very day. And that shift of the bed saved the family from the
death-dealing bullets poured into the house with that first onslaught.

My father had only a muzzle-loading, double-barrel shotgun, with two
charges in the gun—and no more ammunition — with which to defend himself
and his little family against that mob of armed men. The main body of
guerillas, on horseback, were in the front yard. The house stood upon
the bank of a deep gully, with little or no backyard. A wide plank
served as a walk across the gully. Beyond that was heavy timber.

Believing that his family would be safer with him out of the house, my
father, only partly dressed, grabbed his shotgun and flung open the back
door. He quickly emptied both barrels of his gun into the two men who
were guarding the back door. The revolver in the hands of the first man
in line, standing on the plank, was being brought down on him when the
charge from father’s shotgun cut off the crook of the man’s arm at the
elbow and entered his body, killing him instantly. The bullet from the
guerilla’s revolver plowed through my father’s hat. And that was the
revolver my father shot squirrels with in Kansas. It was retrieved by
Federal soldiers and presented to him.

The other man was mortally wounded and lay there in yard, at the far end
of the plank walk, until morning, Things had happened so quickly, and
so disastrously to their ranks, that the mob believed the house was
occupied by armed men. And, after firing another volley into the home,
many of the bullets this time penetrating the bed under which my mother,
with her babies, lay flat on the floor, the mob withdrew to a safe
distance—but sentinels were kept posted in the nearby woods until
morning. All told, more than one hundred shots were fired into the
house.

And now a man from the outside dashed in at the back -the door by which
father had made his exit. Hurriedly he bolted the door from within.

My mother, peering out from her hiding place under bed, exclaimed in
surprise, “You here, Sandy! What does this mean?” And before he could
explain, she cried, “Oh, I smell smoke. Is the house on fire, Sandy?”

“Yes,” he said—”it was. And the tanyard buildings and shoeshop are now
burning.”

Sandy Fouse, a Southern boy, had worked for my father in his tobacco
fields, and lived at our home. My father grew tobacco on the side. I was
told Sandy took a marked interest in me—a baby. God only knows why
it was so, but it seems I was destined to become the favorite of the
family. I had an older brother, too. But it seems I was the favorite of
my Aunt Harriet who helped my mother, and the pet of Sandy who “wormed”
the tobacco.

And as with the prairie fire—only with positive conviction this time—I
must again rely on what has been told me. Reaching under the bed and
hauling me out, Sandy said, “Why, I’d risk my life any time for this
here boy Johnny—or any of you-all.” And that was just what he was doing
that night.

When the mob had withdrawn after starting a fire against the house,
Sandy ran back and kicked the blazing sticks away from the building—and
then made a dash for the door. He was now afraid of the mob and did not
leave the house again that night. Good old boy — Sandy, Pal, Protector.
Just why you were out with those guerillas that night has never been
explained to me.

My father did not come back into the house, and my mother believed that
he had been killed, or mortally wounded, as she could plainly hear the
groans of the dying man outside. And she was, of course, frantic with
grief. After hours of agony, when she could stand it no longer, she took
a lighted candle and went outside to investigate.

My mother’s name was Martha. The wounded man kept groaning, “Oh, Lordy.”
And my mother thought it was my father calling her name. It took some
tension off when she discovered the dying man was not my father — but
she was horrified to find he was the son of a close neighbor. The young
man asked for a drink of water, and wanted someone to pray for his soul.
She gave him water. And she prayed for him. At daybreak the young man’s
companions took him to his father’s home where he died a few hours
later. He told his people that he got what he deserved, that he had no
business in permitting the mob to persuade him to go out with them that
night.

Still my mother did not know the fate of my father — and of course her
mind and nerves were harassed to the point of breaking all through the
long hours of the night. In this story I can only give the facts and
trust that some power of understanding in every human heart may lead the
reader to some appreciation of the tense situation—the web of destiny
seemingly inextricably entangled, in which my parents had been caught.

After shooting his way out, my father had kept on going, and under
protection of the night and the dense woods surrounding the house,
eluded the mob. And after fifteen miles of weary tramping over the hills
and through woods, after hours of worry for the safety of his family, he
reached the Union lines, at daybreak. In the afternoon of that same day
the family was moved to Clarksville, by solders sent out from the army.

The guerillas had burned my father’s tanyard and shoeshop, and his
tobacco barn. They had stolen his horses — four fine grays which were
kept on the plantation for plowing the tobacco fields and for hauling
tanbark. And in the end, someone stole his farm. The trusted agent
forgot to remit.

My father then went as a scout with detachments the Union army. He
served under Major E. N. Morrill, who was later Governor of Kansas,
and a resident of Hiawatha for a number of years. The guerilla band was
broken up. But hostilities did not stop altogether with the surrender of
Lee. And bushwhacking” became a pastime with the embittered few.

My mother, with her sister, Nan Porter, went back to Tennessee some
years later for a visit. And about the first thing they did was to
attend church—a new church in the old neighborhood. My resident aunt —
Aunt Harriet Lovell—had said to her sisters, “You-all will meet lots of
friends after church.”

The two Kansas women, with their handsome and deeply religious young
escort, marched into church a trifle late, and my mother was smiling
and nodding to close seated old acquaintances, and properly attuned, all
were living in the happy anticipation of a real love feast when church
would be out. Then suddenly, abruptly, as if she had received some
deadly stroke, the smile faded from her face. She looked at her sister,
in crestfallen dejection, and whispered, “Let’s get out of here, Nan,
just as soon as the services are over.” That pained look did not belong
on my my mother’s sweet face. Some highly disturbing thing had happened.

Quickly, my mother revised her plans. She could consistently have
waited for the preacher to come down from the pulpit and address her as
“sister” with more significance than ordinarily accrues to the church
going woman. But no, thank you—not my mother. Not in that spot. She had
recognized in that coarse-voiced preacher the leader of that guerilla
mob. He was my non-consanguineous uncle — father’s own brother-in-law.
And the accommodating young man who had been so kind as to “carry” them
over in his shiny new buggy could not understand what made them in such
a hurry to get away.

That meeting house was set in a small clearing in the dense woods on top
of a high ridge. It was called “Sentinary.” The worshippers came in from
the lower settlements from every direction. It was their custom to tarry
after services for a visit — and especially^ if there were strangers in
the congregation they must be wholeheartedly welcomed, Southern style,
as I was to learn.

Some years later it was my pleasure to attend that same church. And
Walter Cox “carried” me over in his buggy—the same rig in which my
mother and my aunt had ridden with him—though the buggy was now, of
course, somewhat the worse for wear, as the roads down there are rocky.
Fully half that four-mile trip was in the bed of a creek which flowed,
clear as crystal, over a rock bottom, between high hills. And when not
in the middle of the creek that road crossed and recrossed the stream
many times.

But the guerilla-preacher—he of the “foghorn” voice — who had so
disturbed my mother’s tranquility, was not at the Church to greet me. It
was my uncle, one of my mother’s rank rebel” brothers, who stepped down
from the pulpit to meet the stranger.

And when Walter Cox introduced us—after effusive greetings and some
emotional tears from the older man — uncle, with fine Southern accent,
said, “I’m powerful proud that Walter here didn’t introduce you before
the services. If I had known one of sister Martha’s boys was the
congregation I believe I would have forgotten my text.” He stroked his
whiskers. “Yes, suh, it would have frustrated me a heap.”


Having registered at the Maxwell House—the one that presumably made a
certain brand of coffee famous—I attended the Nashville Centennial for
three days before looking up any of my relatives. My Uncle Thomas Cullom
lived Nashville — but my Aunt Nancy Cullom-Porter had written from
Wetmore to my Aunt Harriet Cullom-Lovell at Newsome Station, twelve
miles out, of my expected visit—and I went there first, by train. I
inquired at the Newsome store for a way to get out to John Lovell’s,
five miles up Buffalo creek. Mr. Newsome said, “Just go right down
to the mill, the boy there will carry you over plum to his door—you a
Cullom?” The boy led out two horses, and I was “carried” over astride a
horse to my Aunt’s home, arriving at about four o’clock. And here I
met, for the first time, Uncle John Lovell, his two daughters, Emma and
Margaret; and of course my Aunt Harriet—not however, for the first time.
My mother had told me that we had been pretty good friends in my baby
days.

Also, I met here the renowned spirit medium Jim Spain, of whom I had
heard my mother and my Aunt Nancy tell some tall stories—but Jim got on
a horse, rode away, and I did not see him again that day. Jim Spain at
this me was about thirty-five years old. He had come to the Lovell home
when a young man—and just stayed. I don’t know if he had any relatives;
though undoubtedly there was a time when he might have been blessed—or
plagued—with kin.

At eventide—maybe it would define the hour better to say as dusk settled
on the hills and hollows surrounding my Aunt’s home, making the hollows
thick with semi-darkness—girls, in twos and threes, began coming in—in
all about a baker’s dozen. That spirit medium had made the rounds
spreading the news of my arrival. The girls were too nearly the same
age—sweet sixteen—to be of one family. They were my relatives — or maybe
just relatives of my relatives. They were all cousins. I asked one of
the girls where had they all come from? She said, “Just over the east
hill—apiece.” It was a steep hill.

The Lovell home, a double structure with the usual open spacious gallery
separating the apartments—a typical Southern home—was near the junction
of Buffalo creek on the north and a deep gulch between high wooded
hills, flowing in from the south. The building spot, about the size of
an ordinary town lot, had been leveled off some fifteen feet above the
wash, with the west end of the dwelling resting on piles reaching down
almost to the water level. To the east, the hill above the flattened
space, was so steep and high that the sun did not» shine on the house
until after ten o’clock. A cook-house stood in the yard about thirty
feet south of the dwelling where family meals were prepared—presumedly
by a colored cook.

Here, I must explain.

After I had returned home, I learned that my Aunt Nancy had written my
Aunt Harriet advising her to get rid of her Negro cook for the duration
of my visit. Whatever possessed her to do this, I wouldn’t know—there
was, in fact, no justification for it. I had no reason to be prejudice
of Negroes. On the contrary, I may say I “owe my life” to a Negro —
my mother said he was the blackest Negro she had ever seen—for having
rescued me from the river after I had fallen off the deck of the boat,
when coming to Kansas from Tennessee. I was about four years old—and
still wearing dresses, in the fashion of the times. I was told that the
Negro said he had saved my mother’s little darling girl. I didn’t like
to be called a “little girl”—either with or without the “darling”—but
this was no cause for me to forever dislike the colored folk.

Might say I was nearly six years old before I got my first pants—and
even then I didn’t wear them regularly. They were knee pants—in style,
which style endured for a long time. I knew one young fellow in Wetmore
who wore his knee-pants right up to his wedding day. When I first began
howling for pants, my mother said I was lucky she hadn ’ t dressed me
in a flour sack, with holes cut out for head and arms, like Preacher
Wamyer’s kids had been clothed, in our neighborhood. But the joke was,
she did not happen to have a flour sack, and she said that in this
God-for-saken country she was not likely to have one for ages. My mother
made me shirts with long tails — and when around home out there in the
sticks, in hot weather, I would not bother with the britches. I recall
the time mother took me with her to a quilting at the home of one of the
Porter women—it might have been at the home of Kate Evans, wife of Bill
Evans, the famous old stage-driver; but more likely it was the home of
Amanda Ann Watson, widow, who later married Brown Ellet. Johnny Bill
Watson, a red headed, freckled face boy about my age, played rough,
making it plenty hot for me. I pulled off my pants, went into the house,
and threw my britches onto the quilting frame—greatly humiliating my
mother, and creating uproarous laughter from the women.

Well, you know, I didn’t see a “Nigger” or even hear one mentioned
during my visit at my Aunt Harriet’s home, That cook house was the one
place not exploited. But somehow the meals got cooked—tempting meals
just like my mother used to cook—and I suspect by Auntie Lovell’s
regular colored woman, after the Cullom technique.

The smoked ham, produced and cured on the place, was the best I
have ever eaten. Uncle and Auntie’s 200-acre farm lay in irregular
boundaries—likely described by chains and links zig-zagging between
blazed trees—for two miles up and down Buffalo creek. Uncle John showed
me the limestone ledge protruding over the north bank of the creek,
which sheltered his hogs at such times as they would come home to spend
the night—and feed on perhaps the first “bar’l” of corn produced on a
near-by clearing. The hogs came home only at such times as the “mast”
was insufficient. This combination made for cheap pork—and delicious
hams.

I had recently been in Texas—and because of that trip to the Lone Star
state, I had a message from a relative to a relative to be delivered
in Nashville. Here again I should explain. On learning that I planned a
trip to Galveston ten days hence, my Aunt Nancy Porter asked me to stop
off at Dallas and call on a relative—a Cullom of the Tennessee tribe.
I believe his name was Jerry. But if he were not Jerry, he was a close
relative. When I called at Mr. Cullom’s real estate office in Dallas, I
was told he had gone to Galveston. I went on to Galveston, and dismissed
all thought of seeing my relative. I went out to the beach, and
while strolling on the sands—on the gulf side of the sea-wall — among
hundreds, perhaps thousands of other strollers, fell in with a friendly
man. He told me he was from Dallas, and I told him that I was from
Wetmore,„Kansas. He said, quickly, “Did you say Wetmore? Reckon you
might know my cousin Nan Porter, there.” And I said, “Then, I reckon
you know that my Aunt Nancy asked me to stop off at Dallas, and call on
you.” He grabbed my hand, saying with real Tennessee accent, “Mr. John
Bristow, I’m powerful proud to meet you.” Again, I may be wrong. It
could have been the Texas accent. In the course of our conversation
I told Cousin Cullom that I would be going to Nashville for the
Centennial, and he said likely he would go, too. The message from him
was for my Aunt Tennessee Cullom-Clark, mother’s sister, living in North
Nashville.

I may say I’m “powerful proud” that my meddlesome letter-writing Aunt
Nancy took it upon herself to notify our Texas cousin of my intended
visit. That rather unusual chance meeting is paralleled by another
chance meeting — which opens the way for bringing into this writing my
distinguished Kansas cousin. I had an engagement to meet J.L.Bristow at
the Eldridge Hotel in Lawrence, when he was Fourth Assistant Postmaster
General — later, U. S. senator from Kansas. He was of my father’s branch
of the Virginia and Tennessee Bristows, a third cousin to me, and up
to this time we had never met. He was billed as principal speaker at
a Republican rally in the Bowersock Opera House that night. Upon my
arrival in Lawrence about noon, I discovered he was registered at
the Eldridge House—but I could not locate him. I went out to the
Kansas-Nebraska football game, and got a seat by a man who seemed to be
deeply interested in the game. We conversed in an off-hand way when
he was not up on his toes rooting for the Kansas team. From the
conversation I inferred that he was a newspaper man, like myself. But,
unlike myself, he was a college man. Not being a college man, I could
not get interested in the game. It was brutal. When we had fetched up
at the Eldridge House, this football enthusiast—now surrounded by
politicians—said to me. “I am told by the clerk here that you were
looking for me, and it seems you failed recognize a relative when you
had found him.” He was my man.

Might say I first learned of my Kansas cousin when he was owner and
publisher of the Salina Daily Republican, and I was publishing the
Wetmore Spectator. A Kansas City printing firm addressed a letter to
J. L. Bristow, Wet-more, Kansas—one initial off from my own. It was
delivered to me. The contents of the letter showed that it should have
been sent to the other newspaper man in Salina. I mailed it to him. He
came back promptly wanting to know from whom did I get my name? One more
exchange letters told us both exactly who we were. We both claimed kin
to old Ben — of Virginia, Kentucky, and New York fame—though I do
not now recall his specialty. But it’s a safe bet it had to do with
politics. My father was a first cousin of J. L.’s father, a Methodist
minister, living in Baldwin, Kansas. My illustrious cousin Joseph has
climbed high up the ladder of political fame — and who knows his limit?
I shall not lose track of him.

After I would have returned from Pensacola, Florida, and spent a day
in Nashville with Uncle Tom and Aunt Irene Cullom, and their three
daughters, cousins Lora, Clevie, and Myrtle, it was planned to give a
party for me at Aunt Harriet’s country home, the day set for one week
hence — when they “allowed” they really would show me some Tennessee
girls. Here, I think my Wetmore Auntie had been meddling in my behalf
once again. Well, no matter. If it was meant that the girls at the
coming party would grade upwards in looks from the first showing,
it surely would be worth coming back for. Cousin Maggie Lovell, a
fifteen-year-old beauty, told me the girls would turn themselves loose
at the party—and, she said, “The woods are full of ‘em.” The girls of
the advance showing had been rather on the reserved order—I might say
very lady-like. Still, I imagine there were missies in that group who
would have been pleased to start something. Also, I imagine they were
the flower of the flock.

All Southern girls at that time were supposed to be pretty. The climate,
and the care in which the girls were taught to shield their faces from
the sun was believed to make for superior beauty. My mother said that in
her day no girl would ever think of going out without her sun-bonnet.

Admittedly, the South is blessed with some extremely beautiful girls.
But, after extensive searching, may I say that—exempting cousins of
course—I did not find it overwhelmingly so. I am convinced that it takes
something more than climate and ribbed sun-bonnets to turn the trick;
and that the South has no monopoly on this something. Also, I further
find that the strikingly beautiful girl is, like -prospector’s gold,
where you find her. And for my money give me the sun-kissed girl from
the wide-open Kansas range.

Unfortunately, I was called home, and did not have the pleasure of
attending the party—and was compelled to send regrets, from Nashville,
by mail. Also, I missed the chance to see Jim Spain call up the spirits.
But then it was only a half promise. When I asked Jim if he would hold
a seance for me, he said, “Reckon I might—but generally I aim to do it
only for the hill folks.”

“But,” I said, “you fooled my mother and my Aunt Nancy when they were
down here not so long ago.” He said “Yes—I did. But you know they grew
up here in the South where most everybody believes in ghosts.

“My mother used to tell us kids that there was no such thing as a
ghost—but she said it in such a dispirited way as to cause me, as young
as I was, to doubt if she fully believed her own words.

I grew up in a generation which talked freely, pro and con, about
ghosts. And, believe it or not, I have actually seen Erickson’s
ghost—that is, until the apparition faded away into something tangible,
as “ghosts” always do if given time. There was a time here when I — and
other youngsters of like caliber—looked for Erickson’s ghost in every
dark corner. And I think that if I should even now go through the woods
on the old Hazeltine farm adjoining town, at night, as I often did in
the early days, I would involuntarily keep an eye peeled for the ghost
of Jim Erickson, a murderer and suicide, of May 10, 1873—buried, without
benefit of clergy, mourners, or even regulation coffin — on top a high
hill just south of town. To mention only one of the several proclaimed
haunted houses—which always go hand in hand with ghosts—Jim Erickson’s
ghost cut up a good many capers here in the early days, particularly
where “it” was often “seen” on the margin of the big swamp lying between
town and the high hill. Let there come a foggy night someone was sure
to say: “Erickson’s ghost will stalk tonight.” A party of three young
couples—boys and girls — set out one night to trap old Jim, or whatever
it was that haunted a vacant house of many rooms, which sat on a high
hill near the swamp—but, would you believe it, they were disturbed by
another couple who had preceded them—and all fled the scene in a rout.
Actually, some brave people — grown-up’s—positively refused to venture
south of the creek on foggy nights. It’s not a promise—but I may, at
some future date, write the Erickson story for the Spectator readers.

And I can well believe Jim Spain had the situation as to ghosts stalking
among the oldsters of his generation in the South sized up correctly.
However, the bright kids of today should never be troubled with any such
hallucinations.

No, kids—truly, there is no such thing as a ghost. My mother told me so.

NOTE—Cousin Bill Porter recently visited Nashville, and was told
that Jim Spain (having died in cousin Margaret Lovell-Ezell’s home in
Nashville in 1948, aged 84) is only a memory down there now.

And what a memory!

CAREFUL PLANNING When still very young, Donna Cole—in our home—had eaten
an apple and was nibbling the core. My wife said to her niece, “Oh,
oh—child, you must not eat that core.” Donna smiled, and taking another
bite, said, “Ain’t goin’ be no core.”

At another time, the wife and I were visiting in the Locknane home in
Topeka—and Myrtle had taken Donna along with us, at the suggestion of
Coral, who said they would try to get her pictured in the Sunday Daily
Capital. Well, they did that easily. Donna was deservedly given a top
position—a standout picture—among other youngsters. Myrtle and Coral
were very proud of this—and Donna “rode high” during our stay.

The Locknanes had a fine home, neatly, though not lavishly furnished—and
a “hired girl”; a Cadillac car, and a colored chauffeur.

Along with all her gayety, Donna did a little sound thinking. She
whispered. “How can they beford all this, Aunt Myrtle?”

RED RIFLEMEN Published in Wetmore Spectator,

Feb. 7, 1936—and in

Seneca Courier-Tribune’s Historical Edition.

By John T. Bristow

It was early autumn far back in the pioneer days. The wood which this
story opens was one of the largest stands big trees in Northeast Kansas.
It was bordered on the high slopes with sumac, hazelbrush, and tall
grass. The trees had not yet fully shed their leaves.

An Indian, blanketed, with a long rifle swung across withers of his
buckskin pony, detached himself from the band of rovers and rode
straight to the place where my father and I stood, under a great oak
tree, frozen to the spot. A foreboding stillness pervaded the oak grove.
I was terribly frightened. Somehow the idea had formed in my young head
that the Indians would not kill children; that they carried them off
alive, along with the scalps of adult whites.

About that time frequent accounts of Indian depredations had filtered in
from the west — gruesome, hellish, blood-curdling stories they were.

A tribe of Indians lived then, as now, on a reservation only eight
miles away. The fact that those Kickapoos were considered civilized and
peaceable did not register in this all boy’s mind—nor even in some adult
minds.

My father, William Bristow, was reared in the heavily wooded sections of
Kentucky and Tennessee, where, in his day, the gun and the “hound-dog”
were man’s dearest possessions. I knew that he was a crack rifle-shot;
that he could, without doubt, hold his own with the advancing redman—but
not against that band of savages lurking in the background. Wrapped in
flaming blood-red blankets, those Indians, silent and sinister, with the
long barrels of their rifles sticking up like telegraph poles, looked as
if they might be making ready to go on the warpath.

Closer and closer came the Indian. And why the devil didn’t my father
shoot? Was he going to let that redskin take his scalp? In a fit of
panic I dodged behind the big oak tree; and then just as suddenly I
popped out again and backed up my father by clutching his trousers legs
from behind. It is surprising what amount of terror can flit through a
small boy’s mind in so short a time.

In a flash I reviewed again the fate of the German girls, orphaned and
stolen by the Indians. All oldtimers here will recall that the German
girls—Kate, Sophia, Addie, and Julia—after being rescued from the
Indians, became wards of the Government and were placed in the home of
Pat Corney, who lived for many years on Wolfley creek. Their ages ranged
from six to seventeen years when rescued. They were filthy dirty—grimy,
without clothes. When the two younger girls were brought to the Corney
home—the other two were recovered later—the old Irishman exclaimed: “For
God’s sake, Louisa, get a tub of water and a bar of soap!”

Also, about this time—probably a few years earlier — our townsman, Andy
Maxwell, after leaving Wetmore to take up his home in the West, was
besieged for three days by Sioux and Nez Perce Indians. With Andy were
Mrs. Maxwell — his sister-in-law — his daughter May, and four men. They
were traveling out of Miles City, Montana, in covered wagons. The
story of this Indian encounter had filtered back to Wetmore where Andy
Maxwell’s mother, a brother, and two sisters still lived. According
to the report, Maxwell and his men took their stand in a small timber
tract, on three sides of which were deep gullies. Owing to this
advantageous position the Indians could not follow their customary
tactics of circling the whites. They skulked. And whenever an Indian
would get near enough, he would be picked off by the white man’s bullet.
Maxwell and his men killed eight Indians. Two of the white men were
severely wounded. May got an arrow through her foot; Andy lost a lock of
his hair and had his face grazed by a bullet. Mrs. Maxwell was shot in
the arm. The party lost twenty-six oxen. Andy Maxwell now lives at Santa
Ana, California.

I have mentioned these two Indian incidents briefly, merely to give the
reader some idea as to what was, and might have been, flashing through
my mind at that tense moment—and for their historic value. Also other
Indian pictures assailed me. That awful moment will stand out in my
memory while life lasts.

My father said not a word, and to be sure I could not read his
reactions. I knew only that he had been harboring a fine mess of mixed
emotions at the moment when the Indians appeared.

Mark this well.

“How!” greeted the Indian as he drew rein. He slid off his pony and
surveyed the surroundings quickly. At edge of the clearing his redskin
companions, departing from their single-file formation, sitting on their
ponies, went into a huddle not unlike modern collegiate intelligentsia
on a gridiron.

Though it may be said that the Indian’s mission was of rather urgent
nature, let us leave him standing here by the side of his pony while I
tell you how my father and I happened to be caught in this embarrassing
predicament.

For some reason, undoubtedly well grounded, the owner of that timber
forbade hunting on his premises. Nevertheless, on one occasion, that ban
was lifted in promise, if not in reality—and therein lies the nucleus of
this tale.

One day while on a friendly call at the shoeshop in Wetmore, John
Wolfley granted permission to my father to shoot squirrels in his
timber, though he made it plain that this was to be considered a special
favor, because of old friendship. My father and John Wolfley, the senior
John, were among the first settlers in this country. They came before
the railroads, before the towns in this section—in the log cabin days.
The towns then were strung along the old land or military road passing
five miles north of here. As compared with highways of the present
day, it was not a road. It was but a rut, a serpentine streak of dust
spanning the great plains, crossing the mountains—and on to California.
Yet, it carried immense traffic—stage, pony express, commerce — and was
a celebrated thoroughfare. Many notables passed this way. U. S. Grant,
Horace Greeley, Mark Twain. And although of no particular moment here, I
might add that I, myself, came into this country over the Old Trail at a
time when traffic was near its peak.

It was, therefore, in considerable blitheness of spirit that on one fine
October day my father and I “hoofed it” five miles up Spring creek to
the Wolfley timber. We were going to a choice and restricted hunting
grounds, on invitation of the owner—a favor granted no one else.

My father shot a squirrel. The report of his gun, heard by the owner of
the place who was in the timber gathering down-wood—sometimes in the old
days called squaw wood — brought a vigorous protest from a half-hidden
spot across the creek.

“Get out!” the angry voice shouted.

My father was not disturbed. Not then. He even laughed a little. And
I fear his voice was charged with rather too much mirth when he called
back across the stream, “Why, John, don’t you know me?”

Like a flash of lightning came back the ultimatum, “I don’t care if
you are General Grant, you can’t hunt in my timber!” So that was that—a
sorry situation for two old friends to impose upon themselves.

My father told me we would leave the Wolfley timber by the shortest
route. Leaving the dead squirrel on the ground where it had fallen, he
started off at once with the stride of one bent upon urgent enterprise,
muttering incoherent but indubitably uncomplimentary things about his
late friend. It is such breaches of friendship, as this seemed to be,
that cause men to talk to themselves.

Sometimes, however, what we consider a calamity proves to be a blessing
in disguise. That was true in this case. And the breach, which loomed
so menacingly on the horizon at the moment, instead of impairing a fine
friendship was the indirect cause of making it everlasting.


Even as my father hastened away, the Invisible Hand was working in his
favor. Had there been no interruption, he would have continued on his
course as mapped out, up the creek, and the providential thing which was
very soon to take place would have miscarried. Here I want to interpose
a paragraph—maybe two, or more—to show how welcome this providential
thing that was now about to enter my father ’ s life.

A shoemaker with a family rather too large to support in comfort even
in normal times, was my father—a slaving man who, like so many others
in those pioneer days, had nearly reached the limit of his endurance.
In this new country everyone was directly, or indirectly, dependent upon
the products of the soil. Those were the days of Texas long-horn cattle
and ten cent corn—when there was corn. Those were the days when snows
driven by winter’s howling blasts across the open prairies piled high
in the streets and country lanes and cut off all communications with the
outside world for weeks at a time. At such times we would burn corn for
fuel. Well do I remember the superior warmth of those corn-fed fires.
They were life-savers for those who were compelled to live in the open,
wind-blown homes of that day.

There was land to be had for the taking, but my father thought he could
not afford to take it. Without capital to stock the free grass range,
the pioneer farmer could not hope to make more than a bare living. And
when crops failed for lack of moisture, as they too often did in the
early days before the country became seasonable for the production of
grain, all suffered.

That was pioneer Kansas! That was “Droughty Kansas! ” That was “Bleeding
Kansas!” It was not the Kansas of today—barring, of course, the year
1934, and maybe with apologies for 1935.

Then, before that providential find was to bear fruit, two outstanding
reverses visited appalling hardships upon an already discouraged
peoples. The lingering effects of the great money panic of 1873 was the
cause of much distress. There was no such thing as Federal aid then,
and everyone here was on his own. However, the East did contribute
some bacon and a quantity of cast-off clothing, including plug hats and
Prince Albert coats—useful in some cases, but generally scorned by the
needy people.

That money panic was brought on by the collapse of the Jay Cooke
brokerage houses in three eastern cities. Cooke, a nationally known
promoter, was financing the building of the Northern Pacific railroad,
and had made too many advances.

It may be of interest here, especially in Nemaha and Jackson counties
and possibly throughout all Northeast Kansas, to know that, later,
through an unprotected brokerage partnership in the National Capitol
with that wizard of finance, a former resident of Wetmore township,
Green Campbell, who had come into local and national prominence by
reason of his sensational rise to affluence as principal owner of the
famous Horn Silver mine at Frisco, Utah, dropped a cool million of his
mine-made dollars in the aftermath of that failure.

After he had failed, Jay Cooke, still the promoter par-excellence,
secured a railroad for Green Campbell’s mine. Later, after he had sold
his mine, Campbell went to Washington as delegate to Congress from Utah.
Still later Campbell joined Cooke there in the brokerage business. With
new money in the firm, Cooke’s old creditors swooped down upon Campbell
like a swarm of bees. And they stung him hard. His first check was drawn
for nine hundred thousand dollars! However, there was no time after
selling the Horn Silver mine that Green Campbell was not a rich man.
Green Campbell endowed a college at Holton, Kansas, bearing his name. His
old homestead was in the southwest part of Wetmore township. It is now
owned and occupied by August Krotzinger.

Then there was the year 1874—a blank year with its train of blighted
hopes that socked the whole populace still deeper down into the slough
of despond. Following a season of scanty production, the crops that
year, in the spring and up to mid-summer, showed signs of fulfillment.
Then came the usual anxious period—dry, windy, scorching days, And hope,
that had sprung in the tired hearts of the farmers commenced to die as
they looked with anxiety on the drooping crops. The people prayed for
rain. They watched for clouds. Then, out of the northwest there came a
cloud—a black cloud, a menacing cloud, that was to blot out all renaming
hope.

It was a rain of pests—a deluge of grasshoppers! Like the plagues of
old they descended upon us. And they greedily devoured every growing
thing—corn, grass, weeds, foliage of the trees—leaving in their wake a
barren waste and a woefully impoverished lot of people. After devouring
every edible thing, and gnawing on pitchfork handles and axe handles —
for salt deposited by sweaty hands — the hoppers deposited eggs in the
ground, and then perished with the coming of cold weather. The
young hoppers in the spring of 1875 cleaned up the farmer’s first
plantings—but on a day, at noon, late in June they rose up as a cloud
blotting out the sun from the earth as they winged their way to greener
pastures—where, nobody here knew.

Now we have left the Indian standing there by the side of his pony for
a long time. But the Indian doesn’t mind. Not our Kickapoo, anyway. And,
as a stickler for the truth, for accuracy of detail, I will admit
that my deductions, my fears, did not coincide with the facts as later
developed; that, in the language of the street and as my father said of
me at the time out there in the wood—literally, I was “all wet.”

That Indian was not an emissary of destruction, rather, he was, after
the manner of the wise one of his peoples, a maker of good medicine. My
father’s great haste to get away from the Wolfley timber had been halted
by a clump of black oak trees. There were two holes in a large limb
of the great oak under which the Indian found us standing. The Indian
looked up into the tree. “Long time go Indian’s tomahawk make holes,” he
said. “Maybe catchum coon,” He shifted his beady black eyes to another
part of the tree, and exclaimed, “Seeum squirrel!”

My father had hot noticed the holes in the limb, nor the squirrel which
the Indian saw flattened out on a branch high up in the tree. To my
father, that tree presented far more interesting possibilities. Before
interrupted, his thoughts had, more or less, shifted from the man
who had treated him so shabbily and had carried him back to the sunny
Southland, to the evergreen hills of his boyhood home. There he had
successfully operated a tannery—successfully, until the Civil War put
him out of business.

The tree my father was now viewing was a huge black oak. It was
surrounded by more of its kind. At any time the sight of a black oak
attracted him. Black oak bark was the agency he employed in making
leather in his Tennessee tannery. He longed to get back into the
business. There were other black oaks in the country; yet he questioned
if there were enough to justify the establishment of a tannery here. He
was constantly on the lookout for a substitute for making leather.

Pointing to the boots he himself wore, my father told the Indian that
his interest in that tree was because the bark of the black oak was used
in making leather. Also, noticing that the Indian was wearing moccasins
and other deerskin raiment under his blanket, my father asked him what
the Indians used for tanning. The Indian became thoughtful and finally
said something that sounded like “Sequaw.” But that was worse than Greek
to my father.

It is fitting that I pause here to pay tribute to one of those little
borderlets mentioned in the opening paragraph. Resplendent in its
lofty setting that little borderlet, and its kind, possessed priceless
properties. Henceforth it becomes golden thread in the woof and warp
of this tale. As with the lovely Claudette Colbert and her coca-cola
tidings, this is, in a manner, “the pause that refreshes.” And so being,
it is with memorable pleasure that I now salute the sumac! It was my
father’s salvation.

Back in the Wolfley timber, my father told the Indian the owner did not
permit hunting on his premises—that he, the tanner, was not interested
in the squirrel.

“Me shoot ‘im,” said the Indian. The long barrel of his rifle pointed
upwards—a sharp crack, and the squirrel fell the ground, shot through
the head. The Indian picked up the squirrel, and then holding it out to
the frightened little boy, said, “Take.”

Without more ceremony the Indian rode away. He was gone only a few
minutes. When he returned he was holding in his hand a branch of
sumac. “Sequaw,” he said again. There were but a few belated red leaves
clinging to the stem. “Catchum ‘fore go red,” he offered when he saw the
leaves shattering in my father’s hands.

The Indian’s sharp eyes surveyed the black oak again. He looked at
the branch of sumac, saying “Makum buck-kin.” He hesitated. Then said,
“Maybe killum deer ‘fore Sun go way. Maybe two suns. You seeum deer?”

My father told the Indian—whom he then and there named Eagle Eye—that
he had not seen the deer which those redmen were trailing. Those Indians
who had remained in the background were trying to conceal a deer which
one of them had swung across his pony as they went into that huddle.

The deer, more numerous in earlier days, had been pretty well killed out
by this time. Though, as late as 1880, I, myself, shot a deer on
that same run. Also I recall having seen one band of antelope, that
fleet-footed little animal of deer family which could outrun the wind
even in its then unhampered sweep across the prairies. I was too young
to identify the little ruminants, but my father said they were antelope,
and he was a hunter of the Daniel Boone type—in fact had hunted in Dan’s
old territory, and he knew his game.

Here I will say the Indian, Na-che-seah, was the leader of that hunting
party. He was tall, lithe, and straight as an arrow. In later years,
with generous expansion of body, he was known as Big Simon. He died May
27, 1934. As I looked upon the still form of this good Indian, in his
wigwam, on the day of the funeral, my mind drifted back across the
years to the time of our first meeting—but instead of fear, it was now
reverence that gripped me. Big Simon was a man of authority among the
Indians for a great many years—though, contrary to newspaper reports,
he was never chief. About his age, Big Simon would say, “Hundred years,
maybe. Don’t know.” With the passing of Big Simon, Commodore Cat is the
sole surviving member of the old, old tribe. He too may have been one of
those blanketed redmen back there on that deer trail six decades ago.

The redman’s medicine was an invigorating tonic for my father’s
frayed spirits. It seemed like God had sent that Indian just at the
psychological moment — when my father’s depressed spirits needed
bolstering so very much, when an anodyne for his ills was to be had by
the blending of two agencies for making leather. Though he had never
up to this time regarded it as a commercial agency, my father knew
of course that sumac contained tannin. If the Indians could tan their
deerskins with it, he reasoned, why couldn’t he mix it with oak bark and
tan his calfskins?

I shall always believe that it was something more than blind chance that
brought the paths of white man and red man together at that particular
spot. Undoubtedly, the Great Spirit was in control. The movements of the
Indians up to that time were of course dark, but timed just right. And
praise be, there were Indians—amongst them an Indian like Eagle Eye, who
could make himself understood. The big break for my father was in the
sumac patch close at hand.

After ten years absence from his old haunts and the business he loved
so well, the fire in my father’s blood had cooled. Now he felt the old
flame leap. The black oaks and the sumacs beckoned. And to his eager
nostrils rose the odor of a tanyard.

Almost at once after that meeting with the Indian, still nosing a
tannery, my father was hot on the trail. With the characteristics of a
thoroughbred, he doggedly followed his lead, picking up new hope as
he went at almost every jump, into the woods of three counties. In a
particularly fine stand of wood over in Jackson county, he “treed” his
quarry. Looking up into the trees, his senses all aflame with eagerness,
and I might say standing on his hind legs — upright anyhow — he barked,
“Eureka!”

Then, having gone there on invitation of the owner to view those fine
black oaks, standing tall, with their big boles close together, he said
more rationally, but still with considerable enthusiasm, “It ’ s enough!
By God I’ll have that tannery now!”

My father had now declared quite emphatically, though perhaps a bit
inelegantly, that he would establish a tannery here in Wetmore. It was
not idle talk. He experimented, and in due time the tannery was a going
concern. Not immediately, however. Capital had to be provided, and it
took time to bring materials. The tannery was an “open” yard in the
bend of the creek just west of where the town bridge is now—a sort of
makeshift affair, operated only in the summer months. But in one respect
it was regular. It had the tanyard smell.

The black oak-sumac mixture made a fine grade of leather—much
better than leather made with straight oak bark, and superior to the
present-day chemically tanned leather. My father tanned only calfskins.
His surplus stock was sold to L. Kipper & Sons, wholesale dealers,
Atchison, Kansas.

I want to say here that those inviting black oaks, earlier mentioned,
made it easy for my father to graciously accept his friend’s apology,
on the plea of forgetfulness—and when he went to deal for the trees John
Wolfley said, “Why, yes, of course you may have them. You know, Bristow,
much as I prize my trees, I couldn’t refuse an old friend like you.”
He glanced toward me, and now I’ll swear there were mirthful crinkles
playing about the man’s eyes.

The black oaks were cut in the spring when the sap was up, then the bark
was spudded off the trunks of the trees. All available black oaks within
a radius of twenty-five miles of Wetmore were cleaned up in three years.
The last tan-bark came from the Wingo farm near Soldier, twenty miles
away—wagon haul. That was considered a long haul in those days. The
roads here then were no more than winding trails across country,
radiating in every direction from town, like the spokes in a
wagon-wheel. And there were almost no bridges. The creeks were forded.

The sumac — that innocent little flaming bush, over which young and
inexperienced writers are wont to revel — was cut with corn-knives and
left spread on the ground until dry. The leaves were then stripped off
the stems with a little corn-sheller, the kind that fastened on the
hand. The sumac stems were drawn through the closed shelter and the
leaves were caught upon a large canvas. Like harvesting tanbark, that
was work which had to be done in season—not too soon, not too late.

The time to get busy was when the sumac began to show a tinge of
coloring late in the summer, after maturity. But, as the Indian had
said, when the big splash came — when the sumac thickets took on a
blaze of coloring, that dark crimson hue, as if Nature had spilled the
life-blood of the waning summer to glorify the last minute splendor of
its passing—it was then time to quit. The leaves would no longer remain
on the stems to carry through the drying process. Yes! That was it!
“Catchum ‘fore go red!”

My father made Eagle Eye a pair of boots with leather tanned by the new
process. He gave them to the Indian, Eagle Eye wanted to pay for them.
He had Government money and he had ponies. When money was refused, he
thought a pony would be about right. Maybe two, three or even a herd of
ponies would not be too much. But my father said, “No, just bring me a
deerskin sometime.”

The Indian brought him a green buffalo hide. At that time all swell
turnouts—horse and buggy conveyances — included a buffalo robe. When, in
time, the hide had been tanned and made up, my father found himself
in the rather awkward position of owning a buffalo robe without the
turn-out. But even so it was not a worthless treasure. On cold, stormy,
winter nights—they were bitter cold then—it served as an extra bed
coverlet for a quarter of a dozen of his boys, with, at times, an
additional neighbor boy or two thrown in for good measure.

Buffalo were quite plentiful only a hundred miles or so west of here
then. But our Kickapoos did not often venture west of the Blue River.
Hostile Indians roamed that territory. The Pawnees were the worst
Indians the whites had to contend with on the old Overland Trail
between the Big Blue and Fort Kearney. Eagle Eye’s gift was all the more
appreciated because he had braved the hostile Pawnees to get a suitable
present for his “Paleface” friend.

The boots my father made for the Indian were of the tongue pattern,
with morocco tops and small high heels. The tops were scalloped with
half-moons over red sheepskin. A big red heart was fashioned in the top
front. Eagle Eye was very proud of his boots. They were, I believe, the
first boots to be worn on the reservation.

But, in time, one of those boots ripped. The side seam gaped near the
ankle. The Indian had been walking through wet grass when he came to the
shop to get the rip sewed up. He tried to pull his boot off. It stuck
tight. My father did not have a bootjack. He always said he did not like
to have his perfectly fashioned boot-counters ruined by the use of a
boot-jack. He had a better way.

My father turned his back to the Indian, and told Eagle Eye to stick
his boot between his—the shoemaker’s—legs and push with the other foot.
“Harder, push harder!” cried the human boot-jack. When the boot finally
came off, a first-class shoemaker took a header into a pile of lasts and
other rubbish in the corner of the room. He came up with a skinned nose.

The Indian—who had now come to call himself Eagle Eye when in the
presence of my father—did not, of course get any kick out of hurting his
“paleface” friend, but it was plain to be seen that pleasant thoughts
were engaging him. An Indian laughs rarely, if ever—not the old
Indians two generations back, anyway. But he had his moments of extreme
pleasure.

When the rip was repaired, the Indian had a hard time getting his
water-soaked boot back on. My older brother, Charley, said to me, “Eagle
Eye will have to sleep with his boots on tonight.” The Indian heard. His
copper-colored face again registered anticipated pleasure. He actually
smiled a bit as if he saw real humor in the thing.

“Huh!” he grunted, as he raised his foot and thrust it to the fore with
much vigor, “Pushum squaw maybe! Heap fool squaw all time say Eagle Eye
not smart!”

A TWOTIMER We were having company for supper. Little Dorothy Bristow.
four year old daughter of my brother Frank and wife Cecile, told August
and Hulda Bleisener they need not be afraid of the silver, that she and
her aunt Myrtle had cleaned it that afternoon.

But—hold your laugh.

My wife had put pickled cling peaches on the table. Now, everyone knows
how hard it is to get the meat off a pickled cling peach. I shoved
one into my mouth and was doing the best I could with it when Myrtle,
looking across the table, said with shocked overtone, “Did you put that
whole peach in your mouth?” She of course had not seen August put one in
his mouth—but, no matter, August shot his out onto his plate right now.

TEXAS CATTLE AND RATTLESNAKES Not Hitherto Published—1947.

By John T. Bristow

When harvesting sumac, often barefooted and always barehanded, we boys,
sons of the tanner, had to keep a sharp lookout for rattlesnakes—and
Texas cattle. We were repeatedly so warned by our parents. Also, it was
generally understood that all children should “watchout” for Indians.
This, however, did not greatly disturb us after we had made friends with
Eagle Eye.

Then, one day, while cutting sumac for the tannery, with my brother
Charley, near a timbered ravine three miles out southeast, close to the
Oliver Logue farm, a long-horn steer, out of a large herd, chased me up
a tree early in the afternoon and held me prisoner in the treetop until
the riders, Abe Williams and John Taylor, came to round up the herd for
the night.

I thought that steer would surely butt his horns off, the way he
rammed that six-inch tree. He would back off, paw the ground, shake his
slobbering head, and come snorting at the tree again and again. After
quieting down, he grazed fitfully and frightfully close to the tree—and
he came trotting in several times with something ugly on his bovine
mind, I’m sure. Even now I wonder is it possible for an enraged cowbrute
to have red eyes.

The day herder, at ease, on a ridge a quarter mile to the west—probably
reading a Frank Merriwell baseball story—was letting the herd feed
north, and so long as the cattle did not attempt to go over the rise
to the east, out of sight, Wes Shuemaker would have no occasion to ride
down my way. And it would have been futile for me to have tried to call
him, with a south wind blowing forty-fifty mph.

My brother was safely on the other side of the ravine close to trees,
but he slipped out the back way and went home. I knew he was doing the
right thing. And I knew too that I would remain in the tree until the
arrival of the riders. Those Texas cattle behaved nicely for mounted
men, but they could not abide a person on foot.

I really had no business on that side of the ravine, with those cattle
feeding there—but I guess I was, as always, a little too venturesome. I
knew that herd had some bad actors in it. In fact, I had been warned to
never get off my horse when riding as relief herder of that same herd,
on several occasions. And one time while all alone at the dinner hour
my mount, in jumping a ditch, broke the saddle girth and spilled me on a
rattlesnake infested prairie, amongst those longhorns—with not a tree in
sight.

However, nothing untoward happened. Had my luck been running true to
form, there should have been at least one rattlesnake coiled on the
margin of the shallow ditch into which I squeezed myself, and waited in
misery for the day herder to return. As I lay in the ditch I just had to
recall the time, a short while before, when a rattlesnake, coiled by a
cowpath, struck as I trotted past—barefoot, of course—and got his fangs
hooked in my trouser leg, requiring two wild jumps to dislodge his
snakeship.

The herd was owned by Than Morris and Abe Williams, the latter a brother
of Mrs. Jake Wolfley. Morris and Wolfley were brothers-in-law. John
Taylor, herder, was a son of Hebe Taylor, of Atchison. John Taylor was
later bailiff of the Nemaha county court, in Seneca. And he was the
father of Earl W. Taylor for whom the Seneca American Legion Post was
named. Hebe Taylor also, at one time, ran cattle in the open country
southwest of Wetmore — with Ed. Keggin.

Charley went straight to the Morris general store in Wetmore and
told Than of my predicament, and Morris immediately rounded up two
cowpunchers. John Taylor, working with a herd to the southwest, chanced
to be in town, and rode out with Abe Williams.

The herd had grazed on past my tree-perch. The unruly steer did not
follow, but if the critter was capable of the sound thinking I was
willing to credit him with, “I betcha” he always wished he had. A
good cowhand could play a tune with a cattlewhip on a critter’s rump,
under dead run. And John Taylor was good. He lashed his short-handled
10-foot whip overhead to the steer’s rump, right and left, with rhythmic
timing, making the hair fly with each crack. The steer’s hindparts,
seemingly trying to outrun his foreparts, swung to the right and swung
to the left with clocklike regularity—and he thus wove himself deep into
the herd, bawling “bloody murder.”

When told of John Taylor’s adroitness with the whip, my father said,
“I wouldn’t care to tan his hide”—meaning the steer’s, of course.
While father bought the hides from the lost dead of all those big
herds—sometimes the losses in the early spring were heavy—he tanned only
a few of them. He didn’t like to tan a mutilated hide, nor the hide of a
branded critter—and he wouldn’t tan a grubby murrain hide.

Thus it was, I herded the cattle that produced the hides that made the
leather which I helped make into shoes—all while still in my teens. My
apprenticeship as a shoemaker began by holding a candle for my father to
work by, at night. And if you could think it was not a wearying task for
a sleepy boy, you can think again. The light would have to be shifted
from side to side with each stitch as he sewed the soles on shoes. By
midnight he usually ran out of “endearing” terms by which to bring me to
attention—and he was willing to call it a day. Sometimes my mother
would relieve me of this chore, but too often at such times she would
be engaged in sewing up the side seams of a new boot, with awl and waxed
thread. While I did a lot of repair work satisfactorily, I made out and
out only three pairs of shoes. And though always behind with his orders,
my father very wisely demanded that I make them all to my own measures.

Might add that we boys, sons of the tanner, and other rough and ready
town boys—just to be doing something of our very own—tanned, in the
big leather vats, squirrel hides, coon skins, and, of all things, two
rattlesnake skins. Wes Shuemaker proudly wore the belt made of those
rattlesnake skins for a long time.

Dr. Holland was another Atchison man who, in partnership with his
brother-in-law, Mr. Prunty, of Soldier, ran a large herd southwest of
town. His corral, a 10-acre pine board enclosure, was in the northwest
corner of the Harry Cawood quarter. The land was then owned by Billy
Cline, of Soldier. Where there were no corrals, a night herder would
have to stay with the cattle.

The Bradford spring—now known as the Joe Pfrang spring—gushing up from a
hilltop, was the main attraction for those early day cattlemen. Just how
the free range was divided up to carry several individual herds, without
clashing, I do not know—but there were no cattle feuds, and no gunplay.

NOTE—The values in cattle, as with everything else, ran low in the old
days. An instance: In 1861, Bill Porter had a hard time raising money
to pay taxes on two quarters of land. Unable to borrow $7.20, the
troublesome amount, he walked and led a big fat cow to Leavenworth, and
sold her for $7.50. In marked contrast, Garrett Bartley of Powhattan,
son-in-law of Bill Porter, the second, reports a neighbor of his
recently sold a 2,000 pound cow on the St. Joseph market for $540.00.
I think the herds corralled here and grazed around the Bradford spring
were bought for as little as $5 to $8 per head. This year—1950—Joe
Pfrang, present owner of the Bradford spring and surrounding acres,
bought, in May, a bunch of 700-pound steers for approximately $160.00
each—and after running them on pasture, the same wild grass, with some
acres now planted to tame grass, sold them in the fall off grass, for an
average of $270.00; a gain of about $110.00 per head. These steers were
Texas-bred cattle, too. But they were not “longhorns.” Herefords never
are. And likely the Pfrang 1,000-pound steers, out of the feed lot, with
300 pounds added weight, would have sold for about $487.50 each. It was
a great year for the cattlemen. Beefsteak in the old days in Wetmore was
ten cents a pound for the best cuts.

There were, however, some angry threats between the cattlemen and Old
Morgan, an outsider, who had run in four thousand sheep on them. I
helped shepherd that flock, And I discovered early that by looping a
pebble in the cracker end of my cattle-whip, and sending it over them a
little to the outside of the straying sheep that I could bring them
back into the fold without effort. Also, the singing noise of the pebble
thrown over the flock would divide the sheep into two bunches. I really
became quite good at this thing, and played with the discovery a lot
— until one day when the missile did not sail true, and a sheep had to
hobble home on three legs. We were in the hills south of the creek. The
poor little lamb got no help until after the flock had passed over
the bridge at the east end of town. Old Morgan usually met us there.
Luckily, he was tuned up properly and did all the talking. He threatened
to sue the township for permitting a hole to remain open in the
bridge. This, I like to think, was the one black mark against my rather
diversified career. A sheep herder in a cattle country rated pretty low.
Cattle would not graze after sheep. I quit Old Morgan before the season
was over.

The cattle herder’s main function was to keep the herds from mixing, and
to keep the cattle clear of the creek-bottom farms and the few isolated
prairie farms; and also to keep them out of mischief in general, such as
running down careless boys—and free of dogs. A dog could always start a
stampede. And a cattle stampede was something to be dreaded, in the old
days. When those Texas cattle and dogs mixed there was sure to be loud
bellowings and a great clashing of hoofs and horns. I have a clear
picture of my Uncle Nick’s herd of longhorns, after running themselves
down, milling about on the range adjacent to his Wolfley creek
farm—milling in a compact bunch, when one could look out upon a sea of
horns; nothing but horns.

It was quite the thing for local men who had a little cash, or backing,
to take a hand in the cattle game. My Uncle Nick Bristow and Roland Van
Amburg contracted for a large herd of those longhorns from Dr. W.
L. Challis, cattle broker of Atchison. The cattle were fresh from
Texas—brought up over the famed Chisholm trail. Uncle Nick and Van
divided the herd, and after running the cattle on grass, tried to carry
them through a rather severe winter on prairie hay alone. Those fresh
longhorns would not eat corn. The cattle were so weakened by spring that
when turned out on grass they mired down in creeks and water holes all
over the range. They died in bunches, almost to the last head. And while
that cattle deal cost my Uncle his farm, Van said it cost him only
his “britches.” Roland Van Amburg was a grand old sport, with a
great capacity for seeing the “funny” side of life—and up or down,
financially, he was always the same cheery Van.

Other men got out of their Texas cattle speculations less lucky. Dave
Garvin, besides losing a lot of his hard-earned money, had to take
the “rest cure” for nearly a year. However, those who confined their
speculations, within their means, to native-bred cattle made money. John
Thornburrow, starting from scratch, amassed a small fortune. Charley
Hutchison, a mere boy, scion of a wealthy’ brewer family, sent out here
from Ohio to sober up, and put on a section of wild land, made a pile
of money from his herds — and more, he became a teetotaler, a solid,
honorable citizen. Fred Achten, a fifteen dollar a month farm hand,
built the foundation for the Achten Empire, the largest land holdings in
the country, largely on cattle and free grass.

Also, John Rebensdorf, a German farm hand, after marrying Christine
Zabel and settling down, made plenty of money running cattle on free
grass. Rebensdorf was oddly a thrifty man. By no means an inveterate
tippler, he liked, occasionally, to pay for his own beer—and drink it
himself. Time and again I have seen him ride into town, tie his horse at
the rack in the middle of the street in front of the saloon, go in,
and, elbow himself a place at the bar, order three quart bottles of
beer—always three bottles. When he had leisurely emptied the third
bottle he was ready to pipe. “I’ze zee richest man in zee whole
country.” And, at that, the man was not far off in his calculations.

One time, John Rebensdorf and his brother-in-law, Albert Zabel, of
German parentage, were engaged in a spirited argument—on a street
corner, in my hearing — over something which had to do with cattle and
free grass, Albert, a fine Christian gentleman momentarily suffering
a lapse of piety, called Rebensdorf all the fighting names in the
book—that is, all the names that would rile an American, without
perceptibly ruffling him. Albert worked himself up Into a white heat,
but he couldn’t bestir John. Rebenstorf would say, “No, Albert, you
iss wrong.” He repeated this, meekly, several times. Finally, when
Rebensdorf, wearied of the argument, started to walk away, Albert
yelled parting shot, “You old sauerkraut, you know I’m right!” Then “zee
richest man in zee whole country” turned quickly, came blustering back,
shaking his big fat fist, and roared, “By gosh, you call me sauerkraut!
Now I fight!”

Also, the residents would often—that is, in season, cut hay off the
prairie that had been more or less grazed. One summer my brother Sam and
I hauled into town $315.00 Worth, at $2.50 a ton, measured in stack—and
much of this was done at night, by moonlight, owing to high winds making
it impossible to handle the loose hay by day. Owners of cows in town, as
well as in the country, always aimed to have enough hay stored to carry
their stock through the winter, but often the supply was found to be
short, especially when the winters were unusually severe. Then the
speculators who had stored hay against such eventualities, would have an
inning—maybe get $3 or $3.50 a ton, in stack. One especially energetic
man in the Granada neighborhood, with a couple of confederates, put up
an unusual amount of this free hay one season, inside fire breaks—then
a prairie fire in the late winter destroyed all the outstacked hay
belonging to his neighbors. Then bedlam broke loose among the natives.
Still there were no killings.

And, even with all that grazing and mowing there was enough grass left
on the south range to make spectacular prairie fires, racing at times,
all the way to town—and would even sometimes jump the creek and menace
the town.

Here is one more of the many incidents attributable to the free grass
range. Without refrigeration in the early hot summers the farmer’s wives
had difficulty keeping butter made from grass-fed cows fresh until it
could be brought to market. On the whole the women managed exceedingly
well under trying conditions—it was before the day of screens on the
homes—but there were some that didn’t know how, or just didn’t seem to
care.

At that time I was clerking in Than Morris’ store, along with Curt
Shuemaker, George and Chuck Cawood. We had already accumulated a full
barrel of off-grade butter that would have to be sold for soap-grease,
when Morris told us all that should a certain woman bring in butter
again for us to reject it. It so happened that it fell to the lot of the
“cub” clerk to wait on her. Morris and the three other clerks stood by,
grinning. I carried her jar into the side room, and without uncovering
it, brought it back and told the woman we could not buy it. She appealed
to Than, saying, “Mr. Cawood here,” nodding toward me, “took my butter
away and got it all dirty, and now says he won’t buy it.” Morris knew
what to look for—and it was there for all to see. He said, “Look!”
pointing to the uncovered jar, “ Cawood didn’t put those wigglers in
your butter. Don’t bring us any more of that stuff.”

The woman insisted that “Mr. Cawood had dirtied it up”—and Morris paid
in full, gross weight. And she was permitted to take the whole mess back
home, along with her purchases. I was thankful that Morris, in dealing
with her, also called me Cawood—minus the “Mister.”

Still calling me “Mr. Cawood,” this woman later told me she had
rheumatism—that she had, unfortunately, spilled her cooling bucket in
the water well, and that her man would no longer allow her to cool her
butter in the customary way — suspended on a rope deep in the well.
After she had passed on, the second Mrs. L. made good butter—so good in
fact that the town customers called for it by name. But even this could
not correct the damage done to my delicate stomach during that summer
in the Morris store. I have never tasted raw butter since that time. And
with me, after that sheep herding experience, mutton is also taboo. Old
Morgan’s sheep were scabby.

Again, while clerking in the Morris store I was put to the test—and
though this has nothing whatsoever to do with the free grass range, I
am sure you will observe that it is neatly wrapped in fast green. A Miss
Sumerville, a relative of the Zabel’s, visiting in Wetmore—I believe she
was from Pennsylvania—asked for variegated yarn. I told her we didn’t
have that kind, but I would show her what we had. I admit that I was not
very bright on some matters — but at that, I wasn’t as dumb as one of
the standbys that I could have named.

Morris said, “Show her what you have in that drawer over there,”
indicating the drawer holding the variegated yarn. After I had made
the sale, Morris complimented me for selling the little lady a lot of
something she didn’t want. He said, “When you don’t have what they want,
always try to sell them something else.” He henkie-henkie-henkied in
a manner which passed as a derisive laugh. “Keep awake, young man,”
he said, “and you’ll make a salesman in time — maybe as good as Cawood
here,” indicating Chuck.

With George Cox and his two sons, Bill and young George, I helped build
that Holland corral earlier mentioned — and a small bunk house. And it
was here where I mixed it with the rattlesnake I had been admonished
so often to keep a sharp eye out for. Note Note how well young America
obeyed the injunction. I saw the rattlesnake coiled by the roadside as
we were coming in after the day’s work, with ox-team, piloted by a Mr.
Green who had brought the outfit up from Atchison to haul the lumber out
from town. I jumped out of the wagon, and hit the snake with a rock.
It flopped, then lay still. I thought it was dead but to make sure I
prodded it with a stiff prairie weed—and learned pronto that the
stick was a mite too short on one end. That rattler lashed out at me,
overreaching by the fraction of an inch, with its neck or body falling
across my wrist. My hands were scratched and blood-stained from
handling the rough pine boards—fencing came in the rough in those days —
and Mr. Green insisted that he saw the snake bite me “with my own eyes.”
And to prove it, he spotted a snagged place on my hand where he was sure
the snake’s fangs had struck.

Mr. Green crowded those normally slow plodding oxen, and we actually
came to town by fits and spurts on the gallop. He wanted to buy whisky
for me, and seemed awfully distressed when I refused it. He was so
exercised over the matter that one easily could have believed that it
was he who was in need of a generous slug of the stuff — and I’m not so
sure that he didn’t get it. Anyway, I was ready to go out on time the
next morning. Mr. Green was not. And you can bet your life I never again
tried to poke a diamondback with a stick too short on one end.

Incidentally, I may say there were other close calls and near misses—not
to overlook the one August day when a seven-button, (seven-year-old)
rattlesnake actually made a ten-strike on my bare foot. And though
always to me a bit hazy, I can now assure you that this is no dream.
Just why I would stand still by the side of the hole into which I had
poured water in the hope of drowning out a ground squirrel, and watch
that snake slither up through the grass, coil and strike, before going
down the hole, has always been something for me to ponder.

It was said in the old days that snakes would charm their prey—mesmerize
a bird so that it could not fly away. Well, here for once was a
“charmed” fledgling that did “fly” away—too late. The charm was broken
the moment the snake struck, and though I was only six years old, my
brother Charley said I let out a terrific yell, and cleared a wagon road
in one jump. Even now I wonder does one ever get so frightened that both
mind and body refuse to function?

And here is a solemn truth you will likely find hard to believe. For
several years thereafter, come August and dogdays, my right leg would
become spotted like that rattlesnake. In a previous article I told of
this same rattlesnake encounter, and my Aunt Nancy Porter asked me why
didn’t I mention the fact of those recurrent spots? I told her that I
didn’t want to weaken the story with anything hard to swallow, however
true it might be. Then she said, “Well-I, could tell them that it is
true, that your mother—” her sister—”told me that it was the gospel
truth.” And there were no better Baptists than that pair. Still, in this
day of freedom of thought, you can doubt it if you wish — but you would
be wrong.

WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE Little Josephine Cole, not yet three years old,
trying to catch an evasive cat in our home, shocked her Aunt Myrtle
by saying, “Damn that cat.” My wife was telling Mrs. Morrison, our
neighbor, about it, When Dick Morrison, the husband, spoke up saying, “I
said those very Words about our damned old cat while the child was over
here yesterday.” It has wisely been said: “Out of the mouths of babies
come Words we shouldn’t have said in the first place.”

DONE IN CALIFORNIA Not Hitherto Published—1948.

By John T. Bristow

As sequel to the foregoing old-time cattle riding story-experienced in
my younger days on the gently undulating plains of Northeast Kansas, I
here record a contrasting up-to-date cattle riding experience I recently
had on a far away mountain range. But in this last ride I did not race
my horse and crack my whip for the sheer fun of it—as of yore.

Until Sunday, April 18, 1948, I had not been on a horse for fifty-five
years—not since the opening of the Cherokee Strip, September 16, 1893,
at noon, when, with my brother Dave, and Dr. David H. Fitzgerald, and
Charley Rice, I rode sixteen miles in fifty-six minutes to locate a
claim on Turkey creek, seven miles southwest of the present city of
Enid, Oklahoma. In that race we were led—for a price — by “Ranaky Bill,”
an Oklahoma outlaw.

While going up the mountain, the name of other notorious outlaws—the
Daltons—was mentioned by my nephew, Sam Bristow, with whom I was riding.
Sam owns “Dalton Mountain,” some sixty miles east of Fresno, California,
where it is said those desperadoes were in hiding a long time ago.

The Dalton gang of bank robbers—following in the wake of the Jesse James
gang whose hideout was in Missouri — operated mainly, I believe, in
Kansas and the Indian Territory, in the late ‘80’s. At any rate, the
Dalton bank robbers came to grief at Coffeyville in southern Kansas,
with three of the gang killed by a sharp-shooting local hardware
merchant, and law enforcement officers. Grat and Bob Dalton were killed.
Emmett Dalton was badly shot up — was captured, convicted, and given a
life sentence. President Theodore Roosevelt pardoned him. I have a
faint recollection that sometime prior to the Coffeyville raid, the news
dispatches stated that the Daltons—under assumed names—had shipped
their horses to the Far west. And it is not at all improbable that our
old-time Kansas and Indian Territory band of desperadoes rode their
horses to the saddle-back near the top of my nephew’s 3500 foot
mountain, from which eminence they could have guarded the approach in
all directions.

Dalton Mountain is an attraction for patrons of a large Dude Ranch close
by, in the Kings river area—something to talk about only. No dude could
ride a horse up that mountain—particularly none of the thirty New York
“dude” girls who rode the canyon trails thereabout for several weeks,
recently.

Also, I recall the time when Jim Dalton, after killing Sheriff Charley
Batterson and escaping from the Marysville jail, was captured by a posse
led by Constable Charley Andrews, near the Buening school, eight miles
southwest of Wetmore—my home town. After serving time, it was said,
Jim Dalton went to Los Angeles and made an honorable “killing” in the
manufacture of ovens for bakeries. I do not know if he was a member of
the old gang. Probably not. But it has often been considered that he
was.

But we were not riding via a series of switchbacks to the top of Dalton
Mountain especially to view that historic spot. From the saddle-back,
looking to the north down a tree-studded canyon, and looking back over
the trail we had traveled, we could see at a glance much of Sam’s 1480
acres, of mountain pasture land, trees and rocks. And from this lookout
we could locate nearly all of his ninety-eight head of cattle that had
wintered there during the worst winter drought that California has had
in eighty years, while other valley ranchmen were feeding $40 hay to
$100 cattle, or shipping their stock to pastures in other states—some to
the wheat fields of Western Kansas. The north slope of Dalton mountain,
shielded from the burning sun, is what saved the day for Sam. Campbell
mountain, almost in Sam’s dooryard, was picked bare. Sam bought
fifteen of the cattle taken off that range. In his pasture, those newly
purchased cattle did not graze with the other stock. And this is where
the trained McNabb shepherd dog, Spike, comes in. I shall give Spike a
line, later.

When Sam was saddling the horses before loading them in the truck for
the 35 mile drive up into the mountains, from his 80-acre valley ranch,
his wife—Anna—came out to the barnyard, and said to me, “Don’t let Sam
talk you into making that hard ride all the way up to the top of the
mountain. When you get tired, turn around and come back.” Excellent
advice—but that was the one thing I couldn’t do. We were already coming
down when I began to tire, and a quick reflection on Anna’s injunction
told me that to turn around then would have availed me nothing. And
though I had had it done to me many times in my younger days, that hard
four hours horseback ride up the mountain and back did not produce the
saddle-weary spots my relatives were expecting.

For identification purposes, let’s say Sam’s son Robert, 21-year-old
ex-GI, an exemplary young man, and Sam’s daughter Virginia Anne, 13
years old, each own a dog — Spike and Curley. When loading the horses
into the truck both dogs were “rearing” to go. Spike, the trained cattle
dog, told us by signs and in perfectly understandable dog language that
he wanted to ride in the cab. But he was forced in with the horses—and
after he had made the rounds of the pasture, he climbed in with the
horses without argument for the return trip. In the pasture, the dog
would run ahead and spot segregated bunches of cattle, then come back,
point out the stock, and stand “at attention’” awaiting orders. Sam said
should he tell Spike to “Go get ‘em,” the dog would be off right now. He
said it was almost impossible to get the cattle out of the hills without
a trained dog. Sam paid $50 for the pup, and trained it himself.

Sam had said he would not take Virginia Anne’s dog along with us, that
Curley would likely pick up a deer trail and follow it for hours, which
might delay the return trip.

He planned to drive back by the Kings river road through the Dude
Ranch to show me the place where the new irrigation ditch now being put
through past his valley ranch — to take San Joaquin river water from the
lake formed by the recently built Friant dam—goes under the Kings
river, ninety feet below, through a 27 foot circular cement tube nearly
three-eights of a mile in length. From the 100 foot bridge spanning the
irrigation ditch one could look down 90 feet to the bottom of the ditch,
and up nearly a 100 feet to the top of the ridge of dirt deposited by
the big dragline. We had seen the west approach to this siphon on coming
out from Fresno the evening before.

Sam says he frequently sees deer in his pasture—particularly one big
buck—always before the hunting season opens, but never when he is
permitted to shoot them. With the advancing years, it seems the deer,
as well as man, are taking on wisdom. Hunters say that as soon as the
season in California opens the deer make a break for the National Parks,
where they are protected.

Sam also said that we would call on Mrs. Bert Elwood, who has lived
in the canyon adjoining his pasture for a great many years—and get the
facts about the Daltons. But she was not at home when we stopped, on our
way out. I really wanted to obtain from her a firsthand report on the
early-day cattle business, and information about the cougar menace in
the low mountains years ago. I have been told that the cougars were
alarmingly destructive then.

The cougars are now mostly in the high mountains, though the Fresno Bee
reported two killed in the Valley last winter. Professional hunters have
kept them down in recent years. It is said a professional cougar hunter
named Bruce—his surname—has a pack of dogs that will track them down
without fail, if the scent is not more than 72 hours old. A grown cougar
will take a toll of 50 deer in one season.

Getting back to the wise deer in the parks. While “doing” the Sequoia
National Park five years ago with Major Clement A. Tavares—he was in
the service then, and that “Major” handle was pretty firmly fixed,
but “Doctor” takes precedent now—who is the husband of my niece, Alice
Bristow, I saw a deer browsing about the ranger camp. The Major took a
“movie” of it while it was walking in front of a giant Sequoia tree. A
Ranger told me it was a “wild” deer that had never been in captivity.
And I saw deer at several places by the roadside so close that I could
have almost touched them. Also we saw two young bucks “sparring” almost
under the General Grant big tree. The Major turned his camera on them.

Again, yesterday, we saw deer in the Yosemite Valley. My brother
Theodore shooed one away from a foot-path where it was nonchalantly
nibbling a mushroom. Deer are very tame in the valley.

The Yosemite Falls, seen at their best on Sunday, May 23, 1948, with
Yosemite creek in flood from melting snow, did not look to be 2425 feet
in height; not until we got up close enough to be sprayed — good. Even
the foot-path through the grove seemed to grow in length, as we walked
toward the Falls.

Many, many years ago, I heard Eugene May lecture on the beauty and
immensity of Yosemite Valley at the Methodist Church in Wetmore. When
it came to describing the Falls, he got up on his toes, reached for the
sky—literally soaring up, up, up, in an unbelievable manner. Now I find
the Falls and other notable sights in the valley all that May said
they were—and then some. There are six separate falls pouring into the
valley.

Nothing looks its size up in the High Country. The far famed tunnel
drive through the big Sequoia tree in the Mariposa Big Tree Grove, is
deceiving. It looked as if it would be a tight squeeze for the car,
but after passing through with room to spare, I could easily believe a
cattle truck might pass through it.

While driving in the Grove, with the big trees standing surprisingly
close together, the Doctor said he had been pretty much all over the
world, and had seen nothing to compare with this wonderful Grove. Just
imagine a tree 33 foot through standing 300 feet high.

When I first went up into the Sierra Nevada Mountains, years ago—when
automobiles were first coming into general use—trees were hitched on
behind the cars to hold them back while coming down the mountain. And
there was a sizable wood-yard at the foothills—product of those drags.

Five years ago, I came down from the Sequoia National Park with Major
Tavares, when he put the machine in low gear and eased it down ever
so gently. But now, with everything in California moving along in
high gear, the tendency is to open ‘er up, and let ‘er drop down at an
alarming rate of speed.

Last Sunday the Doctor—yes, it was the Doctor now — brought me safely
down from the Mariposa Big Tree Grove, at a fast clip—a drop of nearly
8,000 feet in 65 miles of winding hairpin curves, done in less than that
many minutes, the speedometer showing 65 to 70 miles all the way. And I
had been told that his wife Alice was the best driver in the San Joaquin
valley.

The Park roads are really wonderful—built at the right pitch for safety,
at every turn.

The Doctor, with Alice and their two children, Clemie, eight, and Myrna,
three, plan to fly in June to Honolulu—the Doctor’s birthplace. He is
not Hawaiian, however. Alice has invited me to accompany them—but as I
have always believed air travel unsafe, I declined, with thanks.

But now, after Sunday, I think I would not balk at anything—let come
what may.

THE OLD SWIMMING HOLE Published in Wetmore Spectator January 3, 1936

By John T. Bristow

Other things may be submerged in the whirlpool of life and forgotten,
but memory of the old swimming hole, no matter where it was, or in what
generation, lives long.

Now comes a letter from one of the old “boys” living in another state
calling for elaboration of that tanyard gang’s doings. Combining the old
swimming hole with the tanyard and our circus layout—they were closely
connected — he mentions them as likely material for a story. A “funny”
story, he suggests.

Allright, Buddy. You shall have it. But I must warn you, Old Pal, that
you will, like as not, have the jitters instead of a laugh. But you have
asked for it. As the desired mirth-provoking story, this one will likely
be a flop. Buddy must know that while those old escapades, incidents,
or what-nots, always carry well with the ones who have lived them, when
transported in word-pictures across the years to a new audience, by a
limping artist, they very often fail to click.

Halfway convinced that I could still be murdered for this thing, I have
decided to write a few paragraphs about the old swimming hole and the
gang—and some girls. However, I do not falter. Going on the theory
that when the sweetness of life is over what comes after cannot greatly
matter, I assume the risk—deliberately court danger.

Regardless of the ever-present smell, that tanyard, located in a bend of
the creek just west of where the town bridge is now, was made a sort
of rendezvous for all the town boys. A dam was constructed across the
creek, and there was a Damsite Company, fully officered. The pond —
long, wide, and eight feet deep made a fine swimming hole.

Michael Norton, a diminutive Irish boy, was our life-saver. Shy of
qualifications, he was given the post for no good reason at all—unless
it was that his willingness greatly exceeded his size. Michael was a
queer lad. He always crossed himself three times before going into the
water, and his lips would work in a funny little way without saying
anything. Furthermore, it was characteristic of the little fellow
to round out his sentences—especially when earnestness or excitement
spurred — with, “so I will,” or with, “so he did.” And sometimes
it would characteristic of the little fellow to round out his
sentences—especially when earnestness or excitement spurred — with, “so
I will,” or with, “so he did.” And sometimes it would be “You bet.”

E D Woodburn

Lawyer

HOLTON, KANSAS

January 21 1936

Mr. John T. Bristow, Wetmore, Kansas

Dear John:--

This morning I took time to read “THE OLD* SWIMMING HOLE” which you
wrote for the Wetmore Spectator. As usual, you are very interesting
and your article will be enjoyed by all of the citizens of Wetmore and
community who lived there in the long ago.

It is too bad, John, that you ever quit the paper business. It seems
to me that you naturally belong to that honorable “tribe.’* I have laid
away your articles as I will enjoy reading them again and again. I have
often heard it said that it is one of the signs of old age when one
begins to hark back to our childhood days. Maybe so. I am not denying
that age 13 probably creeping upon you, but I still insist that I “am
as young as I used to be.” We try to keep in touch with the younger
generation and to be and become interested in the things of today but,
in fairness and in strict honesty with ourselves, we will have to admit
that you and I and others of our age are inclined “to cast our eyes,
like a flashing meteor, forward into the past.”

Keep it up, John, and when you have anything to write remember, I will
appreciate a copy of the good old Wetmore Spectator containing your
article.

Yours very truly,

E. D. Woodburn

At that time the deep slough south of the railroad tracks, instead of
turning abruptly at Kansas avenue and paralleling that street to the
creek as it does now, flowed straight across to a point fifty yards down
stream. The narrow strip of land between slough and creek formed the
north bank of the old swimming hole. Trees and bramble shut out public
gaze fairly well, but they did not make a dependable screen against
prying eyes.

Ten yards farther down stream from the mouth of the slough was the old
ford. Still farther down stream there was then and is now a mammoth elm
tree that has budded and shed its leaves sixty times since that day.
Tramped firm by cow hoofs, and free of weeds, this bit of ground marked
the spot where our townspeople often went for a few hours loll in the
shade, and where in the surrounding grove even picnics were sometimes
held. It was here also where, on one Independence Day, a fine English
lady from the old Colony essayed to pet a horse on its nether end and
was kicked in the bread-basket. It was so phrased by our elders then.

In the old days there was in use in the church a hymn-book containing a
song entitled “Beautiful Gates Ajar.” “Dutch” Charley Kumbash, with the
jarring note of the horse’s vengeance and the lady’s name fixed in mind,
said: “It wass now for her the Peu-ti-ful Kates Achar.” The lady was a
Mrs. Gates, daughter of John Radford—later, Mrs. “Paddy” Ryan.

Starting from the friendly shade of that great elm, where they had gone
to while away a little time, and stopping at the old ford for a wade
in the water, a bevy of girls, wandering aimlessly about, fell upon the
boys’ domain.

Willie sent out a low whistle of warning. Eyes from all parts of the
pond swept the opening down stream. Girls coming—a lot of them, too
many to count. The boys ducked. Henry, who chanced to be in the top of
a small elm tree ready for a dive, found the bottom of the pond with his
proboscis in no time. One crafty little fellow, well plastered with mud,
was caught wholly unawares, taking his siesta on the bank, cut off from
the pond. As one having lost all sense of decency, he darted this way
and that way in front of the girls—and then, like an ostrich, hid his
head in the low forks of a tree, with back exposed to company. Well now,
maybe it is that the ostrich, when he sticks his head in the sand,
hopes that he might be taken for another bird. Shall I name this ostrich
imitator? Well—maybe later.

“Let them come!” yelled Henry Callahan, in a braggadocio way. “Who
cares! We used to swim with the Peters girls—and that didn’t kill us.”

“Yeah,” drawled Timothy Doble, in his usual draggy voice, “but remember,
we had our pants on then—and that made a lot of difference.”

Timothy was so right about this. It certainly did make a lot of
difference. Incidentally, I may say I have not thought of this boy for a
long time. And Gaskel was his me—not Doble. But the boys all called him
Doble because he was at one time—a considerable time—in a fair way to
have Archibald Doble for a stepfather. However, Bill Kerr, young school
teacher, stepped in and married the widow Gaskel, who was nearly twice
his own age. That marriage did not endure.

Before going on with the main show, let us go back little—maybe a year,
maybe two or three years. This tanyard pool brought the swimming hole a
mile and a quarter closer to town—and it was hailed with delight by le
barefoot boys. Prior to this, the town boys did their swimming in the
“prairie pools” out south. But the pools had their bad features—hazards
fraught with disturbing elements.

In the first place, one-third of the distance to the pools was across
the big bottom south of Spring creek which skirts the town. The bottom
was covered with a rank growth of sloughgrass, and, in the early summer
months — the natural time for swimming—after the grass had burned
off, needle-pointed stubs were very damaging bare, feet, and caused
utterances of many an “ouch” and not infrequently a “damnit”—and this
unholy language emanating from youngsters barely past the trundle-bed
stage. But the little sinners could swim—every one of them.

The prairie pool patronized most, if it were not filled with soil, as
are all the other pools now, would be close to the public road, on the
Grant Dale forty acres—open territory then. Directly north of this was
the Barney Peters forty-acre isolated prairie farm. We could always
count being accompanied by one or more of the four Peters — Bill,
George, Jim, and John. And on rare occasions two Peters girls, Bertha
and Mary, would invade our privacy.

The pool was about 50 by 25 feet in dimensions with a minimum depth of
eight feet. It was edged with a sort of “greasewood” growth of brush
which grew in clusters at the water’s edge three feet below the rim.
Often water snakes could be seen sunning themselves on branches which
curved out over the water. It was a most disquieting feeling to have
one of those four-foot fellows slither across one’s back. They were not
poisonous. Still they were snakes.

The Peters girls did not often come upon the scene. But when they did,
it was more disturbing than to be raked over the back by those snakes.
The south side of the pool offered the best place for the snakes to sun
themselves — and as soon as the water was agitated by the bathers coming
in from the north side, as they always did, the snakes would drop off
into the water and make, blindly, for the opposite side and disappear
under the north bank. Some of the snakes seemed to sleep more soundly
than others, and, on a good day, the snake parade to the north side,
while not continuous was, seemingly, never ended. Were it true, as
claimed in the old days, that those snakes passing over one’s back would
make hair grow wherever they touched the bare skin, I would have more
hair on my back than I now have on my head.

And occasionally a turtle would drop off those bushes into the swimming
hole. It was said by oldtimers that should a turtle nip you that it
would not let loose until sundown. Other oldsters said it would hang
on until it thundered. The adventurous youngsters—usually ready to try
anything—never, to my knowledge, tried to find out which way was right.
With brassy skies and prolonged summer droughts; with thunder clouds few
and far between, made it too risky. At that time swim-suits were unknown
here — maybe just not used—and always after a swim with the Peters
girls, we would have to walk home in our wet pants.

That chain of water holes along a three-mile treeless water course, was
said to have been “buffalo” holes. But this I was inclined to doubt,
after seeing the remains of true buffalo wallows in Western Kansas. My
Uncle Nick Bristow said there were no buffalo here when he came, and
that so far as he knew no one before him had seen any. But in my time,
the whole plains country west of the Blue river was swarming with them.
They were shamefully slaughtered by eastern outfitted crews, for their
hides. I believe that Zan Gray ’ s novel, “The Thundering Herd, ” was
inspired by the big herds of buffalo in Southwestern Kansas.

Then there were the “second” pools, a longer wash, one mile farther
south, fed partly by the Bradford spring, which we would patronize
in dry times when the stream connecting the “first” pools would stop
running.

Back at the tanyard pool: Those girls, full of high spirits and gay
chatter, scooped up our clothing, such as it was, and stood on the bank
laughing at us. Save for the one with head so nattily ensconced in tree
crotch, all were in water up to necks, and thinking some rather ugly
thoughts, we were, I can assure you, most miserable. Miserable, however,
does not fully define the plight of the featherless bird on the bank.

Then, holding a yapping little dog to a bulging bosom, a Good Samaritan
came moving in. Her smiling face was framed in a lovely orange bonnet.
She interceded for the boys. The girls were adamant, heartless. For
her pains, the intermediary was called “Mother Fuzzicks”—then, and
there-after. She was in truth the mother of the brave Indian fighter
mentioned in an earlier article.

In all fairness to those girls I should say that they were, probably,
possessed of the idea that their appearance in this manner might cure a
certain habitue of the water hole of being neglectful of his duties at
home, and maybe cause him to choose better company as well. They could
not be censured for that. They were nice girls, those intruders.

It was our life-saver who undertook to solve the problem for us—the
little fellow of multiple peculiarities, the most pronounced of which,
as you have been informed, was displayed in his crossing himself three
times before going into the water.

I rather think that one, maybe two, of Michael’s older sisters were
among that hilarious lot. But as to that I cannot be sure. Much water
has gone over the dam since that day and on some points things are a
bit foggy. It is one of the tricks of memory—that parts of a recalled
incident will stand out clearly while other parts remain, shadowy and
tantalizingly, just outside the grasp of the mind.

So, then, of those damsels I make no identifications — this on account
of much fog. Still, casting back through the mists of many years, I can
sense enough of the old thing to cause me to suspect that I could almost
spit on one of those erstwhile trim maidens, now grown stout, from where
I write. Not, however, that I would want to do so at this late date.

With a mischievous twinkle in his pale blue eyes, Michael said: “Lave
them to me boys. By-gorry I’ll show them a trick with a hole in it; I
will so I will!” Much stress was laid upon the last phrase. It contained
the true Irish accent. A trick with a hole in it! An old saying, of
course — much used then.

Manifestly, Michael had decided, as any fine boy of the period would, to
deal modestly with the girls—or, at least, with as much modesty as the
exigencies of the situation would permit—but he had reckoned without
taking into account the destructive forces of Time upon discarded
tinware.

Someone, pointing to a stick on the bank, said, “Take that and wallop
‘em good!” It was a portion from the butt end of a well seasoned sumac.

“Aye, I have it!” mouthed Michael. At the same time he fished out of the
mud at the edge of the pond an old weather-beaten dishpan, one of many
that had been used in the tannery for various purposes. This he swung in
front of him.

Then, with surprising alacrity and apparent confidence in himself and
the implement of his veiling, he bounded up the bank, pivoting at the
top long enough to cast a reassuring look over his shoulder to his
buddies in the water. The gang beamed approvingly on their savior.

Michael advanced on the intruders, shouting in a rather thin voice,
“Drop the rags, and scram!” He waved his cudgel. No results. Michael
didn’t like having his efforts go for naught that way. The laughter
went out of his eyes. His Irish was up. He resisted an impulse at
belligerence. Then, “Vamoose, I tell you, or bygorry you’ll be knowing
the feel of this shillelagh!” Now, however, his belligerent interest was
superseded by new elements.

The girls did not budge. Not then. They laughed mightily. All but one.
The Good Samaritan shook with suppressed laughter. Her orange bonnet
bobbed in fine harmony. The little doggie barked. With deep concern
and echoes of mortification trailing in her voice, the laughless
one, stepping forward—it was now observed that she held in her hand a
shillelagh of her own, once again of magic sumac origin—exclaimed, “Holy
horrors! Look Michael! Your manners! There do be a hole in your shield!”

This he took to indicate her desire for him to depart — as, indeed, it
did. And Michael, our defender, “took water.”

You must believe me now when I say to you that the
never-to-be-dispensed-with three-time act, peculiarly and persistently
the boy’s very own, was delayed somewhat.

“You bet!”

MISS INTERPRETED My mother cautioned my sister Nannie when a very little
girl as she was going out to play, to look good for snakes. After she
had returned, Nannie told her mother that she had looked everywhere and
did not see “ary snake.” Asked what would she have done had she found
one, Nannie said, “I would of bringed it to you.”

THE “CIRCUS” LAYOUT Published in Wetmore Spectator,

January 10, 1936.

By John T. Bristow

Now, I trust “Buddy” will be satisfied with the foregoing narration
of events at the old swimming hole. He really should be. He is in
it—figuring inversely, up to his neck.

Since the actual distance from the swimming hole to the tanyard was but
twenty steps—and I mean literally steps—there should be no difficulty
in making the switch over. Those twenty steps did, however, at times,
present physical hazards. They were dirt steps carved out on a rather
steeply inclined bank, up which the tanner’s sons carried water in
buckets from pond to tanvat. Barefooted, with pants rolled up to our
knees, we would dig in with our toes when going up with the filled
buckets, always spilling a little water on the way, until those steps
would become a veritable otter’s slide. As a boy’s bare heels, in the
old days, were poorly fashioned for digging in, the water carriers would
then have to use the longer rope-protected path provided for making the
descent with the empty buckets. One slippery slide on one’s backside was
a hint that it was time to make the switch.

But a rehash of the “circus layout” as my Old Pal puts it, is maybe
going to be disappointing, as I can now think of nothing in this
connection to pin on Buddy. However, I suppose it might have been
considered—for recreation purposes only—as a sort of adjunct to the
tannery. The trapeze, horizontal bars, and spring-board, were only about
fifty feet removed from the tanvats. And then, too, the lot had the
tanyard smell.

Ringling Brothers wagon circus had recently made a stand here, and the
“fever” among the local youngsters was running high. Activity about the
lot was both spirited and awkward, with a lively bunch willing to try
anything—once.

The real trouble was, we had only one Star performer. Charley Askren
was, before he got injured in a fall, a trapeze and bar performer with
the Dan Rice circus. He was a welcome instructor. And though he could
still do some wonderful stunts, I think there are none I want to mention
here, except maybe the time he let me slip through his hands in a rather
daring act, the fall to the ground breaking my left arm.

This statement, without qualification, would hardly do justice to my
old team-mate. Had we made it, the act would have been a honey. And had
Charley not said, grandly, to a “skirted” audience, “This is going to
be good. Keep your eyes pinned on this Johnny boy, the G-R-E-A-T and
only—,” in real circus ballyhoo fashion, it might not have been a flop.
Charley used a lot of circus terms in his work with us.

The trouble was, I “weakened”—just a wee bit, to be sure—at the moment
when I took the air, and after making a complete turn came down also
a wee bit tardy for Charley to get a firm hold on me, in his head-down
swinging position. Had he caught me by the wrists, he would have tossed
me, on the third swing, face about, back to the bar from which I had
made the takeoff.

In practice, another boy — usually George Foreman, brother of Mrs. L. C.
McVay and Mrs. R. A. DeForest — would stand by to right me, in case of
a slip. George was tall and very active. Sometimes we would change
positions in this act. I know now that this would have been a grand time
for me to have called out, in the usual way, “Let George do it!”

Sure, we had a well-filled straw-tick which was always placed under the
weaklings—but who was there among us that would have wanted to have
it brought out in the presence of lady visitors? Of the two lady
spectators, one was a redhead. She fell in love with Charley—and married
him. Charley had done a lot of impressive flipping and flopping to gain
his position on the bar for the act. The redhead’s younger black; haired
sister (Anna) was the better looking, and near my age—but, as of the
moment, I did not shine as I hoped I might. And then, too, I had that
broken arm to think about. Dr. Thomas Milam “splinted” it up drum-tight,
according to ancient practice—but, by midnight, he had to do it all over
again.

Then, my Dad came onto the lot, and without any coaching whatsoever,
did some pretty tall kicking. Not the circus kind, however. The “circus”
paraphernalia was then moved up town to a vacant spot alongside Than
Morris’ corn cribs on the lots west of where the Dr. Lapham home now
stands. But it was no go. The tannery was the natural place for such
things.

Charley Askren came to us, as a young man, in the early 70’s. He was
a carpenter. He married Lib Fleming. And notwithstanding his serious
injury caused by the collapse of a trapeze under the Dan Rice bigtop, he
lived to be quite an old man. He died at his home in Atchison last year.
Here’s hoping that his kid co-performer — the G-R-E-A-T and only”—may
live as long.

Honesty — The Better Policy NOTE—Some seventy-five years ago I
accidentally dropped a five-dollar gold piece into one of the big vats
at our old tanyard on the creek bank near the town bridge at the foot of
Kansas Avenue which gold piece was never recovered.

The old bridge has now been removed, and a new one—156-foot span—is
being constructed over a newly dug creek channel sixty-five yards south
of the old one, on a grade ten feet above the old road. In building up
the grade between the old bridge site and the railroad, Albert Tanking,
of Seneca, operator of a County bulldozer, today—June 11, 1949—moved the
ground where the old tanvats were buried.

As he made the excavation I noticed no signs of the old sunken vats—but
it is none the less certain that my five-dollar gold piece is now
deposited somewhere along the west slope of the fill, or in the “sunken
garden” between the fill and the newly cut drain-ditch paralleling it.
After it rains on the works it is possible that I might go down there
and pick it up. But I think that I shall leave this for the kids to
exploit. It was a sort of kid’s keepsake, anyway.

That five-dollar gold piece was first given me some years earlier, in
change, by mistake for a nickel. I thought I had been cheated. I took it
back to Peter Shavey, who had a confectionery store in the old part of
the building now occupied by Hettie Shuemaker-Kroulik. He praised me for
being an honest boy—and he loaded me up with candy and oranges. And then
he said, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to give you this gold
piece for a keepsake, something to remind you always that it pays to
be honest.” And think of it — the old Frenchman was illegally selling
whiskey and unlawfully operating a poker game in the back room.

I said, “Thank you, Mr. Shavey—but I still have not got my nickel back.”

He laughed, “Here, honest boy, here’s your nickel.” And now I can’t be
sure If Mr. Peter Shavey inspired this noble trait of honesty in me—or
if it just comes natural.

INNOCENT FALSEHOOD About twenty years ago, I was going with “Dutch”
Roderick, in his car, to Kansas City, starting at four o’clock in the
morning—and Minnie Cawood, with her two and one-half year old Ruthie,
were going along as far as Leavenworth. We stopped at the H. P. Cawood
home, and “tooted.” Minnie came out, and Harry followed, carrying Ruthie
in his arms. She was fussy, and Harry said, “Don’t cry—your partner is
out here in the car.” Ruthie said—well, had she not been such a sweet
kid as to call me her partner, I’d be tempted to say she told a “white”
lie, when she said, “I thought he would be there.”

FATHER AND SONS Published in Wetmore Spectator,

March 20, 1936

By John T. Bristow

T his, then, is the continuation of the story of my father’s tanyard;
with related incidents—hoarded memories of the old days back a half
century, and more. They are solemn reminders that “Time flies.”

That tanyard was, I might say, a howling success while it lasted.
Besides the tanyard, my father owned a bunch of boys, and those boys,
semi-obedient and helpful, really did some commendable things, but when
encouraged and abetted by the other town boys of that happy, care-free
age, their doings were not always something to be commended.

Taken by the large—including, of course, the English and the Irish
and the “Dutch,” and a couple of Swedes — they were, I must admit, a
dare-devil bunch. And I might as well confess now that I was, perhaps,
the most devilish one of them all. Anyhow, I became a printer’s “devil”
at an early age.

My father made good leather—and he knew how to get the most out of it.
Being a shoemaker, he made it up into good boots and shoes and gave his
boys a good leather dressing whenever they needed it—that is, when their
deviltry came within his notice. The Lord knows there were hundreds of
times when they escaped only by narrow margins. And had my father been
a little more vigilant, this day of which I write promised to be the
red-letter day.

There were two outstanding events that day, either of which would have
merited knee-strap activity. In case you don’t know, the shoemaker’s
knee-strap, besides being useful to hold a shoe in place while the
artisan works, is a persuasive instrument of correction when applied
with vim and vigor at the right time and place.

As already informed, in a previous article, the creek had been dammed
and there was a fully officered Damsite Company, with Michael Norton
as life-saver, whose actual services, as Jake Geyer now recalls, never
amounted to more than his crossing himself three times before going into
the water. A large wooden box, with metal bottom, used for cooking the
sumac-tanbark mixture, when not otherwise in use served as a boat on
that fine body of water.

Jim Cardwell, a Kentuckian — and brother-in-law of Andy Maxwell, the
Indian fighter mentioned in previous writings—who held a responsible
position as coal-heaver at the railroad chutes close to the tanyard,
when not otherwise engaged, helped the boys occasionally with the work
of maintaining the dam—and even helped my father sometimes. All this he
did out of the goodness of his heart, glad to be helpful. He was a grand
old sport, even with his one weakness. Jim loved his booze and seemed to
have a mania for sharing his bottle with others. He even gave Eagle Eye,
the Indian featured in a preceding story, a nip of his “firewater” one
day, and my father raised Ned about that. It was unlawful to give liquor
to an Indian.

Having the distinction of being the only enterprise of the kind in this
part of the West, that tanyard was made a sort of port-of-call for all
comers—local and transient.

“Lord” Perry graced the tannery with his august presence one day. He was
of the old English Colony folk and drunk or sober, proclaimed himself a
British peer. He was a “remittance” man.

On this occasion, after riding in from his Colony home, Perry had
stopped up town and was comfortably full when he reached the tanyard. He
slipped the reins over his horse’s head and asked me to hold the animal
while he held audience with Jim Cardwell. “Hand if you let ‘er go,” he
warned, “Hi’ll cut y’r hears hoff.” I dropped the reins as soon as he
was in “spirited” conversation with Jim. The “Lord” soon forgot about
me—and the horse also.

“Lord” Perry had the poise and the marks of the gentleman he represented
himself to be. Also he loved his drink, and indulged himself freely.
When he had taken on about so much, he would invariably mount a chair,
or anything handy that he could climb upon, and attempt to make a
speech, always prefacing his harangue with “Hi’m a gentleman hand a
scholar, by-god-sir, by-gosh!”

In this instance, Perry had climbed upon the tank-boat which was
standing on edge. After making his usual salutory and puncturing it
with his long arms waving hither and thither, he stood for some moments
groping for words which did not present themselves with what might be
called kaleidoscopic rapidity. Then one of the gang—designated here as
the one intrusted to ‘old the Nobleman’s ‘orse — casually leaned against
the prop, causing it to topple from under the distinguished Englishman.

His Lordship then lost some of his aristocratic poise and a modicum of
his temper. A nervous person, with bombastic tendencies, he literally
exploded when he hit the well-tramped terrain about the tanvats. To
be accurate, he made a rather awkward display of himself in a furious
outburst of Anglo-American profanity, in which he branded, correctly, a
certain member of the gang as a “Blarsted, ’ artless hupstart!”

“Tut, tut, my Lord,” said Jim. “It was an accident.”

“Haccident, my hye!” retorted Perry, sharply. Jim Cardwell then felt
it incumbent upon himself to offer something to assuage his Lordship’s
agony, to pour balm upon his troubled soul. Good old Jim! How could we
have managed without him. He once move proffered his bottle. And another
drink was directed with grace down the Perry gullet.

At the tanyard there were six vats, each, four by six feet, which were
set three feet into the ground, with the tops about one foot above
ground.

A wild black cherry tree, at this time loaded with ripe cherries, stood
close to one of those vats. On account of its fruit and its fine shade
it was the delight of all the boys. Especially was it inviting to my
little brother Davey Cullom, who, though fourth in point of spacings
from being the baby or of the home, was still his mother’s darling
little curly-headed man.

There was an erroneous notion that black cherries would make one
tipsy—in a mild way. It was also claimed that choke cherries, some of
which grew in the next bend above oh small trees like plum trees, were
poisonous. That was erroneous, too.

Davey Cullom attempted to walk around on the edge of one of those
tanvats, and fell in. The vat was filled with strong ooze, leachings
from the oakbark and sumac. With the process then employed by my father
it took four months to tan a calfskin—but Davey Cullom got his hide
tanned in about fifteen minutes. Not with the ooze, however. It was
because he could not walk, in a test, the twelve-foot length of a
ten-inch board without stepping off.

Davey told his father that he had eaten too many cherries. But the gang
knew he was fibbing. Davey Cullom was already “pickled” when he fell
into that tanvat. And had it been any place other than the tanyard,
my father could have had olfactory evidence of his offspring’s
condition—but in a tanyard, there is but one smell.

After it was all over but the shouting, Davey’s father shrilled, “Howl,
you pusillanimous little devil, howl! Maybe you’ll now stay out of that
cherry tree.”

Just at that moment Jim Cardwell came staggering up from the creek bank,
flourishing his bottle. “Anybody want a drink?” he queried. My father
took the bottle and threw it into the creek. He never drank. He was
awfully peeved. He swore. And let me say now whatever my father did, he
did it well. “Jim,” he accused, “you’ve been giving Davey whiskey from
your rotten old bottle!”Davey Cullom stopped his howling long enough to
say, “No, daddy, it was the cherries; honest it was.” He supplemented
his little lie with the further information that it was not the choke
cherries, but the black cherries, that he had eaten. Then my father
said, “I’ll cut that damned black cherry tree down tomorrow.”

Jim Cardwell laughed, drunkenly, and inquired, “Got a match, Bill?”
My father didn’t smoke, and he didn’t have a match. Then Jim mumbled,
“Furnish my own whiskey, find my own match.” He fumbled in his pockets
and produced a match.

Jim walked over to the curly-headed boy who had lied so cleverly, and
said, “Now, Davey, we can show Bill that you didn’t drink any of Jim’s
old rot-gut.” Placing the match and a dollar in Davey’s hands, he said,
“Bet you that dollar you can’t blow out the match.” Jim looked at us
boys and grinned in a maudlin way. “Light the match and then blow it
out, Davey, and the dollar is yours. John and all the boys here know
you won’t take a dare; and I dare you!” he taunted. It was then I
wished that I could make little crosses like Michael Norton to ward off
impending disaster.

Jim staggered backwards a little as he continued. “But don’t light the
match, Davey, until I get away. I know my old whiskey breath will burn
like a house afire.” Davey Cullom stared, looked foolish and finally
said, “I don’t want your dollar, Mr. Cardwell.”

I shall now explain. Speaking for the gang as well as myself, we thought
Davey would put the stuff to his little lips, then, with a wry face,
push it away—perhaps spill it on the ground, which, of course, would
have tickled us immensely. But the little fellow, feeling that he must
make sure of winning the dare, took not one but two small swigs of the
raw stuff. Booze was booze then, and it took only a very little of it to
make a small boy wobble. If it will help any to put over my alibi I will
say now that the “pusillanimous little devil” made that face.

Now a bright idea struck one of the gang. I believe it might have been
Will Gill—now Dr. W. W. Gill, of Enid, Oklahoma. He would know, of
course. Anyway, someone had said, “Come Jim, let’s get your bottle.”
They managed somehow to get into the tank-boat and they rowed out to
deep water. And there, from some unexplained cause, the boat capsized.
Michael Norton crossed himself three times.

Then the whole bunch—lifesaver, officers, and all—plunged into the water
without stopping to remove clothing, which wouldn’t have been a very big
job, at that. Jim was saved, of course. And appreciably sobered.

As intimated in the foregoing paragraph, the clothing worn by the
tanyard gang during the summer months was almost nil—negligible, at any
rate. Always there were rents and patches, and more rents. But the gang
did not care.

The next day after Davey’s debauch my father came blustering into the
house, and bellowed, “Now, who in hell has taken my axe?” My mother said
to him in her sweet, calm way, “Oh, don’t be so fussy, William—Davey
loaned your axe to Jim Cardwell last night.”

Attaching no significance to this fact, nor sensing forebodings, my
father laughingly said, “I wonder what Jim thought he could do with an
axe, in his pickled condition?” I should like to tell you now that he
found that out, to his dismay, all too soon.

He was a good feeler, was my father, happy as a lark when things went
right—and not at all ugly even when he swore, not counting of course the
tempo of the sulphurous words of easement which he sometimes released.
Just habitual, understand. The indiscriminate use of swearwords was
as natural as long-whiskers to the old pioneer. He whistled a lot, and
sometimes tried to sing, but he was hot very good at that.

Having first boots to mend for a patron of his shoe-shop, my father was
late in reaching the tannery this day. The ruffled condition which had
broken forth with the axe inquiry now relegated from his thoughts, he
whistled while he worked, and this too in bad taste in the presence of
his patron.

It had fallen to my lot to remain at the house for a while, the home
and the shoeshop being one and the same place. A packing case containing
alum, tallow, neatsfoot oil, and lampblack, had been received by express
the day previous. I was to take from this packing box some alum, powder
it fine, then dissolve it in warm water. It was to be used at the
tannery in the day’s workout of the hides from one of the vats. It was
to firm them. A hide in the jelly stage is as slippery as an eel, and it
was always a chore to get them safely landed on the work bench.

My father would work the ooze out of the hides with a slicker—a piece
of plate glass ground smooth on the edge. Then he would rub the alum in
with the same devise, before returning them to the vat which would be
refilled with fresh ooze. Later, after the six vats were worked out, the
hides would again be put upon the bench, when tallow and neats-foot oil
would be worked into them with that same slicker. It would come into
play again when he polished the blackened leather. All handlings at the
bench called for vigorous rubbings. So vigorously did he attack them
that he would sweat. Oh, God, how that man did sweat! Being in fine
fettle, and late on the job this day, he would rush the work, and
whistle—and sweat all the more.

Consider now for a moment that cherished black cherry tree—the tree
which, in a spasm of idle talk, my father had threatened to cut down. It
was a large tree, as black cherry trees grow, more than a foot through,
and tall with good spread. Under this wild cherry tree reposed my
father’s work-bench. Also under this tree was the ash-hopper in which
lye was made from wood-ashes to remove the hair from the hides. As a
protector from the hot summer sun the tree was well nigh indispensable.

The sun rose that July morning sixty years ago on a rain-soaked world—a
perfumed, growing world; sparkling; invigorating. The brook at the
tannery, slightly augmented by the early morning shower, gave forth a
soft, dreamy murmur as it poured over the dam. Birds sang sweetly in the
tree tops. Jim sang also, though rather poorly, as he put the finishing
touches on the job to which he had set himself. Save for the depressing
knowledge that later in the day things would sizzle in steaming
humidity, with old expansion of noisome tannery fumes, all was fine and
vely.

Came now my father, gayly whistling, to his beloved tannery. Davey
followed. The other boys were already there. With a puzzled look on
his face the daddy of that happy-go-lucky bunch stopped suddenly in his
tracks. He surveyed the surroundings in considerable disgust.

At first I thought my father was so overcome by the shock that he was
not going to say anything. Well, he didn’t—exactly. Maybe he couldn’t.
But it was none the less certain that a violent change of mood had taken
place. The thing he saw had stilled his gay whistle—and whereas only a
few moments before could his voice but have taken up the glad song of
his heart he would have sung beautifully, now he cursed prodigiously!

And Davey howled some more.

That “damned” black cherry tree was gone—cut down, trimmed, and neatly
piled. Jim had mistaken Davey’s purpose in bringing him the axe. He
had done his work well. The morning sun flooded the tanvats and the
work-bench. By noon it would beat down upon them with torrid intensity.

PLUGGING FOR HER DADDY Little Janet, four-year-old daughter of Dr. and
Mrs. Leland Latham, was at the home of J. E. (Dutch) Roderick. Thinking
to get a reaction from Janet, “Dutch” said in a sort of off-hand way to
no one in particular, “Wish I knew where to find a good veterinarian?”
The little Latham girl said, “My daddy is a vet’narian. If you want to
get spayed, he can do it.”

THE STRANGE CASE OF MR. HENRY, et al. Not Hitherto Published—1947.

By John T. Bristow

The last three preceding articles were done at the request of one of the
old tanyard-swimming hole gang whom I dubbed “Buddy.” It really was a
triple order. At the same time I was committed to still another request.
Went out to one of Buddy’s buddies to verify data pertaining to Buddy’s
written request and ran head-on into another one—the one I’m going to
tackle now, together with other incidents.

It is a dangerous operation, this thing of running in unrelated
episodes, and if in attempting it I should find myself up in the air
going around in circles with no place to land, I shall have to call on
Buddy’s buddy to “talk” me down. Though no longer in our midst, Buddy’s
octogenarian buddy still lives. And it will be a pleasure to grant his
request.

In reminiscing one incident calls up another, and that one still
another, and so on ad infinitum—and anything of the time and place
is considered fair game, if you can capture it without maiming it, or
without encumbering something else. In presenting the Strange Case of
Mr. Henry, I shall try to ease it in without a jarring note. But, to
do this, I must go back to the “circus” lot, grab onto one of my
co-performers, and work up to it through a chain of co-incidental
events.

George Foreman was here at that time going to school, and learning
telegraphy with his brother-in-law, L. C. (Cass) McVay. George was my
closest boy friend. After graduating in telegraphy, he worked for the
railroad company out on the west end of the Central Branch—and later
blossomed out as a fullblown lawyer in a finely appointed Denver office,
all his own. When I called on him there he laughingly remarked, “Here
I am, a big lawyer in a big city—with no clients.” In later years I saw
him up at Blackhawk doing assay work for a Colorado mining company. This
time he aid, “I’ve found out that I am a better assayer than I ever *was
a lawyer.” He went from there to Butte, Montana, still following the
assay business. He never married.

His sister, Alice Foreman-McVay, with whom George made his home, came
here from a highly cultured community over by the river in Doniphan
county, as the bride of Cass McVay. And, being a refined lady with a
fine show of modesty, notably out-classing the common herd, got the
unearned name of being a “stuck-up.” But she lived that down nicely,
simply by carrying on in her own sweet way oblivious to it all.
Alice McVay had the happy faculty of attending strictly to her own
knitting—and letting the world go by. She was, in truth, the town’s most
gracious and beloved woman. And had she aspired to it, she could have
been nominated as the outstanding model of social perfection, displacing
one who had held that distinction from the town’s beginning.

Up to this time, our people had not been what one might call
connoisseurs in the art of classifying the townfolk. In the old days,
social standing was largely measured by wealth — even make-believe
wealth. For example, Eliza Morris, (Mrs. Bill), as the leading
merchant’s wife—and a big hearted woman—was looked upon as the leader
in society, one who set the pattern. The fact that she said “bekase”
for because, with many another outmoded expression, did not disqualify
her—but she lost caste when she sallied forth to church wearing her new
Easter bonnet wrong-side-to. But, let it be remembered, she had a way
with the youngsters about town that was taking.

After her husband’s death, which occurred in the eighth year after
coming here, Alice McVay could have married, in later years, Henry
DeForest, the town’s top eligible bachelor, and while she greatly
admired him, as did everyone else, she simply would not “desert” her
three children — Harvey, Myrtle, and Louis. I was favored with this
bit of information for having “tended” store for Mr. Henry while he
accompanied the lady with her purchases to her home. Besides teaching
me double-entry book-keeping of evenings, Mr. Henry would sometimes get
confidential on other matters. He told me himself that Alice McVay’s
love for her children was the one thing which caused her to forego a
marriage with him. And then too, Mr. Henry was markedly devoted to his
aristocratic mother, which fact might have had some bearing on what to
my mind should have developed into a most charming romance. His mother
spoke of him always as Mr. Henry.

Alice McVay had ample means to rear her children — and rear them she did
right here in Wetmore. Then the family moved to Whittier, California.
Besides his savings, Cass McVay and his brother Bill, had each inherited
$7,000 from the family estate shortly before Cass died. Alice was a
step-sister, and also shared in the cut.

Cass McVay was a thrifty man, a real gentleman. Aside from his position
as station agent at the C. B. U. P. depot—it was a Union Pacific
line then, and before that organized as the Atchison and Pike’s Peak
railroad—Cass owned a lumber yard, and operated a small grain elevator,
powered by a donkey. I know it was a donkey for when I would sometimes
whip him up in order to lift the grain faster so that I might get off
early to play, “one old cat” with the town boys, he would bray just
like a donkey. Cass McVay built the dwelling later owned by Dr. Guy S.
Graham. Close in now, it was considered “away out in the cow country”
then. In marked contrast, Bill McVay squandered his inheritance, in
drink. He had Spanish blood in his veins, along with his other short
comings. Bill McVay married Johnny Thomas’ oldest sister, Jemima.

The DeForest-McVay romance was not Mr. Henry’s first. That came earlier
in life. The girl was the sister of Seth Handley, who was Mr. Henry’s
partner in the implement business on first coming to Wetmore. Adherence
to a family brand of religion — something like that which threatened
the love of the King of England and Wally — was said to have prevented
marriage. She was reputedly a divorcee.

In reviewing this romance, I am uncovering no skeletons, giving away no
secrets. The story has been told and retold, in whispers and snatches,
with varying degrees of accuracy. Clean and beautiful beyond compare, it
was not a thing to be hidden under a bushel.

I did not get the divorce angle in the case of the Handley girl from Mr.
Henry, or any other member of his family. Had understood all along
that it was nothing more than family objections occasioned by a doting
mother’s idea of her son’s superior breeding that was holding the
romance in check. But John Thomas, one of the few oldtimers left,
tells me now that he got the impression of the divorce from his
brother-in-law, Moulton DeForest. So then, I think, much as I dislike
to, we shall have to accept it as authentic.

This causes me to speculate.

Henry Clay DeForest was 26 years old when he came here. Seth Handley
was about the same age. His sister was younger. This would have afforded
scant time for the girl to have married and become divorced before the
beginning of her romance with Mr. Henry. And moreover, I cannot imagine
Mr. Henry deliberately paying court to a divorced woman, knowing the
while the family feelings, the Church restrictions, and above all his
aristocratic mother’s set views on such matters. The romance dated back
to Madison, Wisconsin, beyond the time he came to Wetmore — likely back
to school days. And in that event, accepting the divorce angle, it very
well could have been a case where the man had “Loved and Lost,” with the
old flame carrying on after Reno.

The town people said the same thing about Augusta Ann DeForest as was
wrongfully said about Alice McVay — and she lived up to it, nobly. I
wouldn’t know what, if anything, she had in her own right to justify
this, but she had the DeForest name to build on—and that was a million.

The DeForests were of French Huguenot stock. Joseph DeForest,
grandfather of Mr. Henry, was reputedly, at one time, a very wealthy
man. He made an endowment to Yale college—hence the schooling there of
Moulton and Mr. Henry.

Augusta Ann did not play the aristocracy game offensively. With
courteous dignity, she played it faultlessly. It was well known that
she had definite ideas about gentlemen in general marrying beneath their
station and, it was said, she saw to it that her hired girls—in one
long-lasting instance an extraordinarily pretty maiden — would have no
chance, under her roof, to make google eyes at her boys.

In the process of making, Mr. Henry was not touched with this better
than thou idea—and it seems that father Isaac Newton had none of it. In
fact, Isaac was not at all times in complete agreement with his spouse.

Mr. Henry was not Augusta Ann’s oldest, nor yet her youngest. He was
seventh in a family of eight boys. Even so, he displayed no necromantic
talent, despite the ancient superstition. But he sure had a lot of the
worthwhile kind of talent. Then, too, that run of seven might have been
broken by the birth of a girl. I never learned just where she came
in, did not even know of Mrs. John C. Kridler until she came here from
Denver with her three fine little girls — Lettie, Grace, and Blanche.
Jane DeForest-Kridler was now a divorcee—something more for the
aristocratic Augusta Ann to frown upon.

Augusta Ann was a mite heavy on her feet, and on her infrequent
appearances in public leaned heavily upon her Mr. Henry. And though not
of a mind to recognize caste, our people paid her marked respect, and
were free in saying that it was mighty nice of Mr. Henry, tall and
stately, to give his mother, short and dumpy, his arm on all occasions.
It was truly a most beautiful mother-son attachment.

It would, perhaps, be too much to say that in this unusual show of
attention Mr. Henry had hopes of bringing about a change in his mother’s
estimation of his girl. But never doubt he had hopes, enduring hopes,
that in riding the thing out something favorable would turn up. The way
I had it in mind, Mr. Henry did not want to break with the family—nor
did he have any intention of ever giving up his girl. This awkward
situation made it inadvisable for him to bring her here.

One time, after I had gotten myself rather too deeply in the mining game
for comfort, Mr. Henry told me that he also had, some years earlier,
taken a flyer in mining with his old partner, Seth Handley, at Grass
Valley, California. But when the conversation was terminated, I was of
the opinion that he had, in fact, only put his sweetheart on ice, so
to speak, for safe keeping against the time when the family winds might
blow less raw. And had the Aristocratic Augusta Ann have passed on
before the girl I think Mr. Henry, divorcee or no, would have cast his
religion to the winds—as did The King.

Somehow, I don’t like the divorce angle.

Seth Handley’s sister died at the little mining town of Grass Valley, in
California, where her brother was a prospector. Mr. Henry went to Omaha
to meet the Union Pacific train bearing his old partner, Seth, and the
remains on the way back east for burial. On his return home, Mr. Henry
was visibly shaken. It was a sad day for him. Few people here ever
knew just who it was that held such a strangle hold on Mr. Henry’s
affections.

From my early association with Mr. Henry and Seth I got the impression
that there was more between them than just being partners. Later, I had
it from one or the other of them, maybe both, that the girl in the case
was Seth’s sister. Their implement house and yard was just across the
street from our home, down by the tracks, on “Smoky Row.” And though
less than half their age, my mother said I was always under foot when
they wanted to go about their work. The year was 1872. But if I were not
under foot at the moment when Seth wanted to go hunting, he would come
to the house and ask me to go along. He would shoot anything that could
fly. And Seth remembered, years later. He sent his respects to me from
Omaha by Mr. Henry. At that time I was “helping out” in the DeForest
general store.

I suspect there were some things the aristocratic Augusta Ann did not
know about her favorite son. While vacationing in Colorado Mr. Henry,
with the Handley girl—who was supposed to be in California—rode horses
on the trail to the top of Pike’s Peak. Miss Handley rode a sidesaddle,
the ancient kind where the lady puts her left foot in the stirrup and
throws her right leg over the left fork of the split pommel—and holds
on for dear life. That was at a time when it was considered vulgar for
a lady to straddle a horse. Also it was before the cog-railroad mounted
the Peak, even before the time of the carriage road up the north side of
the mountain.

Mr. Henry’s eyes sparkled when he told me it was a wonderful trip—one
I should not miss—and though a little difficult coming down, especially
for the ladies, he said he enjoyed it immensely. That was quite
understandable. Love had come to Mr. Henry wrapped in trouble. Here now
for a day at least he was bound by no thongs. Here, with the girl
who was the most precious one in the world to him, his spirits could
soar—unhampered, up to the clouds.

Under Mr. Henry’s oral guidance, I also made that trip all by my
lonesome—that is, without my girl. Later, I went to the top again with
THE Girl, and I can tell you there was a difference. We were in love, a
maid and a man—intoxicated with the joy that only the first love of the
young knows. And the clouds came down to where one could almost reach up
and touch them—just as Mr. Henry had said they would.

I have learned, as doubtless Mr. Henry had learned, that the show spots
in this old world of ours take on beauty and meaning when you have
someone along—preferably THE ONE—to help you enjoy them. It’s truly a
situation where two hearts can beat as one. And it’s worth a million to
see the shine come into her eyes.

Might say here that it was while on an editorial junket to Colorado
Springs—with THE Girl—that I made this great discovery. It was her first
trip to the mountains, and the shine was in her eyes—big. I’m glad
that memory holds the picture of the girl, who, in all her radiant
loveliness, walked by my side all through that week with but one tiny
shadow to flit across her faultless blue sky.

And while she had, with justification, came near showing temper one
morning, when, in following the crowd, I had innocently led her away
from the historic grave of Helen Hunt-Jackson, on the mountain above the
Seven Falls, down the gravel slide, thereby ruining a pair of new shoes
for her, she was still THE Girl that made all the difference. Compared
with some of the other women who took the plunge, her squawk was mild
indeed—and most ladylike. The well-dressed women in that day wore high
kid shoes and silk stockings.

The gravel slide is—or was—about three hundred feet downslope from the
grave, along the mountain at a left turn, where all join hands, stick
feet in the gravel, stand erect, pulling first one foot up and then the
other to avoid being swamped, while the whole mass slips away to the
canyon several hundred feet below. And there you were—right at the
trail, with the laborious climb down the seven flights of steps avoided.

The mutilation of those new shoes at a time like that was truly a
disconcerting thing to befall the “perfect 34” girl—we had ‘em then—who
had only the day before been declared the neatest dressed and
most attractive woman in the editorial party. She had form, poise,
personality—and a wonderfully good dressmaker. However, before the day
was done, she evened the score—and gloried in it.

The Association members held their annual meeting in the parlors of the
Alamo Hotel that evening, and through the courtesy of my good friend,
Harvey Hyde, of the Holton Signal, I was nominated and elected
vice-president. This gesture cost me. Any one of the editorial party
could have testified that Mr. Harvey had joyously climbed down off
the “water wagon” on his first trip to Oldtown—Colorado City — halfway
between Colorado Springs and Manitou. That I was paying for the whisky
without participating in the drinking thereof, I cannot deny. But if
I should say that he never gave me as much as a smell of the stuff, I
would not be telling the truth. By pre-arrangement, Harvey’s wife
was sharing her room with my girl, and I wars sharing my room with
Harvey—and there was nothing I could do about it. A bargain was a
bargain—and neither of us had the faintest notion of welshing.

When the speech-making was getting dangerously close to the
vice-president’s turn, I slipped out. Motivated by strictly personal
interest, Mr. Harvey followed. And though I did, later, get away with
the acknowledged best write-up of the outing, I couldn’t have said one
word in that meeting, with the Pike’s Peak Press Club in attendance,
for all of Cheyenne mountain, with the famous Seven Falls and the gravel
slide thrown in—and THE Girl knew this.

Also, as it turned out, my girl carried off the acknowledged
speech-making honors—following some very fuzzy ones. I never could
understand why relatively smart people would insist on pushing the
ill-equipped fellow out into the open. When the call came Major J. F.
Clough, of the Sabetha Republican, president elect—the old piker had
just delegated another to do his talking—said, “we must hear from the
vice-president; someone please fetch him back in.”

The Major, who, incidentally, in partnership with Theodore J. Wolfley,
established the Wetmore Spectator, in 1882, and therefore was a sort of
godfather to my paper, looked over to where THE Girl was seated, with
Mrs. Hyde and other women including his own daughter, Miss Bay. Then
THE Girl raised her 118 pounds up to her full 5-6 height, in her scuffed
shoes, saying, mirthfully, “He has gone out with Mr. Hyde. You’ll not
see HIM again tonight.”

The applause, started by the ladies—all of whom had scuffed shoes, and
instantly taken up by the men, all of whom had gotten from their women
a neat and not a gentle telling off—was enough to frighten THE Girl. The
shine having already gotten back into her eyes, THE Girl, in associating
me as of the moment with Mr. Harvey, was actually trying to cover up
for me for running out on them. But the inference, nevertheless, pointed
toward Oldtown.

There were some in the party who were not bona fide editors—that had
worked transportation through the newspapers. A Wetmore shoe merchant
had made a deal with a county paper. The outing was a courtesy gesture
of the railroad—principally the Rock Island.

Might say here that the next year—1892—the Association arranged with
the Union Pacific for transportation to Salt Lake City, concluding the
outing again at Colorado Springs—and it was almost a complete sell-out
on the part of the newspapers. We were short ticketed to Grand Island,
there to meet the through train carrying a Company representative who
would ask us some questions about our papers, and supply us with passes
for the round trip. When he came to me, after working pretty well
through the cars carrying the “editors,” he laughed and said, “You are
the second newspaperman I have found, so far.” I told him he should find
at least one more who knew the password. My partner had been coached.
Though not present himself, Ewing Herbert, of the Hiawatha World, was
elected president. And though a mighty good newspaperman, he did not
seem to have’ influence with the railroads. Our Association never
got another complimentary outing. But, personally, I remained in good
standing with the railroads, and got everything asked for—all told
about 250,000 miles of free travel. In addition THE Girl—Miss
Myrtle Mercer—had a Missouri Pacific pass, and Moulton DeForest, our
proofreader, had one for nearly ten years. Newspapers do not get them so
easily now—if at all.

Also, there were five girls in the Colorado Springs editorial party. The
secretary, Clyde McManigal, of the Horton Commercial, had written
the single editors telling them to bring their girls along—that the
Association had arranged to have a chaperon look after them. The
chaperon proved to be a grass widow, a newspaper owner in a nearby
town—and right off she found herself a man. The fact that he was a
married man, a shoe merchant from my home town, by the way, made no
difference—not until they got home.

Mr. Henry had come to the Spectator office, bringing copy for a change
of his advertisement, and tarried a few minutes to converse with me
about our Colorado outing. I showed him the proof of my write-up. He
said he would not take time to read it just then, but he marveled at the
four fine wood cuts illustrating the Pike’s Peak trip—and marveled some
more when I told him they were engraved right there in the office by my
brother Sam.

Might add that editor Clough said in his paper, the Sabetha Republican,
“The Wetmore Spectator has a genius in the office in the person of the
editor’s brother, a wood engraver. Last week it published engravings of
scenery about Pike’s Peak equal to any we have ever seen. They are true
to nature and finely executed.” He said, further, “We also notice that
nearly all the papers gave the Spectator credit for having the best
write-up of the excursion.” Think maybe those engravings had influenced
some of the decisions.

Might say that Sam became so good at it, that John Stowell, former
owner of the Spectator, sought to get him a job with the Government in
Washington—and he came very near doing it too. Stowell, an impulsive
little Englishman, had the happy thought that as he was making
his appeal for the boy direct to the Government, that a print of
a ten-dollar bill would be an impressive sample. It was a lifesize
masterpiece. Do I need tell you that Sammy’s Uncle Sam informed them
that if they didn’t destroy that cut and all prints immediately,
somebody would surely get a lasting job? Uncle Sam did, however,
compliment Sammy on his work—said it was good, in fact, too good.

Mr Henry also had a few words with Alex Hamel, who, besides being the
type-setter, was editor-in-chief during my absence. Henry said, “Ecky,
I’ll bet you helped John write that one.” Alex—he was called Ecky by
nearly everyone — said truthfully, “No—Myrtle did.” But Ecky had slipped
in a few sentences about the authoress of “Ramona,” which bit of history
had not appeared to the eye when I viewed the large pile of pebbles
marking her grave.

Being the smarter man, Ecky got the credit for writing my best feature
stories during our newspaper regime back in the 90’s. But Ecky died in
1899, and I’ve not been able to find a dependable ghost-writer to take
his place. However, Ecky did write some really fine feature stories
for the Spectator, using the pseudonym, “Xela Lemah” Alex Hamel spelled
backwards. And Ecky was a poet, too. The following eight lines appeared,
unsigned, in my paper, Sept. 1, 1893. It is one of many of Hamel’s poems
that were widely copied by other papers and credited to the Spectator.
To fully appreciate it now, the reader would have to know the then
generally accepted panacea for bellyache. At that time an epidemic of
“summer complaint” was going the rounds. Now, properly signed, this is
the only injection of writings by another than myself to appear in this
volume.

A Summer Idyl.

Jem. Aker Ginger is my name;

I have a way that’s takin’ —

My seat in summer’s in the lap

Of dear Miss Belle A. Aiken.

And Watt R. Melon is the chap

Who, by schemes of his own makin’,

Secured for me the stand-in with

My darling Belle A. Aiken.

—Xela Lemah.

As against Ecky’s classic eight lines, my own most widely copied writing
consisted of only nine simple little words—words well put together,
timely, and not wholly my own: “It once rained for forty days and forty
nights.” It was a prolonged rainy spring, with farmers kept out of their
fields so long as to cause much uneasiness. West E. Wilkenson, of the
Seneca Courier, pronounced these nine words the best piece of writing
coming from any of his contemporaries in many a day.

Brevity—saying a lot in few words—did it.

I do not mean to brag about this, for the item was largely a quotation,
as any good Bible student would know. If I really wanted to brag, I
would tell about the four times in one year my writings in the
Spectator were selected and reprinted in Arthur Capper’s Topeka Daily
Capital—maybe it was J. K. Hudson’s Daily then—as the best article of
the week appearing in any of the four hundred newspapers in Kansas.
Selecting and reprinting a best article was a weekly feature of the
Capital for one year.

I “crowed” a little about it then, and P. L. Burlingame, a school
teacher—principal of the Wetmore schools in the late 80’s and lawyer
thereafter in partnership with his brother-in-law, M. DeForest, in
offices across the hall from the Spectator office—said that I should
have been content to let the other fellow “toot my horn.” But the
Capital’s readers were not my readers—and I figured nothing was too good
for the home folks. Always I write for the home folks.

Alex Hamel’s stories were more academically put together than anything I
could write. Ecky was a school teacher. Also he was my very good friend.
And it would be ungrateful of me not to acknowledge his able assistance
— though his technique was rather too highbrow for my background, and
I had to reject many of his literary buildups. Ecky’s writings were
clothed in rhetoric and spiced with learned quotations, while I had to
get along with bare limpy grammar. But then, in newspaper writing, it
is not always academic learning that counts. However, it doesn’t hurt
any—if one does not try to make it the whole show.

And moreover, one cannot get too much of it—if one learns at the same
time to “carry it like a gentleman.” Firsthand knowledge of the matter
one chooses to write about, when presented in an interesting and
readable manner, even though devoid of the earmarks of higher education,
always scores high.

For example, the late Ed. Howe, “The Sage of Potato Hill,” (his country
estate), publisher of Atchison Daily Globe, and writer of numerous
magazine articles, and a highly acclaimed novel, “The Story of a Country
Town,” once told me that he had never studied grammar a day in his life.
Like Mark Twain and Damon Runyan and Charles Dickens, Howe’s education
really began when he entered his father’s newspaper office at the age of
thirteen years.

Now, since I have brought the name of this successful author into this
writing, I would like to tell you a little more about him—and his. Ed.
Howe was the father of three noted writers. Jim Howe, now living on a
ranch in California, was a top overseas correspondent throughout the
first World War. Gene Howe is publisher of the Amarillo (Texas) Daily
Globe—and a magazine writer. And Mateel Howe-Farnham wrote a book.
Before writing her story, “Rebellion,” Mateel’s father advised her
to select characters from real life. And this she did. It was said in
Atchison that Mateel made her father the main character in her book;
that she was a bit rough in her delineation—and that she painted the
picture so well that everyone in Atchison knew without further telling.
This may be true to a certain extent — but I hardly think a
dutiful daughter would have gone the limit in portraying her father
uncharitably. Ed Howe was my friend—and I don’t hold with those rumors.
Doubtless, Mateel padded, and built her rebellious character into a
personage that did not exist. But her “homey” line made the story. It
was a big success. Mateel’s “Rebellion” won the $10,000 Bok prize—and
become a best seller.

Mateel was living in New York City, while her father was in Atchison,
Kansas—and thus widely separated they could not compare notes. Ed Howe
was asked by Mateel’s publishers to write a foreword to the story. For
this he got big pay—I believe the amount he received was fifteen hundred
dollars for an equal number of words. I think also that the liberality
of the publishers was influenced less by the Sage’s fine wording of
his contribution than it was by his veiled admission that he had been
flailed rather unmercifully by his daughter.

Here, I should maybe pick up a few hanging threads and backstitch a
little. My entry into the newspaper field was purely accidental. Being
a chum of the junior partner of Clough & Wolfley, who were preparing to
launch The Spectator, Theodore Wolfley invited me to stick around — said
I might learn something. Mr. Clough, obviously recognizing my need for
it, observed “There’s nothing like a newspaper connection to bolster
your education.”

Major Clough had brought along from Sabetha his foreman, George Fabrick,
to get out the first few issues. Then, after Fabrick had gone back to
Sabetha, a printer came over from Falls City—but Will Allen played pool
most of the time while here. Allen stayed ten weeks, went home for a
visit, and failed to come back. Then the “Devil” took over. It was as
simple—and raw—as that.

The Spectator passed through several ownerships — Lawyer F. M. Jeffries,
Don Perry, John Stowell, Curt and Marie (Polly) Shuemaker. I worked for
all the separate owners—but there was a time between Jeffries and Perry
that publication was suspended for over a year. The newspaper business
in small towns was not very remunerative in those days. To keep going,
the publisher often had to take up side lines, but Jeffries rather
overdid the matter—and failed, even then. He made a pretense of keeping
up his law practice, taught the Hayden school, walked three miles out
and back, and, after a few week’s help from me, tried to do all the
mechanical work, with only the help of his inexperienced wife.

The ownership had reverted back to Wolfley, and so remained,
camouflaged, through the Perry regime, which also was of short duration.
Perry was a good newspaperman — when sober—having conducted the Seneca
Courier-Democrat for a number of years. Jake Cober, also of Seneca, was
his first printer here.

One evening Don Perry came rushing up to the office—-that is, moving as
swiftly as he could make the stairs, in his cups, otherwise very drunk,
saying, “They are after me — I want to make you safe.” I had drawn
no wages, and the amount due me was $127.00. He grabbed up a piece of
yellow scratch paper and penciled a due bill for the amount, and said,
“There now, my patient friend, you’re safe—that’s as good as gold,” with
emphasis. And the surprising thing is that, though he could not have
paid cash for another half-pint of booze, that yellow memento, regarded
worthless, was indeed good as gold. But the payment would have fallen on
my friend Wolfley—and that might have complicated matters between us. I
decided to forget it—and went to Centralia to work for Bill Granger. And
The Spectator went into suspension again.

Then, after I had worked as compositor on the Seneca Tribune, (with
Wolfley again), the Centralia Journal, the Greenleaf Sentinel, the
Atchison Daily Globe, the Atchison Daily Times, and the Kansas City
Daily Journal—subbed for Harvey Hyde—I became owner of the Wetmore
Spectator, buying it from Polly Shuemaker after Curt Shuemaker’s death,
in December, 1890. And my education, so long neglected and retarded by
circumstances, had now begun. Let me say here and now that I cherish the
memory of Theodore J. Wolfley, from whom I derived, at an impressionable
age, the still unshakable conviction that a newspaperman is a pretty
good thing to be.

Not aiming to brag, I led the “pack” on the Atchison Daily Times with
more type set in given time than any other printer. It was back in the
80’s when everything was handset. On learning that a new daily newspaper
was to be launched in Atchison, I wrote to John N. Reynolds asking for
a position as compositor. He replied that all cases had been filled. He
said he liked the tone of my letter, and maybe there would be an opening
later. I went down to Atchison anyway the day before the first issue was
to come out. Reynolds said he wished I had applied earlier; that he had
been told by a Globe printer—probably Charley Gill or “Doc” Tennal—that
I was a swift, printer’s term for a fast type-setter. After a little
more conversation, he said, “Come back here tomorrow morning—if any one
of the printers fail to show up a 7 o’clock, you shall have his case.”
A printer who had the night before celebrated on the prospect of a new
job, came in five minutes after I had gone to work.

And while I made more money than ever before, setting bravier
type—(8-point now) at 30 cents a thousand ems, had I known in advance
the low character the Times proved to be, I think I should have let that
disappointed celebrant have his case. Conducting his paper on something
like iconoclastic order; not exactly image smashing, but unquestionably
an attacker of shams—I am now thinking of “Bran’s Iconoclast,” published
at Waco, Texas, about that time — Reynolds dug deeply into the private
lives of Atchison’s truly great.

A prominent Atchison banker was reportedly out gunning for the editor.
The Times office was in a large second floor room on the south side of
Commercial street. An open stairway, the only entrance to the printing
office, came up from below in the rear of the building. Reynolds, facing
the stairway, always with a six-shooter tucked in his belt, worked at a
flat-top desk halfway between the head of the stairs and the printers’
cases against the windows in the front end. It was watchful waiting for
the eight printers.

Then one day it happened. When the banker’s head showed above the level
of the floor, every printer made a break for cover—that is, got quickly
out of range of possible feudal bullets. The banker did not come up with
his hands in the air. Nor did Reynolds lay aside his gun, as he had done
a few days before while discussing matters with a woman. But then, it
was said, the woman had no grievance with the editor. She merely wanted
to know how he had found out so much about her man and the other woman
— things that would be helpful in the matter of obtaining a divorce. And
so far as we—the printers — were to know, the banker might also have
had no grievance with the editor. It was apparently only a business
discussion.

As an indication of the stakes Reynolds was playing for, I cite this
case. A tired, overworked, Commercial street business man—and family
man—was reportedly seen crossing the river bridge with another man’s
wife. The incident rated only five lines. Somehow the tired merchant got
hold of a first copy of the afternoon paper—and it was said, paid $500
to have the objectionable five lines lifted before the edition was
printed. And I still think Reynolds had engineered matters so that the
overworked merchant could have a look-see in plenty of time to act.

I had set that five line item. But I balked, later, when I got a “take”
attacking one of Atchison’s foremost professional men, involving a
woman, who, of all women, in her most respectable churchy connection,
should have been above reproach. I gave that “take” and my “string”—type
set that morning—to a printer whose case was next to mine; and called
for my time.

Nannie Reynolds, the publisher’s pretty 18-year-old daughter—she was
really pretty—gave me a statement of the amount due me. Ordinarily,
it would have been the foreman’s place to attend to this matter, but,
unfortunately, he was in jail—said to have been put there because of
his position on the paper, but more likely for a night’s celebration.
Oldtime printers thought they had to go on periodical “busts” to ward
off lead poisoning caused from handling so much type. And, incidentally,
I had declined to take the foreman’s place—that is, the foremanship of
the Times, while the ranking man was confined in the City bastile.

I took the statement Nannie had given me down stairs to Scott Hall, who
was to be the cashier of a new bank not yet formally opened, in that
building—but he had been paying the paper bills. Scott said he had paid
out all he was going to until more definite arrangements could be made.
I went back to Reynolds. He grabbed up a full blank newspaper sheet and
wrote in six-inch letters diagonally across from corner to corner: “Pay
this man $17.65.” Scott Hall reluctantly went into the vault and brought
out the money. He said, “This IS THE LAST. You can count yourself lucky
in getting away now.”

I learned later that the tall Irishman who so bravely took my “string,”
did not profit by it. In fact, there were no more payments. And, with
the publisher in the penitentiary and a portion of his printing plant
in the Missouri river, the Times also was no more. Atchison’s enraged
“good” people did not overlook any bets. Reynolds was caught in a
Federal net, charged with irregularities while president of a defunct
Atchison Live Stock Insurance Company.

Reynold’s wife died a few months after he was taken to Leavenworth.
He was permitted to come home for the funeral, under guard, of course.
Nannie had neither brother nor sister. Thus, she was now left entirely
alone. It is always a very sad thing for a beautiful young girl to be
left out in a cold world alone.

While in the pen, Reynolds wrote a book, “The Kansas Hell.” In fact, he
wrote two books—the other one, “Twin Hells.” He had been in the pen
in another state—Iowa, I believe. After his release from the Kansas
penitentiary, John N. Reynolds drove into Wetmore with four large gray
horses hitched to a spring wagon, carrying his books and four male
gospel singers. He made a stand in front of the old Wetmore House, and
sold his books. He spotted me in the crowd, nodded a greeting, and later
gave me a hearty handshake—and a copy of his Kansas Hell.

Like Howe, and Runyan, and Twain—all good newspapermen—my formal
schooling was negligible. I did not work up to the big school in
Wetmore, on the hilltop. Also I did not graduate. I do not know if I got
as high as the eighth grade, or even far along in the grammar school.
The one-room, one-teacher school down town had no grades. But I do know
I wouldn’t study my grammar. And I now know too that this was one
regrettable mistake.

If it had not been for the ravenous grasshoppers — 1874 — and other
calamitous visitations upon us in those pioneer days it might not have
been so, but the fact is, I quit school at the age of fourteen to help
my father earn money to take care of his family while he himself was
industriously engaged in bringing in new recruits for the school.
The tenth one was the only girl—and to be brought up with a bunch of
“roughneck” boys, she was a pretty good kid. And smart too. She studied
her grammar in the first school house on the hilltop.

Nannie and my brother Theodore are, besides myself, all there are left
of the once big family. They are, and have been for forty-five years,
living in Fresno, California — now at 1005 Ferger avenue. Theodore was
the seventh son, but contrary to ancient superstition, he has displayed
no supernatural talent. He is now, and has been for forty years, in the
employ of the Southern Pacific railroad, at Fresno. Theodore was the
last born of twins. Willie, the first born—and sixth in line—died when
about a year old. And Joseph, my youngest brother, lived only nine
months.

Me, I was just a darned good printer—a “swift,” if you please—trying,
lamely, to fill an outsize editorial chair. And it was Myrtle
Mercer—later my wife—who, as compositor, took the kinks out of my
grammar. The hard and fast printer’s rule to “follow copy if it goes out
the window,” was something to be ignored in my office. And though she
has been dead now since 1925, that ever helpful girl still is, in
a manner, taking the kinks out of my grammar—I hope. The pain of
shop-acquired grammar is that one never knows for sure just how faulty
his English might be.

Getting back to the dominating character of this story, during that
morning call at The Spectator office, Mr. Henry stepped over to where
The Girl was setting type, saying, “I should know, Miss Myrtle, without
asking that you must have enjoyed the Peak trip.” Their eyes sparkled as
they talked it over. Though months and years had passed since the day
he made the trip with the Handley girl, Mr. Henry was still feeling the
exhilaration of it.

The Spectator office was over the W. H. Osborn shoe store on a corner
across the street from the DeForest mercantile corner. Hardly had Mr.
Henry gotten back to his store when Myrtle, looking out the window,
exclaimed, “My gosh—the chaperon! Look out below!” Seeing the chaperon
heading for the shoe store, caused Myrtle to say to me, “It looks as if
some of you brilliant fraters of Faber could have foreseen the damage to
be done by that foolhardy plunge down the gravel slide.” She had picked
up the term, “fraters of Faber,” in the parlors of the Alamo hotel when
the party was welcomed by Mayor Sprague, the Chamber of Commerce, and
the Pike’s Peak Press Club.

The shoe merchant’s wife had taken care of the store during his absence,
and was still on duty. Somehow, during the hour’s visit, the merchant
slipped a pair of new shoes to the chaperon—as was quite proper, since
he had led her down that gravel slide. But his wife seemingly was not an
understanding woman. She followed the chaperon to the railroad station,
and recovered the shoes. No blows, no hair pulling—not at the depot,
anyway.

Another time, while ostensibly vacationing in Colorado—Colorado again,
I’m sure it was—Mr. Henry had a couple of fine flannel shirts washed by
a Chinese laundry-man in Grass Valley, California, and they had shrunk
so badly that he put them back in stock in his store. I’m positive he
told me they were laundered in Grass Valley. Those fine shirts were to
be taken on another outing in Colorado, and one of them got up Pike’s
Peak, too—but those shirts did not find their way to Grass Valley this
time. I know. I wore them.

Years after that sad trip to Omaha, and after he had thrown his fortunes
in with the younger set, Mr. Henry married a mighty fine Wetmore girl,
a school teacher—Miss Anna Gill. The marriage license gave their ages
as over 21, which was correct as far as it went. A closer tab would have
revealed his age as being somewhere around 54, and hers a full decade
above the stated figure. This romance also “hung fire” for several
years. In fact, it was hard to tell just when it began.

More than once have I walked with Mr. Henry the mile to her country
home, when I thought my friend Alex Hamel, or maybe Rodman DeForest, or
Johnny Thomas, or my brother Sam, was the top man there. We were not, of
course—Mr. Henry and I—walking out together of a Sunday evening to see
the same girl, but had I been pressed to make a choice of the half dozen
girls who congregated there, Miss Anna would have been that one. It was
not clear to all just who was going to see whom.

Alex Hamel’s most cherished memory of his suit was the fact—so he told
me—that while walking out in the night with Mr. Henry and the girl,
arms in arms, Alex on one side and the tall stately highbred gentleman
(Alex’s description) on the other side, he had reached over and kissed
Miss Anna. Alex did not say whether or not she had inclined her head
toward him for the reception of that kiss in the dark.

It was no comedown for the “highbred gentleman” when he married the
harness-maker’s daughter. Mr. Henry died, in retirement, in 1917.
His widow and son Carroll, later, moved to Boise, Idaho. Augusta Ann
DeForest died in 1895. Her husband, Isaac Newton DeForest, had died ten
years earlier.

During a ten days stay in Los Angeles, following Christmas (1947), at
the home of my nephew, W. G. Bristow, and his wife Ethel, and visiting
the Weavers — Raymond, Nellie, and Miss Cloy—Tom DeForest called with
a new automobile and drove me to his home at Santa Anita, a restricted
residential section in the foothills, where I met his wife Hilda, his
daughter Mary, and his son Tommy. He also drove me over to the west
side to call on the Larzeleres — Ed, Mabel, Ella and her husband Lester
Hatch, and their daughter Miss Drusilla, who writes feature (society)
articles for the Los Angeles Sunday Times. Tom, son of Moulton and Mary
(Thomas) DeForest, is in possession of the original DeForest family
bible. From those records, and from Tom himself, I verified facts set
forth in this article.

Tom DeForest has a $50,000 home only a little way up the canyon from the
famous Santa Anita race track. After showing me through the home and
we were on our way out, Tom spied some freshly baked pumpkin pies on
a table. I imagine they were pies baked for a family outing “below the
border” in Old Mexico, where Tom said they were going the following
morning for a three-day fishing trip. He said, “I think we ought to have
a piece of pie and a glass of milk before we go over to Larzelere’s.”
While eating the pie, Tom expounded glibly, as only a DeForest could, on
his liking for pumpkin pies in general and particularly the one we
were eating—and his detestation of the so-called pumpkin pies made from
squash. As we were going out the door, his wife whispered to me, “I made
that pie out of Tom’s despised squash which he grew himself here in the
garden.” Tom has an extra lot back of his residence where he digs in the
good earth to keep himself fit.

T. M. DeForest is a former Wetmore boy who made good. He told me that
when he landed in Los Angeles about 1908, Ed (Bogs) Graham, another
Wetmore boy, staked him to a meal ticket. As we were driving past
the business location — confectionery store, I believe — of Ed’s twin
daughters, Marion and Maxine, very close to the Larzelere home, Tom said
he had a warm spot in his heart for the girls because of the lift he
had gotten from their father, long since dead, when things looked pretty
blue for him.

Tom DeForest started his restaurant career with a push-cart, peddling
hamburgers and beans of evenings, while studying law during the day —
just to please his father. The hamburger and bean business grew beyond
all expectations—and Tom soon forgot about his father’s wish that he
study law. Tom did not travel the streets with his push-cart. He stored
it back of a bank building in the daytime, and brought it out only of
evenings — keeping late hours, and quite often “wee” hours. When he
housed the business at 2420 North Broadway, it became “Ptomaine Tommy’s
Place.” And it continued to grow. The name made it famous. Tom told me
he could sell the business for $100,000—but he didn’t know what to do
with the money. Then, too, I suspect, the complicated income tax demands
was also a deterrent. That’s what has stopped Jim Leibig — another
Wetmore boy who has made good, at Santa Ana — from turning a big profit.
I think Jim could clean up with as much, or maybe more, than Tom.

Tom DeForest has leased the business to his former help for a percentage
of the profits. He goes to the place only once every day now, (12
o’clock, noon), to check up — and gather in the cash. Pretty soft,
Tommy—pretty soft.

Now, was there ever another man like Henry Clay DeForest? Certainly not
in Wetmore. Mr. Henry was my hero, had been so since the time of his
partnership here with Seth Handley, when I was eleven years old, “under
foot” much of the time in their establishment. And I should have liked
very much to have seen his romance with Seth’s sister materialize.
Although I had seen her but once, I had come to think of her as an
exceptionally desirable lady, a lovely personage like her wonderful
brother Seth. And though it came to naught, I still think it was, in a
way, the most beautiful romance that I have ever known; with the lady
waiting—waiting unto death for the clouds to roll by.

And even with the handicap of being influenced by an aristocratic mother
— if it really were a handicap — Mr. Henry rose, in a community dead set
against such holdings, to the heights in popularity. He was the almost
perfect man — a man after my own heart, and even now it pleases me no
little to remember that I had selected him as my hero early in life.

SMALLPOX PESTILENCE Not Hitherto Published—1947.

By John T. Bristow

Don’t be frightened. On paper, smallpox is not contagious. That is,
usually it isn’t. But I shall cite one case where it might have been.
Had you been living here in Wetmore fifty years ago, it would have been
about a hundred to one chance that you would have backed away from the
mere mention of smallpox.

Some five hundred others did just that.

It was my first and only experience with the loathsome disease. Also
it was the first — and last — case of smallpox the town ever had. There
were among us, however, several sorry looking walking testimonials
of what that pestilence could do to one’s face. Elva Kenoyer, in her
twenties, unattached and so remaining to the end, was horribly pitted.
E. S. Frager, the furniture dealer, got his pits elsewhere. Eli
Swerdfeger, a retired farmer, had ’ em all over his face, and deep too.
And though he was at that time making his living by doing odd jobs about
town, he wouldn’t for love or money attend me. Said he had his family to
consider.

And Eugene Dorcas, living in the country at the time — later in
Wetmore—had smallpox so badly that the soles of his feet had come off
like a rattlesnake sheds its skin. But, at that, he had nothing on me.

Dr. J. W. Graham, the old family physician, was called in—and, as a
mark of courtesy to me, or perhaps more correctly as a beginning for
launching his son just out of medical school on a like career, brought
Dr. Guy S. Graham along with him. And, in a manner, it was Guy’s first
professional case. They found that I was running a temperature of 105,
and mighty sick, but no signs or even thought of smallpox—yet. The young
doctor remained with me after the old doctor had gone to the drugstore
to get a prescription filled. He sat on the edge of my bed, just
visiting.

At that time, there was a lot of smallpox in Kansas City, and I had been
there about ten days before with a mixed carload of hogs and cattle —
owned in partnership with my brother Theodore—from my Bancroft farm.
Also, I had occupied a seat in the railroad coach coming home, with
George Fundis. He spoke of the prevalence of smallpox in Kansas City,
and his fear of contracting it—and then proceeded to have his attack
almost at once on getting back to his home in Centralia. He might have
been a carrier. George was a stockbuyer—but before this time, he owned
and operated a general store at Ontario.

On the following morning after the Drs. Graham had visited me, I noticed
red spots deep under the skin in the palms of my hands. They worried me.
I sent word to Dr. J. W. Graham appraising him of my fears, and asked
him to not come back. And the young doctor rushed out immediately and
buried his clothes. However, the old doctor was not frightened — so he
said. But he called up the County Health Officer and scared the “puddin’
” out of him.

I had Dr. Graham send for Dr. Charley Howe, of Atchison, known as “The
Smallpox Doctor,” on account of his having stamped out an epidemic at
Lenora with his vinegar treatment, or rather his vinegar preventive.

Dr. Howe first had a talk with Dr. Graham, and decided I did not have
it. He came to see me without putting on his rubber suit. On first
entering the room, however, he said, “You don’t need to tell me
anything, you’ve got it, I can smell it—but I thought you were so scared
of catching it, that you would never get it.”

A few weeks before this I had met Dr. Howe at the depot in Wetmore,
while on his way to Centralia to see a man whom the local doctor
believed might be coming down with smallpox. I had known Charley Howe
for a long time — had worked with him on his brother Ed’s Daily Globe
in Atchison, and worked for Charley on his Greenleaf newspaper before he
was a doctor. When he stepped off the train to tell me about his
findings, I hung back a little from the start, but when he said the
fellow was broken out, I backed still farther away from him before he
had got around to saying it was not smallpox. Dr. Howe laughed about
this, and said, “Oh, you’ll never get it.”

The doctor asked me if I had a shotgun? I told him Dad had one in the
kitchen. He said, “You better have it brought in here. If the people try
to force you away to a pest house, stand them off with it. To move you
now would mean almost sure death.” Dr. Howe told my sister Nannie — she
had been attending me up to this time, and thought she was in for it
too—that she could continue waiting on me, without risk, if she would
ring off my bed with chairs”, come into the room as little as possible,
not touch dishes or anything else handled by me, without rubber
gloves—and take the vinegar preventive, she would be safe. He said the
danger was not so much with the first fever stage, as later.

The doctor said I should eat no solids; nothing but soft food for
eight days— “ and then,” he laughed, “you’ll not care to eat solids
or anything else, for awhile.” That’s when the smallpox patient erupts
internally. We settled on cream of wheat, and my sister, not getting the
short term well fixed in mind, kept me on that one diet for forty-two
days—long after I was well enough to get out. The County Health Officer
was afraid to come down from Seneca to release me. He took plenty of
time, and then without ever seeing me, issued an order for my release,
with a “guess so” attachment.

My sister Nannie, at seventeen, was rather plump — not bulky fat—but
after the vinegar treatment she came out as slim as a race horse, and
has been trim ever since. An awful lot of cider vinegar —it had to
be cider vinegar — was consumed in Wetmore that winter. I believe the
vinegar produced an acid blood.

On the first afternoon when the fever was making me pretty stupid, I had
spent maybe a half hour sitting by the stove in Bud Means’ store, below
the printing office. Near by, there was a water bucket, with dipper,
for everybody’s use. I did not drink at the public bucket that day — but
when it became known that I had a high fever at that very time, and was
now down with smallpox, it was but natural for Bud to imagine that I had
tried to cool my fever with several trips to his water bucket. And
there was no imagination about the quaff he himself had taken from that
dipper, after I had left. Bud told me after I had gotten out—not right
away, you can bet your life—that it almost made him sick.

With Elva’s and Eli’s pockmarked faces constantly in mind, I laid awake
nights to make sure that I would not, in my sleep, scratch my face, or
misplace the slipperyelm poultice, done in cheesecloth, in which my face
was swathed. And then, even then, it was awful, a mass of apparently
disfigurating open pustules, with face redder than a spanked baby.

After my face had come back to somewhere near normal, I sent my
neighbor, Ed Reitzel, up to B. O. Bass’ barber shop to buy—not borrow—a
razor and mug, aiming to use them only once. Then, before I had started
on that oh-so-awful looking face, I began to wonder if maybe Byron had
not sent me his “deadman’s” razor, and I had to send Ed back to make
sure about that. I knew that Byron, when telling one of his funny
barbershop stories, was liable to do and say things off key. One time
he poured nearly a whole bottle of hairoil on my head—which I had not
ordered, and didn’t want—while he was looking away from his work, and
laughing at his own funny story. Then I had to have a shampoo before I
could go to “protracted” meeting that night.

Fixed up with Byron’s razor, I looked a little more like myself, and was
now ready to hold an appointment with my girl, who was also the manager
of my newspaper business, with the alternate help of Herb Wait and
Jim Harvey Hyde, of the Centralia Journal. She had secured for me
from General Passenger Agent Barker in St. Louis a pass over the MK&T
railroad, to Galveston. George Cawood had sent me word not to show up at
his store for awhile after I would get out, and I knew that all the town
people were feeling the same way about me. Hence the trip to the gulf.

As instructed, Myrtle met me at the front gate of her home, handed me my
credentials and the money she had gotten for me, stood off a reasonable
distance, also as per instructions, and said, “You look like the devil.”
The cold had enhanced the “splendor” of the blemishes on my face. If she
could have said further, “But I still love you in the same old way,” it
would have been a more cheerful sendoff for the long journey ahead of
me.

But Myrtle was too busy trying to tell me how she had managed my
business. She didn’t know it, but she herself had, in prospect, a
substantial interest in the printery. Before leaving the office on that
dreadful day when my fever was at high pitch—I mean actual temperature—I
deposited in my desk a check written in her favor, with no ifs or ands
attached, for an amount which would have come near bankrupting me as of
the moment—even as I have now, since I am no longer a family man, set
aside the residue of my possessions, if any, in favor of the sister who
had so bravely, at the risk of her face and figure, stood by me through
that smallpox ordeal.

After getting settled in bed that first night, I told my sister about
the check in my desk, and also told her that I wanted her to see that
it be paid, if, and when, it would appear appropriate to do so. I was
remembering at the time the case of Myran Ash and Ella Wolverton,
south of town. Ella had waited on him in his last sickness, and in the
meantime picked up Myran’s check for $1,000. His relatives tried, but
failed, to prevent her from cashing the check.

When I boarded the train at Wetmore that same day, Charley Fletcher, the
conductor, coming down the aisle gathering tickets, stopped stock-still,
and backed up a few steps, when he saw me. He wouldn’t touch my Mo.
Pacific pass until I had explained that it had been in the office all
the time during my sickness.

After first calling on my doctor, I stopped in Atchison long enough to
buy a suit of clothes and other needed articles. I had left home wearing
an old suit, “borrowed” from Ed Murray. On leaving the clothing store
I met, or came near meeting, Mr. Redford, bookkeeper at the
Green-leaf-Baker grain elevator, whom I knew quite well, having shipped
grain to the firm. Taking to the street, he shied around me, but he
had the decency to laugh about it—and told me that I would see Frank
Crowell, of the firm, at Galveston, if I were going that way. The Kansas
Grain Dealers Association was to hold a meeting in Galveston two days
hence.

On my way to a barbershop down the street, I had a chat with my doctor
again. He was standing on the sidewalk at the bottom of the steps
leading up to his office, grinning. He said, “Well, your conductor came
along while I was standing here, and I asked him what did he mean by
bringing that smallpox patient down from Wetmore?” Dr. Howe laughed, and
said, “You know, I thought that poor fellow was going to collapse on
the sidewalk, and I had to tell him quickly that you couldn’t give it to
anyone if you would try.”

There was one small spot on my jaw that had not properly healed, and
I had asked the doctor earlier, in the office, if he thought it might
cause the barber to ask questions? He said, “No, no—just go in and say
nothing.” But after we had talked awhile on the sidewalk, he said, “You
better hunt a fire before you go to the barbershop. Your face is as
spotted as a leopard.”

At Galveston, I met Mrs. Poynter—she was our Bancroft correspondent—with
several of the grainmen’s wives. Usually very sociable, she acted as
if she were looking for a chance to run, and I backed out of a rather
embarrassing position. Evidently not knowing of my smallpox siege,
Secretary E. J. Smiley gave me a cordial ham, even laughed as if he were
remembering the illegal grain contract which he and my local competitor
had virtually forced upon me, “for benefit of the Association” — a
similar one of like illegality, which had, reputedly, within a few
weeks therefrom, got someone a 30-day jail sentence at Salina. Other
acquaintances in the grain dealers party acted as if they could get
along very well without me—and I troubled them no more.

Back home, the people gradually stopped their shying, and in the week I
waited for the County Health Officer’s instructions for fumigating the
house, I talked matters over with the family. For the peace of mind of
our town people, it was decided that everything in the smallpox house
should be burned—and my parents and my sister would go to Fresno,
California, where my brothers Dave and Frank were in business.

My Aunt Nancy, with her husband, Bill Porter, drove in from their
Wolfley creek home, and had dinner with the folks the day I was to start
the fires. Bill Porter said it would be rank foolishness for us to burn
the stuff. I said, “All right, Bill; drive by this afternoon and I’ll
load your wagon.” He said, quickly, “Don’t want any of the things — on
account of our neighbors.”

Several years later, the Porter family all had smallpox—and Bill, the
elder, died of it. And Bill, the second — there is a third Bill
Porter, and a fourth Bill Porter now — tells me that not for six months
thereafter did they have callers. Had I loaded his wagon that day of my
fire, the loss of my uncle would have made it regrettable—but I don’t
think that I would have allowed him to cart away anything, even had he
accepted my offer.

Jessie Bryant’s three-months old daughter, Violet, was first in the
Porter family to have it, and she was thought to have contracted the
disease in a rather peculiar way. Jessie was holding the baby on her lap
as she read a letter from her husband, Lon Bryant, who was working in
Nebraska, saying he would have to move from the place he was staying, on
account of the people in the home having smallpox.

The burning of the things was mostly done that afternoon, but the
fumigation would carry over into the next day. To avoid an extra
scrubbing of myself, with change of clothing twice, I planned to stay
that night in the house, and held back one bed and some bedding. It was
in the same room I had occupied, and was first to be fumigated. It would
get another dose of brimstone the next day, after the room would be
cleared. I opened all windows and one outer door, but the room did not
air out readily. The brimstone had penetrated the bed covers so as to
make them squeak under touch, and I could hardly get my breath in the
room. It was almost dark, and quite cold. I could not sit by an open
window, through the night. Then I thought of a roll of linoleum in the
kitchen. I put one end of the rolled linoleum in the bed and stuck the
other end out the window. With the coat I had worn that day wrapped
around my neck, I got in bed, covered up head and foot, stuck my face in
the funnel, chinked around with the old coat, and got through the night
very well—with little sleep, however.

Our close neighbors did not show undue fright. In fact, they volunteered
assistance while the home was under quarantine—but they had the good
sense to limit their visits to the middle of the road in front of the
house. My brother Sam got out before the red flag was posted, and
took refuge in his mobile photo gallery. My father got caught, with my
mother, in the kitchen—and remained there and in a connecting bedroom
until permitted by the proper authorities to go to his shoeshop. And
there, save for one lone kid, he had no callers, for the duration—but,
with the help of this boy runner he kept the supply line open to the
quarantined house. Louie Gibbons, half-brother of “Spike” Wilson,
our old Spectator’s celebrated “Devil,” after spending forty years in
Minneapolis, Minnesota, got the urge to see what Wetmore and Holton
looks like now—and, after flying to Kansas City, dropped in here for a
day recently. When he found out who I was, and I learned who he was, he
said, “You know, I used to carry groceries over to your home in the east
part of town when you had smallpox.”

Oldtimers who have often heard the expression, applied to persons of
dubious ways and stupendous blunders, should not miss the climax in
this last paragraph. After I had cleaned myself up with doubly strong
solution of corrosive sublimate — which, by the way, salivated me — I
called on our neighbors, Don and Cass Rising. Don had been choreboy for
the folks while holed up. My face was not pitted, and Don said that I
must have had smallpox very lightly, or maybe not at all. I told him
I had protected my face because I figured that it would be about all I
would have left after the expense of the thing—but if he would send his
wife out of the room, I would show him. My hips, and even farther back
all the way round, were badly pitted — still very red, almost raw. When
I showed him, Don yelled, “Cass, Cass—come in here!” I started to
pull my pants up, but he grabbed hold of my garment, saying, “No, no —
don’t!” Then he shoved my trousers down even farther than I had dropped
them.

And the lady came in.

CORRECT VISION Little Donna Cole was whimpering in my wife’s arms as
Myrtle was carrying her niece to the child’s home after nightfall, with
a half-full moon lighting the way. Myrtle said, “Oh, Donna, you must
not cry—don’t you see the pretty moon?” Donna stopped her whimpering and
after a moment, said, “I can see half of it, Aunt Myrtle.”

GRAPES — RIPENED ON FRIENDSHIP’S VINE Not Hitherto Published—1947.

By John T. Bristow

In the preceding article I mentioned an illegal contract literally
shoved down my throat. The purpose of this article is to shed further
light on that incident—and to show how it got me pulled into court, as
star witness. And then too, as a whole, the article gives a “bird’s
eye” view of a small town pulling for the good of the town—according to
selfish individual tastes.

There is no malice in this writing, no sore spots. But there are some
blunt facts. To leave them out, or gloss over the bluntness, would
destroy the comedy — then the writing would have no point. There are
some “humdinger” situations in it—and I don’t aim to lose them. But,
believe me, there is no chip on my shoulder. When one approaches the
cross-roads where he can go no farther, when his interests are all
centered around the stark grim business of clinging to life, he wants
nothing so much as tranquil waters on which to drift leisurely down the
remaining days of his existence. I repeat, this article is not meant to
be critical.

Starting out with the grain trade in Wetmore, I will say Michael Worthy
had been a shipper before I got into the business. He owned and operated
a small grain elevator connected with the flour mill originally built
by Merritt & Gettys, and later owned by Doug Bailey, G. A. Russell, and
Littleton M. Wells, on the south side of the railroad. After the mill
and elevator were destroyed by fire in the eighties, Mr. Worthy built a
small combined crib and grain house, with a long high driveway, on the
location of the present Continental Grain Company’s elevator, west of
the depot, north of the tracks. There had been a minor accident on that
high driveway, and Mr. Worthy had abandoned use of it. This reduced him
to the status of a track buyer.

In the meantime I had bought the Grant Means corn crib—capacity ten
thousand bushels—on the north side of the tracks, east of the depot,
and filled it with ear-corn, for speculation. When I moved that corn,
I saved some money by shipping it myself. And that’s how I got into the
grain business, as a side line, in competition with Mr. Worthy.

About this time, the Kansas Grain Dealers Association was born. The
Association did not recognize track buyers. In fact, its members fought
them whenever they came in competition with the elevators. Just how my
competitor, with his inoperative dump, got into the Association in the
first place was, of course, his own business. I didn’t care to join
the Association—probably couldn’t have got in anyway, as I had no blind
dump.

But I was shipping to a house in Atchison that had been forced into the
Association to hold its business. I think Mr. Baker had come in only on
one foot, however. Anyway, he was sending me sealed bids, and buying my
corn against an Association rule which said he must not do that. It took
Mr. Worthy nigh onto two years to find this out. And then, of course, it
was his duty to report the matter to the Association.

I had a friend in the Mo. Pacific Agent, and whenever I would bill out a
car of corn, Ed Murray would give me the waybill which ordinarily would
have been placed in a box by the door on the outside of the depot for
the trainman to pick up along with the car. I watched for trains, and in
event the car had not been taken out, I would put the waybill in the box
after I was sure Michael would not snoop.

Mr. Worthy was a devout Methodist, a religiously just man who would not
knowingly do a wrong—a wrong according to his lights. He attended prayer
meeting every Thursday night. His home was a half mile south of town.
On a Thursday I had two loaded cars on track. That Michael had something
unusual on his mind this day there could be no doubt. He had stopped by
to chat a bit with me while the cars were being loaded. He handled coal
in connection with his lumber business, owned coal-bins close by, and
had the grace to putter around them a bit before leaving the scene.
I hung around on the fringe of the depot that night until Mr. Worthy
drove by, as always, in his one-horse buggy, with lantern hanging on
the dashboard. I allowed time for him to drive to his home, and a little
extra—then dropped my waybills in the box. And that was the night when I
should have stood vigil until the wee hours.

Michael snooped. Two A. M.

On the fifth morning after that shipment I got a telegram from Atchison
telling me, much as a friend might ask a criminal to come in and give
himself up, to go to the Josephine hotel in Holton that day and join the
Grain Dealers Association.

Also, there was a circus billed for Holton that day.

I found Michael Worthy and Secretary E. J. Smiley at the hotel waiting
for me. There was much stir about the hotel, as if a general meeting was
in progress. Mr. Smiley told me that he and Mr. Worthy had a tentative
contract drafted, and that I might take my girl to the circus—then I
was to drop by the hotel and sign up for membership in the Association,
which would cost me $12 a year, in quarterly payments. I was going
to take my girl to the circus anyway. Harvey Lynn and Anna Bates, and
Myrtle Mercer, were in the hotel parlor waiting for me. We had planned
this even before I got that telegram. I had complimentary tickets, and
we could not afford to miss the circus to parley over a contract. We
four circus lovers had gone to Holton with a livery team, in an open
spring wagon.

After the circus, Mr. Smiley asked me if I had any objections to the
contract? I told him that inasmuch as I was being pushed in with scant
knowledge of what it was all about, and that in deference to my friends
in Atchison who were urging me to get in PDQ, that I would sign on the
dotted line—and trust to luck. It seemed to be Mr. Worthy’s field day,
and he would have had his own way, anyhow. It looked as if it might
rain, and I did not want to waste time quibbling over the matter. If
need be, I would gladly forego shipping altogether for the life of the
contract—which was six months, with renewal privilege — rather than get
my friends in trouble.

When I had signed the paper, Mr. Smiley shook his head, negatively,
grinned, and said in undertone so that Michael couldn’t hear, “He’ll not
want to renew it.” I pondered this for many days, and don’t know that I
ever did hit upon the right solution. There certainly was nothing in
the contract to alert me on that point. Had Mr. Smiley known what I had
decided to do in the matter before I got home that day, he would have
been justified in making that prediction.

Well, it rained. It rained “pitchforks.” And, in that open wagon, there
were two mighty sloppy girls, and as many sloppy boys—and, to make
matters worse, the creek was over the Netawaka bridge. Held up here, I
took the opportunity to scrutinize the $3.00 package I had so recently
purchased, practically “sight unseen,” and see what they had really done
to me.

The contract gave Mr. Worthy two-thirds of the business, and I was
to have the other third. If either of us got more than the allotted
proportion, he must pay the other one cent a bushel for the excess. We
would buy now at a price supplied us from day to day by an anonymous
somebody having no permanent address. No matter where located, any
member receiving house that we might choose, would confirm our sales. It
was September, and the old corn was about all gone. Mr. Worthy had 1200
bushels contracted from Herb Wessel, and I had 3000 bushels coming in
from Charley Hannah. By agreement, these lots were not to be counted on
the contract.

Harvey Lynn was Assistant Cashier of the Wetmore State Bank, and should
have been able to decipher any funny business—but he could see no just
reason why Mr. Worthy should be given twice as much as me. Certainly not
on account of that old dump.

Anna Bates said, “Why, that old dump, nobody would risk their horses
on that rickety high driveway. I’ve heard lots of farmers say they
wouldn’t.” Mr. and Mrs. O. Bates were operating the north side
restaurant, and as waitress Anna had a good opportunity to hear the corn
haulers express themselves.

Myrtle Mercer said, “I know what I’d do. You could let Mr. Worthy have
it all, and then go down to his lumber office once a month, and collect.
That would give you a third interest in his grain business—just for
grapes. That ought to hold him.”

Harvey said, “John, I believe Myrtle’s got something there. You can’t
fight with your hands tied.”

“But,” I said, “that clause saying I must buy everything offered, at a
designated price, will keep my hands tied.”

Myrtle said, “Think, think, think! Let’s pray that there shall be a way
around that. It’s not fair to let Mr. Worthy do all the thinking. It’s
only for corn shipped. And you always fill your cribs every winter
anyway.”

She was all for the grapes.

As of the moment, Myrtle’s estimate of one-third was correct — but, like
a struggling corporation doubling its capital with the induction of new
blood, our new set-up raised the buyer’s margin from one cent to two
cents a bushel; thus reducing the little man’s share to one-sixth of the
gross, with all the expense of handling and shipper’s losses falling on
the promoter. And the losses—mostly on account of wet snow-ridden corn
being carelessly scooped off the ground into the sheller—were unusually
heavy that winter. But Michael, being the man he was, took his medicine
without a whimper.

Happily, there was a way around it. An honorable way. Michael said as
much himself. Actually, I did not ship one car of corn in the whole six
months. But I did spring the market on nearly all the 10,000 bushels of
ear-corn cribbed that winter. My crib was 16-foot tall on the high side,
with doors or openings well up toward the top, and it took more to get
the farmers to bring it to me in the ear. The extra money paid for the
shoveling was very generously interpreted by Mr. Worthy as no violation
of our contract.

Though I was the loser, a funny incident fits in here. I was bothered
some by petty stealing, but never a loss of any consequence. John
Irving, commonly called “Nigger John,” head of the only colored family
ever living in Wet-more—and, except John, a right good colored family
it was — thought it a huge joke on me. He laughed “fit to kill” when
he told me that he had climbed up to one of those high doors one night
about 10 o’clock, and then dropped down on the inside to the corn, and
was filling his sack, “when I gets me some company.” He said a white
man, (naming him) with sack in readiness, had dropped down on top of
him. He laughed, “That white man, he was sure scared most to def.”
Nigger John also told me that he and our deputy town marshal had bumped
heads in my corn crib one dark night. “But that’s eber time,” he lied.
And John was not what you might call a really bad Nigger. Other men who
helped themselves to my corn were not “white” enough to tell me about
it.

Also, someone had whittled out a hand-opening, enlarged the crack
between two boards on the back side of the crib—with a loss of two or
three bushels of corn. When I went down one evening about dusk to close
the crib, I saw a very fine old lady—a grandmother—filling her apron
with my corn. I sneaked away, praying that she had not seen me.

And again, I had given permission to a crippled man to gather up some
shattered corn around the sheller after the day’s run. When I went
down late in the evening to close the crib, I saw the man and his wife
putting ear-corn in a sack. I didn’t want to humiliate them, so I walked
unobserved around to the opposite side of the crib, and made a lot
of racket. The sacks contained no ear-corn when I got around to the
sheller—and I knew then that they would always be my friends.

Eighty-three dollars was the largest monthly check paid me on that
lop-sided contract. With the sixth and last month’s collection in hand,
I asked Mr. Worthy if he wished to renew the contract?

“Lord no,” he said, throwing up his hands. “The nice thing about this
track buying is, when a fellow knows he’s licked, he can shoulder his
scoop-shovel, go home and sleep soundly.”

But it was not so tough on Mr. Worthy as one might think. We had been
buying on a one-cent margin. Now we — or more properly he — were working
on a two-cent margin, and, barring shipping expenses and losses, he
would still be making a cent profit on the third on which he would have
to pay me one cent a bushel. It was just galling him — that’s all. He
had the old-fashioned notion that one should labor for his money.

Mr. Worthy told me later that he had made the discovery of my billing at
two o’clock that night after he had gone home from church. He laughed,
saying he had made several futile nocturnal visits to that box before
this time. It was luck more than perseverance that had rewarded him at
that late hour. A freight train that would have picked up the loads, had
it not already been loaded to capacity, passed through at 11 o’clock.
Also, he said he had believed for awhile that I was selling my corn on
the Kansas City market—and that when I would get enough of this that I
would quit. Except on a sustained rising market, the dealer shipping to
Kansas City could not compete successfully with the dealer who sold to
the receiving houses, on advance bids. And that is how the Association
was eliminating the track buyers.

I could not realize at first what tremendous advantage this lop-sided
contract would give me. On the face of the contract—no. Decidedly the
opposite. Nor was it out in the open for Michael to see. In fact, it
was by way of developments mothered by that contract. The Association
maintained a weighmaster at all member receiving houses, who would check
on member-shipper’s receipts, at 35 cents a car, if desired; but it was
not obligatory. Having had some rather unsatisfactory treatment from
other houses, I had now found a place where I could depend on getting
honest weights. I wrote F. M. Baker, telling him that while I
hardly knew yet why the urgency, I had paid for a membership in the
Association; and, as I had always had satisfactory weights from his
firm, I desired him to disregard the Association weighmaster.

He wrote me, saying he deeply appreciated my statement of confidence
in him; that he had been accused of all manner of uncomplimentary
things—stated much stronger—and that if he could ever do me a favor,
he would do it gladly. Thus was laid the foundation for a real helpful
friendship—but, handicapped by that lop-sided contract, it did not come
into being for another six months.

On the q~t, we belonged to the same poker club.

When I got a free hand, I also got the corn. We received bids from the
purchasing houses every morning, good until 9:30 a.m. Corn bought after
this time would be subject to the fluctuations of the day’s market, with
a new bid the next morning. Though I hardly know how it got started,
it became a fixed routine for the firm’s telegraph operator and buyer,
George Wolf—now Executive Vice President of the Exchange National Bank,
in Atchison—to call me up after the close of the market. If I had bought
corn that day on the basis of the morning bid, and it had dropped a
cent, or any amount, he would book it at the morning bid. And if it
had gone up he would tell me to hold it for developments the next day.
Sometimes the market would go up day after day, and I would not sell
until there was a break; and then I would get the last top bid.

That was grapes—ripened on friendship’s vine.

I spent a pleasant hour with George Wolf in his private corner of the
Exchange National, three years ago. We discussed old times. I believe
George would now vouch for all I am saying here.

I went down to Atchison one afternoon, when corn had dropped a half
cent. I had 3,000 bushels that I had bought from Jim Smith, and 10,000
bushels of the Ham Lynn corn which I had agreed to ship for his account,
at $5 a car. The corn was several years old, and a portion of the big
crib had been unroofed for one whole summer. The grade was doubtful. I
did not want to buy it outright. There was a car shortage, too, and I
wanted the shipment to take care of the grades as well as penalties,
if any, in case the shipment was not completed within the 10-day time
limit. Mr. Baker said he would take my 3,000 bushels at the morning bid,
and Mr. Lynn’s 10,000 bushels at the present market (one-half cent less)
if he would let it go at that. And in that case he would give me credit
for the half cent, amounting to $50. He said, rather gruffly, “We don’t
owe the farmer anything. There’s the phone. See what you can do with
him.” Mr. Lynn accepted the new offer. And he was mighty glad that he
did. By the time I got around to telling him all about the deal, corn
had dropped several cents. If it had gone up, I don’t believe I would
have ever told him. The Lynn shipment totaled 13,000 bushels, with only
one car off grade.

I used to take an occasional flyer on the Board of Trade—mostly, I
believe, before my good Christian friend, Albert Zabel, told me that it
was gambling. I had 7,000 bushels of corn cribbed, and Albert had 3,000
bushels cribbed on the same lots, which he wanted me to sell. Corn was
cheap then, and getting lower as the new crop promised a good yield.
A good general rain the night before had spurred our desire to sell at
once. My top bid that morning was 17 cents.

Ed Murray, agent at the depot, showed me a wire from the Orthwine people
in East St. Louis, bidding Mike Worthy 18% cents. I had shipped some
corn to the Orthwines. I wired them, offering 10,000 bushels at 18 3/4
cents, same as their bid to Mr. Worthy. Their reply was slow in coming,
and I may say that when it did come, the market was off nearly five
cents.

I had told Albert that evidently the Orthwine people were waiting for
the market to open—and that I was going to sell mine on the Board, and
asked him if I should include his in my sale? He studied a moment, then
said, “That would be gambling, wouldn’t it?”

I said, “No—not when we have the corn to fill the contract. This will be
protection against further loss. We gambled, Albert, when we bought the
corn at the ridiculously low price of eleven to sixteen cents a bushel.”

Albert said, “I don’t know about that. If it wasn’t for them weevil
in the corn, I would hold it over until next year.” We had previously
discussed this, and decided that it would not be advisable to hold it
over. He finally said, “No, I’ll not go in with you. I never gamble.”
And just think of it, the fellow was buying and shipping hogs—continuing
in the business until his finances were “not what they used to be.”

I sold 10,000 bushels anyway, on the Chicago Board — and cleaned up
three cents a bushel by the time we sold our cribbed corn at 14 cents
a bushel. “Them” weevil had us scared. But the damage was not enough to
lower the grade beyond the number three contracted.

In the old days, many of the farmers would shuck their corn early, pile
it out in the open on a grass patch or rocky knoll, and then haul it
to market after it had taken rains and snows—the more, seemingly, the
better. More than once have I gone out to the country, and shoveled
drifted snow away for lots bought on contract. It was such corn as this
that brought the weevil, which worked mostly in the damp spots. Another
trick of the old farmer was to wait for a freeze before shelling and
marketing his ground “cribbed” corn. One such car of mine, billed for
“export,” and passed by the Greenleaf-Baker firm—that is, not unloaded
in Atchison, was reported steaming when it arrived in Galveston. It had
passed inspection in Atchison.

Think I should say here—well, really it should be apparent without
saying—that our reputable farmers were not guilty of this practice. It
was usually floater-tenants, irresponsible farmers making a short stay
in the community, who devoted much time to figuring out a way to skin
someone. A fellow by the name of Groves, farming the old Adam Swerdfeger
place eight miles northwest of Wetmore, contracted to deliver to me 800
bushels of “Number Three, or better” corn at 32 cents a bushel. When
the wagons began coming, in the afternoon, I saw the corn was not up to
grade, and I held up the haulers waiting for the arrival of the seller.
In the meantime I learned from the haulers that it was corn that had
been frosted, gathered while immature, shelled while frozen, and stored
in a bin on the farm. The fellow had sent word by the last hauler in,
that there would be two more loads to follow. When they did not show
up at the proper interval, I dumped the loads (in waiting) and let
the impatient farmers go home. I knew now from the way the fellow was
holding back that I would have a tough customer to deal with—but I would
take a chance on him. I felt that I couldn’t afford to keep the haulers,
who were my friends, waiting longer. The seller came in with the two
loads between sundown and dark. I told him the corn was not up to grade.
He said,”Well, you’ve dumped it, haven’t you?” I said, “Yes, for a fact,
I have dumped thirteen loads of it—but here’s two loads I’m not going to
dump.” But I did finally dump them, on agreement with the fellow to ship
the lot separately and give him full returns. The shipment was reported
“no grade” and the price was cut six cents a bushel. I paid the man 26
cents a bushel, on the basis of our weight—and was glad to be rid of
him. Then, the next day I received an amended report on the car. It was
found to be in such bad condition that the receiving house had called
for a re-inspection—and the price was cut another eight cents a bushel.
And this was mine—all mine.

It seemed to me that nearly everything, in the old days was, in a sense,
touched with that horrible word—gamble. And I know that I really did
gamble in an attempt to grow a crop of corn on my expensively tiled
bottom seed-corn farm down the creek a mile from town, one very dry
year.

I hired all the work done, paid out $500 in good money—and got nothing
but fodder.

Another time I filled my cribs with 25 cent corn and held it for the
summer market. When I was bid 49% cents a bushel, I jokingly told Mr.
Worthy that I couldn’t figure fractions very well, and that I would
wait for even money. Fifty cents was considered a high price for corn
then—but usually when it would reach near that figure, the holders would
begin to talk one dollar corn. It was a year when the corn speculators
just didn’t know what to do, after the price began to slip.

Alpheus Kempton, over north of Netawaka near the Indian reservation,
had 5,000 bushels stored on the farm. He told me he had been watching my
cribs, and thought that maybe I had inside information of a come-back in
prospect. I too had been watching some cribs, with similar thoughts.
The Greenleaf-Baker firm had 20,000 bushels stored in two long cribs at
Farmington. As I frequently traveled the railroad—on a pass—and noticed
the corn had not been moved out, I thought that maybe, after all, I had
not erred in letting the high bids get away from me. I told Mr. Baker
that I had been watching his Farmington cribs for a reminder as to when
it would be time for me to sell mine. He laughed, saying, “I’ve sold it
(on the Board) and bought it back probably twenty times.”

Well, Alpheus and I—we held our corn over another year—and then sold it
for 301/2 cents a bushel. May I say that by this time I had brushed up
on my arithmetic. And Christian or no, who is there to say I did not
gamble that time? I still maintain that I gambled when I bought
the corn. However, there were times when I sold 25-cent corn for 70
cents—and most of it went back to the country here. The only advantage
that I could see in storing corn instead of buying it on the Board, was
the possibility of striking a local market.

And again, I bought 5,000 bushels of wheat on the Chicago Board, at 61
cents a bushel, and margined it with $100. As the market advanced, I
bought seven more five thousand bushel lots with the profits, making
40,000 bushels in all. It was a very dry time in Kansas, and wheat was
jumping three to five cents a day—and had reached a fraction under $1.00
on the Thursday before Memorial Day, which of course would be a holiday,
with no market.

My profit on the single $100 investment was now nearly $4,000.00. I had
planned to get out before the close of the market on Thursday, because I
did not want to run the risk of carrying the deal over the holiday. But
the weather map, just in from Kansas City, indicated clear skies for
Kansas over the week-end. This, coupled with the exuberant spirits of
the excited dealers on the Atchison Board, caused me to change my mind.
One more day of dry weather would likely double my earnings.

The weather man was wrong; horribly wrong.

It began raining in Wetmore about 10 o’clock that night. You’ve probably
been lulled to sleep by rain patter on the roof. Believe me, there was
no lullaby sleep in the constant rain patter on the roof over me that
night. It rained off and on here all day Friday. Everyone I met on the
street here exclaimed, “Fine rain, John!” I would say, “Yep”—and think
something else. It was truly a $4,000.00 rain, in reverse—so far as I
was concerned.

On Saturday morning, the speculators were back on the Atchison Board
of Trade floor—to a man. The rain had washed their faces clean of all
animation. Mr. Roper, working with telegraph instrument, rose and faced
the weary-laden boys. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I’ve got good news — for
nobody.” The death-like quiet for a fraction of a moment, as if we
were standing in the Salt Lake Mormon tabernacle waiting for the usual
pin-dropping demonstration, gave way to a concerted sigh. It had rained
everywhere.

I sold 50,000 bushels at the opening. My profits were wiped out clean.
The extra 10,000 bushels short sale made me $63.75 in about three
minutes. And this, added to the return of my $100—and relief from
liability—made me feel rich.

Though little or no wheat was grown here at that time, the Kansas wheat
farmer was considered the biggest gambler of them all. Even so, having
just got out of a big wheat deal, by “the skin of my teeth,” would it
not be good business for me to take a “flyer” in some wheat land, and
try growing the stuff?

Land in the wheat country was going begging at $300 a quarter—the same
land that is now selling up to $200 an acre. Land agents were actually
fighting over prospective buyers. Bill Talley, born in Indiana and
reared here, was at this time operating a drink emporium in Wetmore, but
had lived, and dealt in land, at Cimarron, in Gray County. At the depot,
the day I started for the west, Bill told me to go to his friend, Johnny
Harper. When I got off the train at Cimarron at 2 o’clock at night,
Johnny was there to meet me. We by-passed the leading hotel—a rival
agent, F. M. Luther, lived at the hotel—and Johnny took me to a
restaurant three blocks away. The next morning Johnny and his partner,
Mr. Emery, ate breakfast with me at the restaurant. Mr. Emery was to
drive me across the river to look at land. Every parcel of land shown
was priced at $300 a quarter. And at every booster stop we visited, the
farmer would reply to Mr. Emery’s inquiry: “I would not take $25 an acre
for mine.” A few sandhill plums, a dilapidated barn, and weather-beaten
three-room house—made the difference. We got back to Cimarron about four
o’clock in the afternoon.

As if he were sure I had seen a plenty to interest me on the side of a
quick purchase, Johnny produced a map, saying, “Now, which piece have
you decided on?” I had made no decision. Mr. Emery then thought I might
like to see a big alfalfa field four miles up the river—not that it was
for sale, but just to show me how good it was. In truth, it was just to
get me out of town. The alfalfa looked good, but you know my mind was
fixed on wheat, and this big field did not interest me.

I had company again for supper, and either Mr. Emery or Mr. Harper
stayed by me until bedtime. It was Saturday. I needed a shave. Mr. Emery
took me through the main business part of the town to a barbershop on
the south side of the tracks. And here I came as near getting a skinning
as I ever did in a business deal. There were, of course, better shops in
town—but competitive real estate agents didn’t go across the tracks
for their shaves. In the meantime Mr. Luther had dropped in at the
restaurant. He was introduced by Mr. Harper. I asked Mr. Luther if he
were engaged in business in Cimarron? He replied, “Yes, the real estate
business.” Right away I had a notion that I should like to have a
private talk with Mr. Luther. Likewise, Mr. Luther. And don’t think that
Johnny didn’t catch on, too.

Mr. Luther bid us “good night,” and stepped outside. Mr. Harper bid me
“good night,” and started on his way out—and I went up to my room. We
were to start right after breakfast on a drive to Dodge City, thirty
miles down the river, where I would get a train for home. I did not
go to bed immediately. I went back downstairs for something, I don’t
remember what now. Maybe to pick up a little disinterested information
from the restaurant man. Mr. Luther came back in at the front door. Mr.
Harper followed immediately. I went back up to my room.

The following morning three real estate men ate breakfast with me. Mr.
Harper, Mr. Emery, and I started for the livery stable a block away,
while Mr. Luther lingered awhile over his coffee. Bill Talley’s friends
owned their driving team, and did their own stable work. When they got
their fractious horses partly hitched, I made an excuse to run back to
the restaurant. Mr. Luther said, “You were over in the neighborhood
of the Kelly school house yesterday, I believe. I can sell you three
quarters in the same section as the Kelly school house for $200 a
quarter, or $600 for the three quarters.” I promised to write him—or see
him later.

Mr. Emery drove me to Dodge City, showing me a big 30-acre cottonwood
planting on the way, which purportedly was the reason for the drive. It
did not interest me. We had cottonwoods at home. Mr. Emery stabled his
foaming horses at a livery barn on the south side of the tracks, near
the river, a good quarter of a mile from the Santa Fe depot. We ate
our dinner at a restaurant close by the depot. It was Sunday. Mr. Emery
showed me the town. We visited “Boot Hill” Cemetery, the only visible
reminder now that Dodge City was once the wildest and toughest spot
in the Old West, and other semi-interesting and some non-interesting
places. After walking our legs off, we were now near the depot again.

Mr. Emery wished to look in on his erstwhile steaming horses. Yes, I
would go along with him. On passing the depot I dropped out of the line
of march on the pretense of wanting to get a line on the through train
I was to take that evening. This done, I hiked back to the restaurant,
inquired for a real estate office, and was told the Painter Brothers in
office above the restaurant were the men I should see. A poker game was
in full swing, but one of the brothers—I couldn’t for the life of me
remember which one now—took time out to tell me that he could sell me
land as good as the best for $200 a quarter. He gave me some literature.
We planned to meet again.

I rushed back to the depot in time to meet Mr. Emery on his return from
the stable. We walked some more. A local train from the west was due at
3 o’clock. Johnny Harper got off this train—and took over. Mr. Emery bid
me “good-by” saying he would now drive his team back to Cimarron. Johnny
proposed a walk. We took in the town again—always by our lonesome. He
saw me off on the train. I did not learn how Johnny planned to get back
to Cimarron. And I didn’t care.

Bill Talley was at the depot when I got back home. He said, “Well,
did you see Johnny Harper? Fine fellow, isn’t he?” And, “Did you find
anything to suit you?” Yes, I had seen Johnny; fine fellow, too. No, I
had not bought anything—yet. But I planned to buy three quarters in the
same section as the Kelly school house, from F. M. Luther, for $600.
Bill popped his fist in the palm of his left hand, and bellowed, “Damn
Luther!”—with shocking prefix.

It is only fair for me to say that ordinarily Bill was not given to the
use of such language. But the exigencies of the situation were very much
out of the ordinary. With prospect of a cut in commission—and his fear
that I might run afoul of Mr. Luther—Bill had gambled the price of a
telegram to Johnny Harper. I did not learn the why of this explosion for
a little over one year. My brother Frank was considering a trade for a
quarter of irrigated land south of the river, two miles from Lakin,
and had written from Fresno, California, asking me to look it over, and
report to him. On going through on the train, I stepped off at Cimarron,
and inquired for Johnny Harper. A by-stander said Johnny was not among
the people on the station platform—but, he said, “Here’s his brother.”
Johnny’s brother stepped forward, saying he was going west on the train.
On the train, he said, “You were out here last year driving with Johnny.
Why didn’t you buy, then?”

I told Johnny’s brother that they had “herded” me so closely as to make
me suspicious. He said they had to do that to keep their competitors
from blocking their sales. He said the competitors would quote a low
price on tracts in the neighborhood of the places visited by Johnny’s
prospects—and then, if the prospect decided to buy, the competitor would
discover that his partner had just sold it to another—but he always had
other bargains to show him.

Johnny’s brother also told me that our friend Talley had gotten into an
altercation with Mr. Luther, and that the Cimarron man had knocked the
whey out of our Wetmore boy—all while the latter was connected in the
realty business with brother Johnny.

If I could have gone out there wholly on my own—that is, without any
helpful interference from Mr. Talley, and maybe got lost on the big flat
beyond the sandhills just south of the river for a week, I could have
made a potful of money. I had planned to buy two sections. But, instead,
I bought 80 acres of rather swampy bottom land here for the same money,
$2400 — and then spent $1800 more to install five miles of drain tile.

This tiling was a gamble that paid big dividends.

Michael Worthy, my late semi-partner in the grain business, had better
luck than I. He bought Gray County wheat land in the neighborhood of the
Kelly school house — which was to be passed down as a huge profit-making
legacy—even to the third generation.

Oscar Porter was a track buyer at Bancroft until Jim Wilcox, elevator
owner, crowded him out. Being a track shipper, Oscar was not eligible to
come into the Association — nor was I, but somehow I had been roped in.
Porter wanted to know how I did it, that he might do likewise. I could
give him no helpful information. His next step was to start legal
action to compel me to divulge the secret. I was subpoenaed to appear
in court—supposed to be the star witness—in a complaint lodged by Mr.
Porter against the Association.

County Attorney S. K. Woodworth called me aside, said he knew I had the
information to smash the Association, if I would just give. He said I
could tell the truth—he added, “and I know you will,” without fear of
having it used against me. I asked him if he were thinking of the time
when I had slightly stretched the truth—but I really had not done this —
in behalf of his candidacy, in my newspaper? He laughed at that.

I told Sam that he could depend on me to answer his questions
truthfully, as always—he laughed again—but that I would not make
a statement. He said he would not ask me to do that. I was not
particularly in sympathy with the Association, but I did not want to
volunteer information against it—and then, too, my Atchison friends and
my partner Michael were entitled to some consideration.

I answered the County Attorney’s questions truthfully, and I believe
satisfactorily—but still they did not get what they wanted. I had the
information, of course, but Sam and Oscar knew too little about the
business in hand to formulate the right questions. I believe they did
not know about that illegal contract.

If they could have had Michael and our illegal contract, written in
violation of the Sherman Act, brought into court, they would have had
a case. But then it was I, a lowly track buyer comparable to the
complainant, who had by some hook or crook, aided by a swift kick in
the pants, bolted through the barrier that was keeping Oscar out of the
Association.

LOCAL “BOARD OF TRADE” Not Hitherto Published—1947.

By John T. Bristow

This, a continuation of the preceding article, brings us up to the
second phase of my grain dealing experience. The businessmen, and some
who were not so businesslike, organized what they called a Board of
Trade, purportedly for the enhancement of the town’s interest—but,
in reality, as events proved, to locate an outside man in the grain
business here.

Goff had two merchants advertising in my newspaper — one a particularly
live businessman—quoting prices, and drawing trade away from this
territory. Even people living right here in town would go up on the noon
train, and come back at four o’clock, loaded with purchases.

There had been discussions as to whether or not it was morally
legitimate for the local paper to accept outside advertising when in
competition with the home merchants—and the publishers all around had
decided that it was quite legitimate, especially when the home merchants
did not make liberal use of the paper’s space. Yet, I doubted if it was
wise for me to do so. However, I do not think I was violating the code
of loyalty when I prayed for a live merchant like Mr. Abbott.

The Board of Trade had come to life in Moulton De-Forest’s office
across the hall from my printing office, on a Thursday night. My name,
mentioned for possible membership—I was told, later—was discussed at
length. I was the culprit, at least it was I who owned the vehicle
carrying the price-smashing ads which were making them unhappy. And
though I was at the time publishing The Spectator, doing job printing,
buying and shipping grain, writing fire insurance, selling real estate,
and making more farm loans than both the other assembled loan agents,
there was doubt if I should be classed as a businessman, in the true
sense. Stupid as this may seem, it is a fact. The reason for it is not
apparent—yet.

There were in this organization men who had been at odds, even fighting
mad, over other activities. It seemed as though something nasty was
always brewing then. The man who had not so long before been petitioned
to leave town, and the fellow who had borne the liberally signed
document to the printing office for public exposure, were now working
together in an effort to push me around, simply because I had been so
indiscreet as to accept outside advertisements.

The leading Prohibitionist had been especially active in trying to clean
up the town. It had provoked the imbibers and the “blind-tiger” boys.
They got up a petition asking the Prohib to leave town, and brought
it to the Wolfley printing office, where I was in charge during the
editor’s absence. I refused to print it. They berated me plenty. But
they got handbills printed elsewhere—now signed “Committee.”

The Prohib did not choose to leave town.

One of the “boys” got gloriously drunk—and bragged a little. The Prohib
and the Drunk met in the middle of the main town square. There were a
lot of people on the street. Ed Cawood, quite young then, is the only
one now living that I recall. The Drunk struck at the Prohib, missed,
and fell flat in the street. He had to have help to get up.

Years later, I heard a brother of the Drunk, a highly respected, and
ordinarily very truthful man, in telling the story, say that his brother
(called by name) beat the Prohib up scandalously. You can’t rely on what
the old fellows tell you. You’ve got to know it—or let someone who does
know it, tell it. Hearsay, after it passes through a generation is not
reliable.

Here I wish to say that, except the grain business, the sidelines
enumerated herein were acquired from the long established agency of S.
C. Shuemaker, at the same time I bought the newspaper after his death,
and that I was not butting in on anyone’s prior rights. Also, I want to
say that the ones having those unreasonable notions, had axes to grind.

However, a committee came over to my office, and asked me to join them
in Moulton’s office. I gave them $1.00 membership fee, and noted the
freshly written by-laws calling for an additional dime for each and
every time I might be absent from the regular Thursday night meeting.
Keep this in mind.

The members who had no axes to grind were pretty decent. They felt the
need of something to counteract the inroads the Goff merchants were
making on the local merchants’ business, and decided that a full
front-page write-up in The Spectator was desirable. It was promised
for the second week ahead. Nothing was said about paying for this
service—and no payment was expected.

Henry DeForest told those dominating members that they were acting like
spoiled children, or worse—imbeciles. It is really surprising to what
absurd lengths some fairly just people will sometimes go in trying to
force their will upon others.

Now, Thursday night was always a busy night with us — but it was doubly
so the next Thursday night. The Board fellows decided that they could
not wait two weeks for the write-up, and asked me to advance it one
week. I told them that we would accommodate them it we could get Mr.
Abbott to reduce his space, or forgo the advertisement altogether. Mr.
Abbott would oblige. And this was the straw that ultimately broke the
spinal column of the Board of Trade.

Our full office force burned the midnight oil that Thursday night—and
then some. The Board members trudging up to Moulton’s office could have
looked in on us and seen that we were having no picnic. But, by golly,
we were a little proud of our accomplishments, hoping it would please.
And it did. The thing that caused me to lose faith in the Board was that
paltry dime assessed against me for missing the meeting.

The prime purpose of the Board was to locate an outside man in the grain
business here, backed up by a stronger purpose of one of its members
to sell an old canning factory building to be converted into an
elevator:—plus one up-and-coming young doctor who was crying for an
opposition paper, with political slant. The business was delegated to
a committee of four—the canning factory owner, a relatively new doctor,
and two other men.

At this time doctors, after petty politicians, were the bane of the
local papers. It was considered by the profession unethical for them
to advertise—yet, too often, they craved top newspaper recognition when
only minor mention or none at all was due. The case in hand was the
third, with as many different doctors, with which I had to contend—in
every instance for what the paper failed to say about them, or what
it did say about some other doctor. But I want to say that our old
reliables, Dr. J. W. Graham, and Dr. Thomas Milam, did not fall into
this category.

However, the cases I had t o deal with were really mild — mild indeed
to the one which threatened to do mayhem, or worse, to the whole office
force, when I was printer on T. J. Wolfley’s Spectator. A doctor who
had come down from Granada and located in Wetmore, sent word that he
was going to pay us a visit at 10 o’clock of a Saturday morning for the
express purpose of cleaning out the whole office. The offending item was
a week old, and the demanded retraction in Friday’s paper had, as viewed
by the Doctor, added “insult to injury.”

Theodore Wolf ley really enjoyed a scrap—and managed to have something
on tap nearly all the time. He represented one faction of the local
Republicans, and Moulton DeForest, when not a pronounced Prohibitionist,
essayed to control another faction. The Doctor, a husky farm-bred boy
in the Granada neighborhood, now on honored citizen of Wetmore, was
a rantankerous Republican allied with the De-Forest faction—until
he switched to the Populist party without losing any part of his
rantankerous attributes.

Anticipating in advance the proposed call from the Doctor, Wolfley
procured a revolver, and he and I practiced shooting the thing in the
office, from a distance of ten feet, with target pinned on the leg of
the imposing stone. He never hit the target once, but he broke a window
pane all of two feet above the stone. He always shut his eyes and
flinched before pulling the trigger.

I was supposed to be stationed at the imposing stone, in pretense of
performing my regular duties, with iron side-stick—a lethal weapon when
expertly wielded—in readiness for my part of the defense, if, and when,
the Doctor might extend his belligerence thus far.

The printing office at that time was over the old Morris store on the
north side of the main street. A stairway went up on the outside, with
turnback to the front porch above. At the appointed hour, heavy feet
pounded on the stairs. I had all of one minute in which to visualize
my precarious position. With each step on the stairs my nervousness
mounted. The irate intruder would of necessity be stationed somewhere
between the editor and his foreman. The thing that worried me was my
boss’ unpredictable marksmanship.

But it was not the Doctor’s heavy feet on the stairway. He had sent his
understudy, Joe Eyman, who also was a husky bigfooted farm-bred boy from
up in the Granada neighborhood. Joe fixed matters so that the Doctor and
the Editor could talk it out between themselves. And in good time Joe
became eligible to write MD after his own name. He then married Hattie
Smarr, and they went to Sundance, Wyoming, to hang out his shingle. She
was known in later years, in Wetmore, as Mrs. Stalder.

I am not sure if the belligerent Doctor’s grievance was professional
or political. Probably the latter—but I do know that he was touchy in a
professional way, for he later accounted for one-third of my unfavorable
experience with doctors, as earlier mentioned in this writing. His
successor in the Granada field had sent in by our Granada correspondent,
a dollar’s worth of advertising, in the form of a personal, which had
piqued the Old Doctor, causing him to do a bit of rantankerous snorting
at me. But I did not rush out and buy a gun. I used the weapon I already
had. The paper ignored him—and that whipped him into line in about one
year. And he was ever after that my friend—with full ‘appreciation
of the silent power of the press. He was a good doctor, and a good
fellow—when he was good.

As Populist crusader, the Doctor was a success. His advertised meetings
drew big crowds. He always brought in a principal speaker. One time he
had two billed for the same night—”Sockless” Jerry Simpson and “Peruna”
Jerry Botkin—but he got Mary Ellen Lease, instead. The Doctor and his
two very fine little girls, Bertha and Belle, led the singing. The
Doctor himself was not a noted vocalist—but he bore down heavily on the
refrain of his favorite Populist song, “Turn The Rascals Out.”

Also, let me add that any time the editor of a local paper lets the
politicians handle him, he is going to be woefully out of luck. Politics
was dirty then. If an editor was a Republican, he was expected to engage
in mud-slinging, shying the muck at all and sundry Democrats, regardless
of their standing as citizens. The mere favorable mention of Republican
candidates was not enough. And if he were true blue, he must keep up a
barrage against editors of Democratic papers, and vice versa, a sort of
nonsensical exchange of blasts. I steadfastly refused to be drawn into
their political scraps. They called me a “mugwump.” But Gov. E. N.
Morrell said—put it in writing—that inasmuch as I had succeeded in
keeping my political skirts clean that I was a high-minded Republican.
My hardest task was to hold down a brilliant and goshawful sarcastic
local politician who wanted to engage in muck-raking, over the assumed
name “Samantha” in my paper.

Politics was something to be shunned by me—that is, from a business
standpoint in connection with the publication of the newspaper. I
once went over to Edgerton, in the Missouri hills beyond Rushville,
to investigate an offer of $1,000 bonus for the establishment of a
newspaper. I struck the town at a time when a teachers’ convention was
being held there. The banker, who was on the committee welcoming the
teachers, was also on the committee pulling for the paper, and he had
arranged the appointment with me. Mistaking me for a professor, he gave
me a hearty handshake, and welcomed me along with the teachers getting
off the same train. When I got up town, I called at his bank—and was
“welcomed” again.

“What’s your politics?” he asked.

“Republican,” said I.

“Your train leaves in one hour,” said he.

I did not know Missourians as well then as I do now. The banker
laughingly said, “Stick around awhile—I will talk the matter over with
you when I get a moment’s time.” He told me that there were only
two Republicans in the township; that I could run the paper as an
Independent until election time, and then I would be expected to be a
good Democrat—a real old “Missouri Mossback” and no foolin’, I think
the order would have been. I judged they did not want a newspaper. They
wanted a political “organ.”

On invitation of the banker, I attended a meeting in the school house,
which was set in a natural oak grove — and met many sociable and
interesting people. In the gathering, there were a lot of pretty
girls—and all in all, it looked to me as if it would be a swell place
for a young fellow to settle down. But—while I wouldn’t know why I was a
Republican, I couldn’t pretend to be something that I was not.

A young doctor from Goff had come here to make his professional start.
He first took his old schoolmate, Ecky Hamel, to task for calling him
by his given name, demanding that he be addressed as “Doctor.” Ecky
had gravitated from country school teacher to printer and reporter, and
thought he himself was some pumpkins, too. But I don’t think this was
held against the Doctor when Ecky wrote the five-line item that touched
off the explosion—caused the Doctor to whoop-it-up for a competing
paper.

The offending item merely said that “Dr. Jermane of Holton, who had
operated on Lyman Harvey here last week for appendicitis, had died of
a like operation at Holton this week.” A Philadelphia lawyer could
have found no fault with this—but the local doctor thought it was a
reflection on his professional ability. Knowing that he had brought the
Holton doctor here to do the job, and knowing also that the local doctor
had been duly recognized in the item reporting the Harvey operation, I
thought he had no kick coming — and let it go at that. And anyway, Mr.
Harvey had also died of his operation.

The complaining doctor was a hustler, socially a good fellow, very
much on the way up in his profession, when a catastrophic repercussion
reduced him to the level of the ice-man. As attending physician, he had
brought into the world an illegitimate child whose birth was a great
embarrassment for its little mother and the maternal grandparents. And
on a subsequent call at the country home he discovered the child was
missing. I am not familiar with the details at this stage of the affair,
but rumor had it that the doctor turned sleuth and dug up the fact that
the child was buried in the back yard.

The home folks, older members of the family, contended that it had died
of natural causes—pneumonia, I believe. The doctor was wholly within
his rights when he reported the matter to the authorities—but he did not
prove an apt witness in court. Two older doctors from the north part of
the county, combined and “proved” in effect, on the witness stand that
the young doctor did not know enough about such matters to make a case.

In the ice business in a southern Kansas town the fellow made good. And
though the “injured” doctor had kept on whooping-it-up for a competing
paper until he did, with the help of some disgruntled politicians, put
me out of the newspaper business, I’m glad to say he was not one to
carry a grudge beyond the time of its actual usefulness to him. Just for
old friendship’s sake, he wrote me from the office of his artificial
ice plant—owned jointly with his brother—complimenting me on one of my
articles in W. F. Turrentine’s Spectator. This note on the background of
the doctor is given here for reasons which will appear later.

J. W. Coleman, publisher of the Effingham New Leaf, having conceived the
idea that a string of local papers along the Central Branch, would
be the motive power to land him in a fat political job, came here to
negotiate with me for the Spectator. My paper was not for sale. The
doctor and the political boys combined to persuade Mr. Coleman that a
second paper would be preferable. It would seem the MD and PB’s did not
want to crush me on the spot—or maybe it was their idea of one huge joke
to let me die a slower death. In either event, it was the wedge that
pried me loose from The Spectator. I sold to Coleman. I did not permit
this to cause me to break with the Doctor and my political friends — as
there was the outside chance that they might have been misquoted by the
over-anxious purchaser. And then, too, it was not long before I really
liked it. It afforded me time to give my full attention to other more
congenial matters — for getting married, for instance. The wife said it
was a great stroke of good luck for me.

I had weathered one brief, and I may say clean siege of competition,
which had proved that the town was not large enough to support two
papers. P. L. Briney, with his two daughters, Bertha and Olive, wholly
on their own—that is, without MD’s or PB’s moral support—established and
published the Enterprise for about one year. Unable to make a go of it,
Mr. Briney sold the whole outfit—exclusive of the girls, of course—to me
for $125, his first asking price.

Mr. Coleman did not last long enough here to do the political boys any
good. He got off on the wrong foot in an early issue. He attended a
recital given by Edith McConwell’s music pupils—and ridiculed it. Our
people did not like to have their kiddies ridiculed—nor their music
teacher either, who was once a kiddie here herself. However, after a few
issues by Coleman, Art Sells, also of Effingham, took charge, and gave
the people—not the politicians—a very satisfactory paper. Coleman gave
up his political aspirations, sold his two papers, and took the job of
City Editor for the Atchison Daily Globe. However, Coleman’s successor,
W. F. Turrentine, held forth twenty years longer than the fourteen years
that I had published the Spectator before giving up the ghost about five
years ago. The idle plant is still in Wetmore.

To give a clear picture of the grain situation I should explain that Mr.
Baker, of the Greenleaf-Baker grain firm, of Atchison, had asked me why
would it not be a good idea for me to build an elevator here? I told him
that I did not think there would be business enough, from year to
year, to justify me in so doing—which, I might say, was a fact
fully demonstrated in later years. I pointed out that with the large
feeding interests here; and in the north territory, particularly at
Granada, where the Achtens sometimes bought as much as one hundred
thousand bushels of corn for feeding cattle and hogs; that practically
all the south territory was in pasture land; and with two elevators at
Goff and- two at Netawaka, we could hardly expect to draw trade away
from them without making costly inducements, as we were now doing in our
track buying.

Mr. Baker said, “Well, then, I’ll build one for you. It will save you
paying a premium to get the corn, and make it more convenient for you to
handle it.”

I think the Board members did not know this at the time of organizing.
But the committee, composed of the man who had a canning factory
building to sell, and the doctor who wanted a competing newspaper with
political slant, both uncompromisingly for the Goff man, and two other
men who had a tendency to view things in their proper light, met with a
representative of the Greenleaf-Baker firm in ‘the opera house here.
The spokesman for the committee told Frank Crowell, Mr. Baker’s
brother-in-law, and member of the firm, that they preferred to locate
their man Reckeway, because it would bring another family to town and
consequently make a bit more business for the local merchants. Mr.
Crowell told them that we would like to have their friendship and
co-operation—but, regardless of whether or not they located Mr.
Reckeway, that his firm positively would build the elevator as planned.
The two silent members on the committee packed power enough only to
delay action.

As it is now all water over the dam, with not even a trickle of
cankerous aftermath, it is not my purpose to show up the old Board of
Trade boys in a critical light—but it was evident that they were not
being guided by the Golden Rule. They knew the Greenleaf-Baker people
were going to build an elevator, when they located their man. They knew
also that in normal crop years there would hardly be business enough
here to sustain one elevator. As a sort of excuse for them pulling for
the Goff man, the spokesman said to me, “You know, if we don’t get our
man located this year, we may never get an elevator. We have never had
a corn crop like this before, and we may never have another one.” It was
not strictly a Christian act—and I suspect they never had any regrets
for having turned the trick. It was apparently their way of building up
the town—and, incidentally, securing a buyer for an old canning factory
building.

The Canning Company, a local organization, having failed to bring in the
expected returns, and having accumulated debts in excess of its ability
to pay, had liquidated, the building going to the highest bidder, one
Theodore Wolfley by name—uncle of Editor Theodore Wolfley. Then, later,
it was planned by the holders of the worthless canning factory stock—and
others—to try to recoup their losses by the establishment of a cheese
factory, with an eye on the old building as a prospective site. It
was then that the present owner hopped out and bought the old canning
factory building, hoping to turn a neat profit. But the cheese factory
promotion fell by the wayside. It was then patent to the purchaser
that he had over-played his hand. Knowing these facts, one can better
understand his sudden anxiety for an elevator—for the good of the town.

Their prospect, W. M. Reckeway, who had been operating the Denton
elevator at Goff, likely misunderstanding the Committee, gave out an
interview in the Goff Advance, saying that they had bargained for the
Worthy dump, and that it was his intention to build a modern up-to-date
elevator in Wetmore, but J. T. Bristow had slipped in and bought it away
from them—the inference being that the good people of Wetmore who had
longed for an elevator for lo these many years, would now have to take
what they could get—something less than would have been the case had
Bristow behaved himself.

Had this been true—the way I look upon such matters — it would have been
both shrewd and legitimate business on my part, though it would have
left an ominous smirch on Mr. Worthy. But it was far from the truth. The
Board Committee had not bargained for the Worthy dump.

As has been pointed out, the Greenleaf-Baker Grain Company had already
planned to build an elevator here for my convenience, as a shipper—but
of course the company was not in the market for the old canning factory
building. My Company, as well as their prospect—not the Committee —
wanted a better location. Mr. Baker instructed me to buy the Worthy
dump, solely for the location.

Knowing the canning factory owner like a book, I did not even suspect
that they would consider the Worthy location. And as a matter of fact,
the Board Committee apparently did not want the Worthy dump—only, at
any rate, as a last resort. When I called on Mr. Worthy, he said, “I’ve
given the Board of Trade fellows an option on it for $200, good until
noon today. Come back here promptly at twelve o’clock. Now don’t wait
until after dinner,” he warned. The Committee went to Mr. Worthy after
one o’clock, asking for an extension of the option. That old canning
factory was still in the way. And the owner did not exactly pat me
on the back, but looked as if he wanted to when he learned that I had
bought the Worthy dump. I did not get the doctor’s reaction to this—but
I do know that, though we continued on friendly terms—we never had any
clashes — he continued to “harp” for a competing paper, with political
slant.

Mr. Reckeway, being handy with hammer and saw, converted the old canning
factory building into an elevator in time for the fall business. The
people, including the Board of Trade boys, had an erroneous notion that
an elevator operator could pay more for corn than the track buyer, and
while the reverse is true, they had located their man with this belief.
Then that new man did give me a merry chase—in fact he put me completely
out for a spell. He paid more for corn than I could get for it. How
come? Well, the BT boys gave credit to the old canning factory. They
were wrong of course.

It may be a little early to bring this in—but Mr. Reckeway was making
some profit on the sale of a carload of flour he had brought in, but he
could not count on a repeater in this line, for he had already been told
by the canning factory vendor—who sold flour in his general store at
substantially higher prices—to cut it out. It was made plain to the
fellow that he had not been brought here to compete With the home
merchants.

I’ll get around to aft explanation of how and why Mr. Heckeway bid up
the price on corn—but this seems the opportune time to slip in a line
about the entry of a business which led all competition. And lo, the man
was from Goff, the town which had furnished me a competitor in the
grain business, and a politically minded doctor who wanted a competing
paper—and ironically enough, the town whose advertising merchants, C. C.
Abbott, John Wendell, and George Bickel, were the thorns that had been
pricking the Board of Trade boys’ sensitive hides.

Mr. C. C. Abbott, the live merchant—the man whose advertisements in my
paper had given so much concern at the Board of Trade’s first meeting,
and was the cause for that elaborate write-up, had moved in on them with
a complete new stock of general merchandise, locating in the old Stowell
brick building, the present Catholic recreation hall.

Now, let ‘em kick!

The energetic efforts of the dominating member of the Board Committee
to close a deal for the sale of that old canning factory building had,
unwittingly of course, also paved the way for the entry of some live
competition for himself.

Mr. Abbott became my best advertiser. Legitimate, too. He paid, in
trade, three to five cents a bushel premium for ear-corn, and turned it
to me at the market price. Also, there was a general come-down of prices
in the other stores. Now was I, or was I not, working for the best
interests of the town?

Evidently Mr. Reckeway had a threefold purpose in bidding up the
price of corn. He wanted to build up a reputation, wanted to crush
competition, and at the same time discourage the Greenleaf-Baker people
in their plans to build an elevator here. The word got around that I was
going to try to operate the Worthy dump “as is.” It would have not been
fruitful for them to let Reckeway know the truth at this stage of their
dickerings—hence the circulated report that I had bought the Worthy
dump, aiming to operate it myself.

Nor did Mr. Reckeway know that the order for the lumber in special
lengths had been given to a mill in Arkansas the day after I had bought
the Worthy dump, when he betook himself to Atchison in an effort to
dissuade the Greenleaf-Baker firm from building, pointing out that he
had the grain business corralled here; that I was now a “dead duck,”
without standing in my own community. Mr. Baker was not impressed by Mr.
R.’s pleadings.

Mr. Reckeway had been shrewd enough — or lucky enough—to sell, in early
fall, a sizable quantity of December corn at a price above the settled
market. He had been sloughing off his profits to the farmers to create
atmosphere—and to stop me. Many of his old Goff customers were now
bringing their corn to him in Wetmore, a high testimonial of his
popularity—and a welcome morsel for the aggressive half of the BT
Committee to peddle in support of their earlier expressed contention
that an elevator man could actually pay more for corn—even, so to speak,
pull rabbits out of a hat.

Had Mr. Reckeway made it win, it would have been good business. As it
was, I’m not shrewd enough to say whether it was good business or bad
business. The one certainty is that he did not make the goal he was
shooting for.

Owing to delay in getting the lumber, the Baker elevator did not
open for business until January 5. Reckeway had now quit playing for
atmosphere. Then, we both got more corn than we could conveniently
handle, as a car shortage had developed, which slowed down shipments.

We had a little bad luck the very first day the Baker elevator was
opened for business. We were getting corn from three shelters, about
4,000 bushels that day—and some of the wagons came in after dark. Elmer
Brockman, the builder, was looking after the elevator end of the first
day’s run. I weighed a wagon, told the driver to wait for Elmer to
signal him in with his lantern.

Something had gone wrong, and Elmer had taken his lantern and stepped
out of the driveway. Mr. farmer, after pulling up and stopping, decided
that he didn’t need a lantern to guide him—and he drove on in and got
one horse part way in the open dump. The horse lost patches of hair in
two or three places, but was not otherwise injured. The next day the
fellow came back and wanted to sell me the horse for $100. The old plug
was worth only about $40. I didn’t want to buy the horse at any
price, and I didn’t want the man to go away dissatisfied. And I
suspicioned—correctly—that some of my competitor’s supporters might be
back of the fellow. I suggested that I send Milt Cole, the liveryman,
out to the farm to examine the horse—and that I would pay him whatever
amount that the two of them might decide would be just. Mr. Cole said
$40 would be a big plenty—and I paid it. Then, about a week later the
farmer, pleased with his high-handed stroke of luck, had the nerve to
tell me that I was an easy mark, that the horse was as good as ever, and
that I had virtually thrown away forty dollars.

Now, this man was on a farm owned by an Illinois man—a Mr. Smith, who
had entrusted me with the rental of the place. The farmer had contracted
to pay cash rent, with a clause in the contract stating that in case of
drought, or for any cause lowering the normal yield, that a substantial
reduction would be allowed. Mr. Smith was a firm believer in the old
principle of “live and let live.” But he soon found out that it wouldn’t
work so well here. And anyway, it was mostly his sister’s idea—she
having an interest in the land.

The tenant had asked for a reduction. Well, Mr. Smith came to my
printing office one day, borrowed my shotgun, pulled on new overalls,
and went out to his farm to hunt a bit. He found the tenant at the
house, asked for and received permission to hunt. Mr. Smith said
truthfully he had just got in from Minnesota, and casually asked about
crops in general here. The tenant said they had been good, and he
bragged a little about how well he himself had done that year. Mr.
Smith’s sister lived in Minneapolis, and he had gone around that way
to get her to yield a point on that stiff “live and let live” idea of
hers—and to discuss plans for selling the farm. I sold it for them,
later.

Might say here that another tenant the previous year had asked for, and
received a reduction. The man had sold his corn. He patted his pants
pocket, and told me, “I’ve got the money all in here. They’ll have to
settle my way, or not at all.” He was entitled to a reduction and I
was sure Mr. Smith would do the right thing. And he did. I said to
the tenant, “If you should lose that money we would have no chance to
collect anything. Put your money back in the bank where it will be safe.
If anything comes up, I’ll notify you in time for you to get it out
before attempting to force a collection.” He said, “On your word, I’ll
do that. Can’t sleep very well with the money in my britches, anyway.”
This man was Albert W. Dixon. Don’t care to name the other fellow.

This rather unusual incident got “noised” around, and the tenant:—the
farmer with the “crippled” horse—being what he was, thought he might
just as well do a little more gouging. Mr. Smith said to me, “Make that
fellow pay in full—and get rid of him.”

Still Mr. Reckeway was not satisfied. Having failed in his efforts to
block the building of the west elevator, he now began a play to get
control of it. And, finally, he did get it. During a grain dealers
meeting at the Byram hotel in Atchison, Frank Crowell told me that my
competitor was still after my “goat”—that Mr. Reckeway had just renewed
his offer to give them all his shipments, if he could get control of the
west elevator.

I said, “For heaven’s sake, let him have it—if it means anything to
you?” Please note that Mr. Crowell and Mr. Baker were my sponsors. They
would not let me down.

Reckeway closed the west elevator.

When the new crop began to come in, I resumed track buying. I could have
forgiven Mr. Reckeway for trying to squeeze me out—but now I would have
to show him how badly he had been misled by his promoters, when he told
the Greenleaf-Baker people that I was a “dead duck.”

We now had a new man in the depot. Agent Larkin was a fine Christian
gentleman, an active church man. Also, he had a wife, and a pretty
daughter who was a popular elocutionist—and a flock of 200 chickens. He
did not impress me as a man who could be influenced or bought for a
few kernels of corn. However, when he asked permission to scrape up the
waste around the car we had just loaded, it gave me an idea. I was not
expecting any favors from this agent — but I wanted to forestall the
efforts of my competitor in demanding a division of cars on a comparable
basis of his grand-elegant physical representation. When the boys would
spill too little corn while loading the cars, I often climbed into the
car and kicked out an extra bushel, sometimes more, before reporting the
car ready for sealing—and of course I wouldn’t object to Agent Larkin
gathering up the spilled corn, for his 200 chickens. I was getting an
equal division of cars, and that was all I could reasonably expect—more,
in fact, than seemed equitable to my competitor, with his investment
in an owned elevator and his shrewdly acquired control of the
Greenleaf-Baker elevator.

The idea that an elevator operator could pay more for corn than the
track buyer was all wrong. An elevator is a convenience to the shipper,
and helpful to a community — but don’t forget for one moment that the
grain producer must pay for it all. When track buying, I usually kept
two men at the car, one inside the car and one to help the haulers
shovel off their loads. I paid them 15 cents an hour. Tom and Juber
Gibbons were horses to work then—but don’t look at ‘em now! And in long
hauls, I would take the drivers to dinner at the Wetmore hotel, and feed
their teams at Cole’s livery barn. The haulers, who were the seller’s
neighbors, would complain about having to shovel the corn—but they, in
turn, would bring me their corn for these extra helps, and extra money.
One farmer who sold me 3,000 bushels said, “My neighbors will kick like
the devil about having to shovel off their loads—but I reckon I kicked
too when I shoveled off my loads when I was hauling for them.”

On the basis of those magnificent holdings, Mr. Reckeway took his
troubles to the higher-ups. Agent Larkin called me to the depot.
Reckeway was there with a special representative of the railroad — the
“trouble shooter.” Reckeway told his side of the story—very correctly,
I must say. He owned outright an elevator, and he had control of the
Greenleaf-Baker elevator as well — and that firm was getting all his
shipments. And, as a clincher, he said, “You know the Greenleaf-Baker
people are heavy shippers over your railroad. They have elevators all
along the Central Branch.”

The special agent then asked me: “Have you any storage for grain?”

“Yes,” I replied, “a bin with capacity for two car loads of shelled
corn.”

His next question: “Did you ever have to pay demurrage for holding a car
over-time while loading?”

Again I replied, “Never.”

The special agent’s final question, the one I was hoping he would ask
me: “Where do you ship your corn?”

I said, “To the Greenleaf-Baker people in Atchison, as always.”

Reckeway’s countenance showed surprise, if not real anger. The agents
both laughed.

Turning to Agent Larkin, the special agent asked: “Has he told the truth
in all three instances?”

“Absolutely,” said my chicken-owner friend.

“Then, give him every other car,” said my newly found friend.

And Mr. Reckeway stalked out mumbling in jumbled English and German, of
which I could catch only, “A man with two elevators—.” My reputation was
now redeemed.

The so-called “Board of Trade” had long since passed out. It was never
a Board of Trade, anyway. Its operations were limited to the sale of one
old canning factory building, and the location of Mr. Reckeway—that is,
if we do not choose to count the location of Mr. Abbott. You know, I was
a member of the Board, with dues and absentee penalties paid in full.

Now, let’s get this straight. I wouldn’t have been so resentful as to
induce a live merchant like Mr. Abbott to move in on the homefolk. I
just told him of the behavior of some of the Board members, and that
I might have to deny him space in my paper. “Oh,” he said, “I
don’t believe you will want to do that to me.” He winked. Well, I
didn’t—really.

Mr. Abbott had been thinking things over ever since the time I had asked
him to surrender his space in the interests of that elaborate write-up.
Said he figured it would now be OK for him to bring me copy for a
half-page advertisement announcing his location in Wetmore.

There were, however, many proposals advanced — but always they met with
opposition from some member or members of the Board. In general, they
kicked like the proverbial “bay steer” whenever something was advanced
which might be helpful to one and detrimental to another. I think Mr.
Worthy and I were the only ones who did not protest their proposals—such
as bringing in Mr. Reckeway. And, frankly, until it had come to a
showdown, I was not favored with too much information as to what Michael
had up his sleeve.

I don’t know where they could have found a better man than Mr. Reckeway
for the place—but he was no miracle man. Handicapped as he was, he
found the going rather tough. And having found out also that the Board
Committee’s prophesy was only a myth—that an elevator alone could not
make two bushels grow where only one bushel grew before—after a few
rather lean years, he departed for greener pastures. I believe Mr.
Reckeway made good in the flour milling business at Girard, Kansas.

The Board of Trade sponsored (Reckeway) elevator, after years of
idleness, has been torn down. Goff and Netawaka, like Wetmore, each now
have only one elevator. And still the grain does not roll into Wetmore
as was anticipated by the Board of Trade enthusiasts. Perhaps the old
town may someday be favored with another set of progressives—who do not
know their onions.

I reiterate, there is no lingering malice in this writing. Collectively,
year in and year out, the oldtime Wetmore people, despite all
differences, were the best people I ever knew—and I lived in relative
harmony with them for a long, long time. I’ve lived a lot of living in
the old home town.

And, thankfully, I’m still here.

FAMILY AFFAIR Not Hitherto Published—1947.

By John T. Bristow

In the foregoing article I made reference to Theodore Wolfley’s poor
marksmanship, with a revolver. When possible, I like to back up my
assertions with proof. I now quote from a letter dated at St. Louis,
April 5, 1941, written by T. J. Wolfley to his sister May Purcell,
commenting on my writings in The Spectator, in which I likened a
Belgrade story to a hot Wolfley editorial. It was at a time when a
Hitler delegation was in Belgrade endeavoring to put pressure on the
Yugoslavs to force them into the war on the Hitler side. The quote:

“I received the copy of the Wetmore Spectator, which you so kindly sent
me. Thank you for it. I was interested in the story from Yugoslavia; and
flattered to be even remotely connected with the incident by my friend
John Bristow, who professes to think that if I wasn’t in St. Louis,
I might be running a newspaper in Yugoslavia. . . . Just as in the
political wars he mentioned, I was sometimes more friendly with the men
I opposed than with the ones I favored. But the people liked it and it
was then the accepted slogan to give the people the kind of news they
wanted. . . . John was a good newspaper man and a good squirrel hunter,
so we thought a little expert shooting might lend realism to the
picture. But I wasn’t a good shot. I couldn’t even hit the imposing
stone when it stood on the side against the wall. But I remember John
could hit a penny when it laid on the floor at the leg of the imposing
stone. So we depended upon John’s ability as a shooter to keep the
enemy away. . . . Show this to John. A good many things happened in the
Spectator office even after I quit, similar to the way they happen in
Yugoslavia. He may remember some more.”

Well, yes—I do remember one more. Always one more. But first I want
to say that Theodore verifies the point I made in the preceding
article—that he could not even hit the leg of the imposing stone, in his
gun-practice. To those who are not familiar with the mechanics of the
print-shop, the imposing stone is a heavy slab of marble mounted on a
stand about waist-high, on which the forms of the newspaper are made up.

When the Spectator was in its first year, I helped Theodore Wolfley
carry out one of his “bright” ideas which gave him some sleepless
nights. His sister Mary, still too young to carry on a flirtation with
a grown man, had embarked on a whirlwind romance with a Central Branch
railroad engineer. The heavy grade at the John Wolfley farmstead five
miles west of Wetmore, made it possible for the engineer and the girl to
exchange notes. And when they might desire a few moments time together,
it was said, he would drop off at the crossing near her home, and then
grab onto the caboose—and the fireman would take the long freight train
into Goff.

Theodore told me that, as her older and wiser brother, he intended to
break it up. He said it had got to a point when a talking to would do
no good—and the girl was too big to spank. We printed a ten-line item in
the Spectator, branding Mary’s Romeo as an all round bad character, even
had him arrested and jailed for drunkenness—and credited the item to one
of Atchison’s daily newspapers. After printing one copy for the Wolfley
family perusal, I lifted the spurious item before running the regular
edition.

Theodore commuted on horseback between farm and town at that time. He
took the “doctored” paper home with him. He watched Mary read the item.
He said she wrinkled up her nose, shook her head as if she meant to
get even with someone. When he came back to the office the next day, he
said, “I guess that will hold her.” But it didn’t.

On the following day Theodore discovered the item had been cut out of
the Spectator—and he rightly suspicioned it had been turned over to Mr.
Romeo. He came to the office in agitated confusion. He asked me, “What
paper did we credit that darned item to?” He had maligned an Atchison
man and credited the item to one of the three Atchison daily papers—the
Champion, the Patriot, or the Globe—which made him liable to attack from
two angles. But luck was with Wolfley. John Reynolds, the engineer,
came back promptly with his daily exchange saying the item referred to
another John Reynolds living in Atchison—and the romance went merrily
on.

Theodore would have felt a lot easier had he known there actually was
another John Reynolds living in Atchison. And though the second Mr.
Reynolds had a shady record, he was never guilty of the things the item
charged the engineer with. I have penned a line on this John N. Reynolds
in another article. John A. Reynolds, the engineer, was really an
honorable man, with high standing in Atchison. I came to know him well
in later years.

I shall carry on from here — after this paragraph — without Mr. Wolfley.
But I’m not forgetting the Romeo engineer. And I should say here that
Mary’s romance terminated without hitting the rocks, and that Theodore
never had any complaints from Atchison. And I might say further, as a
last tribute to my old friend, that Theodore Wolfley went from here to
Phoenix, Arizona, and became editor of the Daily Republican, owned
by ex-Governor Wolfley, of Arizona, (no relation), where he played up
Republican politics to his heart’s content. From there he went to the
St. Joseph (Mo.) Daily Gazette, where I imagine he would have been a
loyal Democrat. And from St. Joe he went to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat
as Financial editor. While in St. Joe Theodore wrote me that he was
holding open for me a place on the Gazette paying four and one-half
times the ten dollar weekly salary I was getting here. That was
considered “big money” then. But I had promised Curt and Polly Shuemaker
that I would remain on the job here when they bought the Spectator from
John Stowell. Curt Shuemaker was blind—lost his eyesight from close
bookwork in the Morris store and as the first cashier of the Wetmore
State Bank. I could not quit them cold—but I was trying to find them
a reliable printer when Curt sickened and died suddenly, leaving The
Spectator in need of an editor as well. The quickest way to help out
Polly was for me to buy The Spectator—at my own price. Not an unfair
price, however. When Theodore was back home a short time before he died,
having just read my manuscript of the Green Campbell story, he proposed
that we buy The Spectator from the Turrentines—just to show the people
what we could do. From past experience, I knew he could have shown them
plenty—and I was afraid he might insist on doing it.

Some years after Mary’s romance, I was walking past the depot in Wetmore
with the girl who afterwards became my wife. Her home was on the south
side of the tracks, near the watertank. The noon passenger train was at
the tank. As we came abreast the engine the engineer hopped down from
the cab, pulled off a leather gauntlet glove, and met the girl with a
hearty handshake—and some hurried palaver. She introduced him as Mr.
Reynolds.

But you know, passenger trains must move on time — and when alone with
the girl, I said, “Let me see your hand.” She said, “Oh, you’d never
get a speck of dirt from shaking hands with Johnny Reynolds; he’s really
quite particular about keeping himself clean of engine grime.” I learned
later that she had told the truth in this particular—but how the
devil did it come she knew so much about him? I said, “I think I know
something about him that you do not know.” Then I told her about his
exchange of notes with the Wolfley girl.

She laughed and said, “Were you expecting to see a note in my hand?
You don’t need to be afraid of Johnny Reynolds. He is engaged to a Miss
Spelty, in Atchison.”

“Johnny” Reynolds had roomed at their home in Effingham before the
family came to Wetmore, when Myrtle Mercer was eight years old. Being
a very courteous man, he “made over” all members of the Mercer family
whenever and wherever he might chance to meet them. And he had gotten
lunches from their home in Wetmore.

After her husband’s death in 1888, Myrtle’s mother had rather a hard
time providing for her family of five girls, ranging in age from two to
sixteen years. She was advised to open a boarding house for trainmen —
and others—but it settled down mostly to providing lunches for the two
local freight train crews which passed through here about the noon hour.
I think it was not very helpful. She was an excellent cook, and her
twenty-five cent lunches were too elaborate to make money, even in those
days. The passenger trains had stopped here for dinner before this.
The hotel charged trainmen 25 cents—as was customary at all stops—while
passengers paid 35 or 50 cents. Hence a 25 cent precedent for trainmen.

The pinch was lifted, however, some years later, when Mrs. Mercer
was granted a Government pension—for herself and the two younger
children—with several years back pay. Though only 39 years old when he
died, John Mercer was an “honorably” discharged soldier. He had enlisted
in 1864, when only 15 years old. How he managed to get in at that age,
is presumed to be the same as other under-age boys got in.

One time when I was riding the local freight to Atchison, I saw Tom
Haverty, the conductor, an Irish Catholic, open his lunch basket. It
contained a big porterhouse steak cooked just right—it was a steak that
would cost at least $2.50 now, with very few trimmings. I know that
steak was cooked just right, for my wife had learned the art from her
mother, and she had cooked many a one to the same turn for me. Well,
Tom Haverty picked up that steak, held it as though he thought it might
bite, walked to the opposite side of the caboose and chucked it out an
open window.

It was Friday.

After selling my newspaper, I found time to “putter about” on my farm
one mile down the creek from town. I actually did a lot of worthwhile
work, cleaning up the bottom land of brush, trimming hedge, and cutting
cockle burrs with a “Nigger” hoe. I usually stuck a sandwich in my
pocket for lunch—but sometimes Myrtle would prepare a real dinner, even
steaks like I’ve been describing, carry it in a basket, sit down on
the ground with me in the shade of hedge or tree, fight flies and gnats
while eating, and pretend to enjoy it.

One morning she said I need not take a lunch—that she was going to cook
a real dinner, bring it down to the farm, and eat it with me. I told
her I would come for dinner, and save her that long walk. She insisted
that she “loved the walk, loved to get out in the open,” and I told her
where to meet me.

But she caught a ride most of the way. Green Goodwin, conductor of the
local freight, told her to come aboard the caboose, that he would stop
the train out near the farm and let her off. He had gotten lunches from
her mother’s home. She said, “Mr. Goodwin said my lunch basket smelled
good — like old times. He told a passenger in the caboose that he could
always be sure of getting a good lunch at our home. I sure appreciated
the ride, and I offered to give him my part of the lunch, but he
wouldn’t take it. I’ll bet that traveling man who peeped in the basket
wouldn’t have turned it down. But Mr. Goodwin did eat two of the
cream-puffs: he said they were as good as the ones mamma used to put
in his lunches. That leaves four cream-puffs for you—if I don’t eat any
myself.” What manner of man would have eaten four cream-puffs—just then?

Myrtle felt pretty chesty about getting this ride—to think Green would
stop his train on a steep grade, to save her the walk. Well, it was a
pretty steep grade—and it was kind of Green to give her this lift. It
recalled the time when, on several occasions, freight trains had stopped
at that same place to let me off. And when the train had started to move
again I could easily have beaten the engine to the top of the grade, in
a running walk. But that would not Tiave been what I had been taken on
the engine for, in town. I walked, or trotted slowly, ahead of the train
pretty close to the creeping engine, shooing grasshoppers off the rails.
After the 1874 invasion of grasshoppers freight trains could not make
that grade until the rails were cleared of hoppers—and I had to stay
close to the engine so that the hoppers would not fly around me and
settle on the rails again. I was always “Johnny on the spot” to catch
those rides. To ride the engine was a thrilling experience for a
twelve-year-old boy.

While eating our lunch that day, a covey of half-grown quail came out
from between the rows at the end of a cornfield. Myrtle said they were
so cute that it was a shame to kill them. “And if you shoot any more
of them,” she declared, “I will not cook them for you.” I said that I
guessed I could cook them myself—that I had roasted them suspended on a
stick over a fire in the woods.

“Well,” she said, “I’ll cook them, of course—but I promise you that
I will never eat any more of them.” I tried her out on six birds. She
cooked them, of course—and kept her promise. And then, in due time, I
also thought they were too cute to be killed. But I continued carrying
feed to the quail, in snowy times.

While Wolfley said I was a good squirrel hunter, quail was really my
game. I trapped them in my younger days, and shot them when old enough
to be trusted with a gun. I “potted” them. In the old days quail
sold for 5-cents each and no one would think of wasting a charge of
ammunition on a single bird, especially while on the wing; though I did
once shoot a lone quail sitting on top my figure-four cornstalk trap,
under which were twenty live birds. We made our traps then with any old
thing we could pick up and bind together. The twenty trapped quail had
followed a tramped out path in deep snow, baited with a thin scattering
of shelled corn, with a more generous supply of kernels under the
trap—thus to engage the lead birds while the others were coming up, lest
an impatient bird might go after the nubbin on the treadle and spring
the trap too soon. I think trapping and “potting” were legal then. I
winged them in later years, same as other sportsmen were wont to do.

One time while coming home from the farm on a Sunday morning about
eleven o’clock, three teen-age boys caught up with me. They said they
were from Fresno, California. I questioned them a little about Fresno,
and decided they were telling me the truth. Also, I knew they were
not professional tramps—and that they were hungry. I took them to the
Wetmore hotel, and told Bill Cordon to give them their dinners, fill
them up with double orders. One of the boys had about worn out his
shoes—the sole of the left shoe was dragging, making it hard for the boy
to keep up with his pals. While they were waiting in the hotel for the
dinner call, I went to my home and hunted up a pair of shoes—almost new
shoes, which pinched my feet—and took them, with a pair of clean socks,
to the little fellow, and started them on their way back to Fresno,
walking of course. On parting, the boy wearing my shoes, asked me
why had I taken so much interest in them? I told them that I might be
tramping myself someday, maybe even get as far away from home as Fresno,
and in that event I hoped to meet them all again. This is what I told
the boys. For the correct answer—it is enough to know that my people
live in Fresno. One of the older boys said, “Never doubt, we’ll be
there—if we ever do get back home.” And though I have been in Fresno a
number of times since, I never had the pleasure of meeting any of them.
I lost their names.

Now—the $64 question!

A real honest-to-goodness professional tramp had hurriedly passed me by
before the boys had caught up with me. I had a couple pork sandwiches
in my pocket. My first thought was to offer them to this fellow—then
thought that maybe he was not a tramp. A tractor had been running on a
farm east of my place, and this fellow was just about smeary enough
to have been the driver. I let him pass—and later saw him go into the
depot. The wife and I were preparing to eat the sandwiches which were
on the table still wrapped in oil paper. Then, this professional tramp
showed up at our kitchen door, asking for a handout. Taking the two
wrapped sandwiches off the table, I said, “Here you are, my man—I’ve
been saving them for you.” I told him that had he not passed me by in
such hurry on the railroad tracks, that I would have offered them to him
then. He said he had been sick, and was hurrying to get in out of the
weather. It had been “spitting” snow—which, I imagine, had caused my
dinner guests at the hotel to wonder why did they leave their homes in
sunny California. My home was two blocks away from the depot—and this
was the tramp’s first call. Now—had this fellow “read my number” in
passing on the railroad track? Or, did he read the sign at my home? It
was said in the old days that tramps had a way of marking the favorable
houses. My wife never let an applicant go away without something, little
or much, to allay his hunger.

I shall drop back a few years now and expand a bit on the trials and
tribulations of my wife’s family—before she was my wife, understand.
Married at the age of sixteen, and left a widow at the age of
thirty-three, with little more than the home and a houseful of kids—all
girls, at that — Kate Mercer found herself in a highly discouraging
predicament. Deprived of the bread-winner, the almost new five-room
house on an acre of ground down by the creek, on the “wrong side of the
tracks,” could now hardly be called a home. It had been ideally situated
for the husband and father, who had been section foreman here for eight
years.

There was no county welfare aid here then, as there is now. There was,
however, in practice at that time the “good neighbor helping hand.”
It consisted of raising a temporary fund by the circulation of a
subscription paper. But when such a course was proposed by sympathetic
neighbors, Mrs. Mercer, strongly backed up by her oldest daughter,
declined to permit that. They would try somehow to get along without
charity. They would go out and work. Thus, an up-hill drag was in store
for them.

Myrtle finished her schooling in May—though she said that with the
readjustment problem confronting the family, and consequent worries, she
feared she had made a rather poor job of it. Then she went out to work
as domestic, or maid—just plain “hired girl” it was termed then. She
worked two weeks in the home of the aristocratic Augusta Ann DeForest
during the illness of Miss Mary Randall, the regular long-time maid.
Myrtle said she could not have wished for a more congenial place to
work. She dined with the family, notwithstanding the traditional rumors
which said that such breaches of table etiquette were not tolerated in
that home. And she said Mr. Henry, whom gossip claimed never even got to
see the other cooks, was especially considerate, and told her not to try
to overdo. That would be Mr. Henry, all right.

Myrtle worked for the eccentric Mrs. Draper, who was the mother-in-law
of Charley DeForest. And she worked for Mrs. R. A. DeForest—and as
chambermaid at the Wetmore hotel while her mother was the cook there.
Of all her domestic “positions” Myrtle said she felt more at ease, and
liked best to work for Linnie (Mrs. R. A.) DeForest. Linnie was the
sister of the gracious Alice McVay, mentioned in another article. And
Linnie was the mother of Harold DeForest, now living on a farm two miles
northeast of Wetmore.

Myrtle worked five weeks that first year for a young married couple
who had come down from Granada to set up housekeeping in Wetmore with
scarcely more than their love to go on. She quit them before the man
had accumulated the money to pay her. The loss was only ten dollars, she
said—but ten dollars would have been something toward keeping the family
together. Myrtle said, “There ought to be a law preventing people from
marrying before they are financially prepared for it.”

That was a statement worthy of a philosopher.

In the early winter of that first year the family went back to Illinois,
the home of Mrs. Mercer’s people. Again Myrtle worked out at her
enforced occupation as “hired girl.” Jennie, the second girl, went
temporarily to an aunt, Mrs. Esther Noble—her father’s sister—in
Bloomington. Georgia stayed with her aunt, Mrs. Henry Ham, in Bureau
Junction. Kathy and Jessie remained with their mother in the home of
Mrs. Mercer’s father, John Leonard, in Bureau—which railroad town was
the home of the Mercers before they came to Kansas. They were all back
in Wetmore within a few years.

James F. Noyes, a well-to-do retired farmer, living in Wetmore, adopted
Georgia. He and his wife Jennie could — and did — give her a good
home. But after the novelty of the new life for the child had worn off,
Georgia would “run away”—and go back home. The several occasions when
she did this, made sorrowful times for the family. When matters became
really serious, Georgia’s foster parents took her on an extended trip to
visit Mrs. Noyes’ brother, George Scott, in Oregon, hoping to cure her
of her homesickness. Georgia married Don Cole and reared a family of two
boys and three girls in the Noyes home. She never lost contact with all
members of her mother’s family.

Then there was an opportunity to have another of the girls adopted into
a childless home. I don’t think the matter was considered seriously
— not favorably, anyhow — but Myrtle said she “Threw a fit.” No more
adoptions, if she could help it. She’d just “bedarned” if anyone could
have Jessie, the baby. So it came to pass that she got the care of
Jessie herself—after her mother had married John Hall, and gone to live
on a farm one mile west of Powhattan.

Mr. Hall’s first wife, and mother of his four children, had stayed
several months in Mrs. Mercer’s home while taking treatments of Dr.
Haigh for the chronic ailment which caused her death. He had come
over weekly to pay the bills. And he therefore knew just where to find
himself another wife—provided.

Graduate Wetmore Public Schools—Class 1899.

image8

No, Girls—It’s not her Graduation Dress.

Artist’s Idea—1904.

Mother of Virginia, Ruth, John, and Betty.

The deliberating period was another trying time for the girls — but
after thorough consideration, mother and daughters were in complete
agreement. It would perhaps be best for all of them, especially for the
overburdened mother. And it was really good for all of them—the Halls
included.

The Mercer girls all finished their schooling in Wetmore. The two
younger girls could have gone with their mother—it was so arranged—but
they preferred to remain in Wetmore, most of the time. Jennie was
offered the chance to work for her keep in Conductor Carlin’s home in
Atchison, while taking a course in the Atchison Business College. She
soon switched to the home of her uncle Stewart Mercer (a tailor) and his
wife Mina, to act as baby sitter for little Esther, their first born.
The Spectator, by virtue of some timely solicitation by Jennie’s older
sister, and an advertising contract, contributed the tuition fee. Then
Jennie went to work for a grain commission company in the Kansas City
Board of Trade building. She worked in that one building as secretary
and bookkeeper for different grain firms for the remainder of her
life—more than thirty-five years. She never married.

Not that Jennie never had the chance. She turned down Danny Cromwell,
a Kansas City boy, after he had secured the license. His sister Kate, a
true friend and a very sensible girl, told Jennie that he had nothing,
that he was sickly, without prospects—and that she would do well to sack
him.

Then, too, Jennie had prospects of marrying her boss. But, after years
of happy anticipation — you could see it written all over both their
faces when they spent a vacation week with her relatives in Wetmore—it
developed that this romance also was fraught with intolerable aspects.
Her Romeo lived with, and was the sole support of an aristocratic mother
who was allergic to working girls. Oh, those aristocratic mothers!
A wise Nineteenth Century girl needed no advice. What think you a
Twentieth Century girl would have done?

Jennie was helpful in securing positions in Kansas City for her younger
sisters. Kathy worked as cashier and bookkeeper for the B. F. Coombs
Produce Company down by the market, at Fifth and Main. She married
Luther P. Hyre — and reared a family of three girls and one boy, in
Kansas City.

I think Kathy was the only one of the girls to inherit in a high degree
her mother’s Irish wit. I don’t care if she was my mother-in-law, Kate
Leonard - Mercer - Hall was a witty woman. And what’s more, I never
could understand the why of so much criticism of the mother-in-law.

Also, little Virginia Hyre, Kathy’s first born, was a bright kid. Note
this. Percy Worthy had gone to the farm with me to get a load of
posts. Little Virginia, my wife’s short three-year-old niece, tiny and
talkative, was taken along. The posts were in a small depression on the
edge of a cornfield. I lifted the little girl out of the wagon and stood
her on higher ground. She remained quiet while we loaded the posts.
When Percy started to pull out, the front wheels of the wagon hit soft
ground, sinking to the hubs, stalling his big bay team. He lashed the
horses—mildly of course—and yelled fearsome notes of encouragement.
Virginia set up a howl—screamed as if the lashes and frightening words
were falling on her little tender person. Percy climbed down off the
wagon to investigate. Virginia stopped her howling and said with broken
sobs, puncturing each word with her little right hand swinging up
and down, “I know what’s the matter, Uncle John.
You-just-got-too-many-posts!”

And again, nearly a year earlier, after the child had spent a month in
our home, Virginia’s mother had come out from Kansas City to take her
baby home. At the last minute, when they were seated in the passenger
coach, Virginia decided she did not want to leave us, and she tearfully
argued the matter with her mother—to no avail. As the train started to
move the little girl, tiny and tearful, standing up in the seat, thrust
her head and outstretched arms out an open window, and sobbed, “Uncle
John, don’t you want me?” That did something to me. The fact was, we
did want her. And I could have made the flying catch all right—but her
wardrobe would have gone on to Kansas City. Virginia came back to our
home, later, and started to school here, but she “fell out” with her
teacher—and was carted back to Kansas City again. “I just don’t like
Miss Peters” is all we could get her to say. Miss Myra Peters was the
primary teacher who had for many years been adored by the little tots.

After a brief spell as Kathy’s assistant with the Coombs Company,
Jessie came back to try country life again. She married Will Hall, her
step-father’s son. One time when Myrtle and I were visiting the Halls
they took us to a Masonic program and supper in Powhattan. I was sitting
with Mr. Hall when a friend of his from Hiawatha asked, “Who is that
pretty girl in red over there with your son?” Mr. Hall said, drolly—he
was a slow talker when he wanted to be impressive—”Well, she is my
wife’s daughter; and my son’s wife.” The friend looked puzzled for a few
seconds, then said, “I get it.”

I shall now have to drop back once more. At this time Myrtle Mercer was
working in my printing office, and she and Jessie were living in the
home place down by the creek. My brother Theodore and his wife Mattie,
living on my Bancroft farm, had given Myrtle a Great Dane puppy. It grew
into a very large dog. With Vic as protector, the girls felt secure in
their rather isolated home between the timber and the tracks. Hoboes
were numerous along the railroad in those days. The girls were not
bothered by tramps, with Vic around.

Historically noted, the pup’s mother, aided by a visiting male dog of
like breed from over near Hiawatha, had got herself in bad repute by
taking down a stray cow that had come into the front yard where the
tender spring grass made better pickings than were obtainable on the
roadside. After being poorly wintered, roadside pickings were the cow’s
only chance for sustenance. The cow was the property of a roving family
consisting of father, mother, and five kids, that had wintered in the
Jake Brian farm house a half mile away. The cow was trespassing, of
course—but there were the kids to be considered. My brother paid the man
for the cow. He already had possession of her. She was still down in his
front yard. But in time, she got up—and was driven with other stock six
miles to Uncle Bill Porter’s pasture for a summer’s outing. She never
got back.

When the pup was brought to town, the record of the old dogs
followed—and as he grew to be a monstrous dog he was feared by some
people who knew him only by his breeding. Then the town got a mad-dog
scare. Vic was reportedly seen fighting with the suspected mad-dog
down in the lower part of town—on “Smoky Row.” The informer recanted
later—but that did not help matters after Vic had been killed by order
of the City Marshal. I think the dog’s overly-advertised ancestry had
marked him for annihilation. Thus, “the sins of the parents were visited
upon the son” to the extent of needless distrust.

Vic was a good dog.

Myrtle said she couldn’t believe her dog was seen fighting with another
dog on the town-side of the tracks, as he was never known to leave the
home alone. But she felt that it was best to be on the safe side. And
then too an order was an order. She wished that it had come a week
earlier, so as to have saved her the dollar tax she had paid the City
Marshal for the privilege of keeping Vic another year. It was a tragedy
that the girls’ watchdog was to be killed because of that false alarm.

Here I will put in a word on my own hook. I knew Ed Lazelere had stuck
the pup headfirst into a rubber boot and given him a treatment designed
to keep the dog at home. It really worked. In his mature years Vic was
never known to leave the premises alone, and seldom with either of the
girls. His one mistake in his puppy days was when he followed Myrtle,
unbidden, to the Lazelere home.

Frosty Shuemaker was detailed to do the shooting. I went along to help
get the dog away from the house. Vic was in the back yard in the shade
of an apple tree. He wouldn’t budge for us. Myrtle came to the back
door, and said she would have Jessie lead him over to the creek bank
west of the house. Frosty and I went around to the front of the house,
and then west on the outside of the yard fence to where there was an
opening in the enclosure.

Jessie and the dog came running. Vic stopped broadside opposite the
opening, and was knocked down with a single charge from Frosty’s
double-barreled shotgun—when Jessie was halfway back to the house. She
did not look back. She held in until the booming report of the shotgun —
then let out a terrific squawk. We dragged the dead dog outside the
yard fence and left it in a weed patch. Vic was now the City’s dog. The
Marshal would get a dollar for burying him.

Back at the house Myrtle, red-eyed and sorrowful, asked me what had
become of Jessie? I found the kid in a patch of marijuana over by the
east line of the grounds, lying face down—crying her heart out. And I
think I dropped a few tears, too. You know, there are times when you
can’t fight them back.

COMPLIMENTARY TO THE “KIDS” Here, I wish to pay my respects to the
“Kids” — all “Kids.” And especially the children born of parents living
in my home—separate apartment—with whom I have had close and pleasant
association.

Complimentary to MY LITTLE PAL

image1

Also, I was brought up with kids—ten in my father’s family; eight of
them younger than me; all boys but the last one. And then, too, after
my marriage, the wife’s nieces, Josephine, Donna, and Lucile Cole;
Virginia, Ruth, and Betty Hyre; and Mary Jane Hall, were in turn very
much in our home—which, altogether, has instilled in me a profound
respect for the kids. Girls preferred.

Cloy spent the first five years of her life in my home—separate
apartment. When she was about one year old, I often carried her down
town and got her an ice cream cone. She was just beginning to walk, that
awkward period when a child has to spraddle and step fast to hold its
equilibrium. At times when she would be with her mother on the settee
at the north end of the 22-foot front porch when I might choose to come
around from my apartment to the south end, she would make known to her
mother her desire to be put down on the floor, and she would come cooing
with outstretched arms for me to pick her up. And while she could not
talk, her mind was, I’m sure, on a cone somewhere down town. I never
aimed to disappoint her — but one time when I had been working in my
Rose Garden and was plenty tired, I tried to talk her out of it, put her
off. She could not understand all I was saying, of course—but she caught
the general idea all right. Never again did she come a-cooing to me with
outstretched arms. This is not to say we did not get more cones.


When Cloy was about four years old, she had a line-up for me to
participate in a social activity of the family. I said, “No, Cloy, I
couldn’t do that—I don’t belong. She said, “Well, gee—you’re one of us,
ain’t you?”



image5

When hardly five years old, Cloy found me, at night, standing on the old
National Bank corner. She asked me if I would give her a nickel—said she
had one nickel, and wanted to buy a 10-cent lipstick at the Wells store
for her mother. I said, “Cloy, your mother does not use lipstick.” “Oh
yes she does,” said Cloy, “the kind that don’t show.” I did not have a
nickel, and offered to go with her to the Wells store. She said, “Can’t
you get the change at the drugstore?” I said, “Come along, I’ll get
it for you,” and headed for the restaurant operated by her father and
mother and her aunt Genevieve Weaver. As we were passing the drugstore,
she said, “Get it in here.” I said, “No, let’s go to the restaurant.”
She said, “Well, bring it to me here”—and she sat down on a bench.
When I gave her the nickel, she skipped across the street to the Wells
store—and I went back to the restaurant. In a little while she came in
with her purchase, grinning. She opened it, and proceeded at once to
paint her fingernails right before her parents, still grinning. Nellie
said Cloy had “deviled” them for that extra nickel to get the nail
polish — and that they had turned her down. It was plain then why she
had said to me, “I knowed durn shore if I’d find you, I’d get it.”

I could keep on writing about this kid until the “cows come home”—but I
won’t. This paragraph shall suffice. We were coming up from town, hand
in hand, when Cloy, fairly bubbling over with good cheer, said to me,
“You never did let me see in your rooms.” I said, “Well, come in now
and take a good look.” When inside, she said, “Gee, it stinks in here.”
Defendant pleads nolo contendere.

These two fine little youngsters have been in my home—separate
apartment—since time began for them. And I’ve instilled in their heads
the ice cream cone habit. Their mother has told them that they must
not ask for the cones—but together we’ve worked out a way around that.
Whenever I meet Karen, bright-eyed and smiling, in my path, I say to
her, “Well, go in and tell your mother.” I never know how she gets it
over to Marjorie—but we are always off at once, usually with a mighty
active little trailer not far behind. When brought into my presence in
the yard, before she could talk, Karen, doubtless thinking of a cone,
would point the way down town and then run ahead for about a rod. When
this did not bring the desired results, she would take me by the hand
and lead the way, humming like a contented kitten sometimes purrs.

When hardly three years old, Karen’s mother sent her, with an older
little girl from across the street, on an errand down to Hart’s store.
They both “fetched up” at the restaurant where I get my meals. They
found me “in” — but Karen, in the lead, did not give me so much as a
single look. They marched on past me, climbed — with much effort — onto
the counter stools. Charlie Shaffer asked them a couple of times what
they wanted — but they just stared. Charlie then glanced over toward me,
laughing, which was equivalent to saying, “You take ‘em, ” and then I
had gotten over my laughing spell, I called Karen over to me, and asked
her if they would like cones.

Her little head went up and down a couple of times. They got their
cones, and went out pleased. And I was pleased, too. When the annual
Wetmore Fair was in progress I found Karen, slightly more than four
years old, sitting primly on a bench among strangers at the down-town
end of the block on which we lived, and I sat down by her. She proudly
told me she had on a new dress — a little yellow creation—which I
later suspected she had been told to keep clean. I told her she looked
nice—and this she accepted with true womanly grace.

It also developed that she had been permitted to go thus far only in
advance, to await the coming of her mother and Harry—but she did not
take the trouble to tell me this. I asked her to go with me to the
drugstore for cones. She hesitated a moment as if she were remembering
something—and then declined to go, but she said, “I thank you for asking
me.”

On my return from the post office, I observed the little yellow dress
was still on the bench—and, as Karen had been so nice about it, I
stepped into the drugstore and bought a couple of cones, aiming to
pick her up on my way home. Then, too late, I realized my mistake. The
children saw me with the cones as they turned the corner with their
mother enroute to the program on the Fair grounds in the next block.
With apologies, I gave the cones to Marjorie, thinking to make her
jointly responsible for messing up her children.

Well, the next day when we were getting cones at the drugstore, I asked
Karen if she had gotten her new dress soiled with the cone last evening.
Karen laughed—and said, “You know something. Daddy and mamma ate the
cones—but mamma gave me one bite.” I did not hear from Harry on this
score, but assumed matters had been properly taken care of. The moral
is: Never give a kid a messy treat after mama has cleaned it up for
public appearance.

ANOTHER BRIGHT LITTLE STAR The little Fresno, California miss was
ushered into my presence. My sister then went back outside to continue
with the watering of her flowers. Standing off at a reasonable distance,
Connie Jean Moser, from across the street at 1010 Ferger, said, “Aunt
Nannie told me to come in and get acquainted with Uncle John.” Attracted
at once by the little visitor’s proud carriage, pleasant expression of
face, and trim little body not burdened with too many clothes, I told
her that for me this should be a real pleasure.

Little girls, from three to six, in all their innocence, have always
made a hit with me. This is not to say I do not appreciate them when
they are older. But in general they lose a lot when they get smart.
And here now was beauty and apparently innocence at its best. A little
reserved at first, Connie Jean declined my invitation for her to sit
with me on the sofa, where I had been writing on a tab. She climbed into
a chair, twisted, and got settled with her little bare feet sticking
straight out at me. She told me her name, her age, and where She
lived—and that she had a boy friend named David.

Not wanting to lose an interrupted thought, I picked up the tab and
wrote a few lines. This done, I now found Connie Jean Moser, four years
old, sitting close up by my side, on the sofa. She asked me to read what
I had written. I said, “Oh, Connie, you wouldn’t understand it.” Then
she commanded, peremptorily, “Read it!” I told her I was writing a
book, and if she would promise to read every word of it when she got big
enough that I would send her the book.

“Oh, a book,” she said, happily, a light breaking in upon her
understanding, “I could take it to school like Oralee.” Oralee Johnson,
ten years old, is Connie Jean’s next door neighbor. I told Connie that
Oralee, when four years old, had paid me several rather affectionate
visits when I was in Fresno six years ago—but Oralee was getting too big
for that now.

“Yes,” she said, “Oralee is big. ”

Connie Jean squirmed and twisted on the sofa, as children will, causing
the straps sustaining her little sun-suit to slip off her shoulders,
annoying her to the point of alarm. I said, “Don’t let the straps bother
you, Connie—you will not lose your suit.” She smiled, and her blue eyes
opened wide. “If I would lose ‘em,” she said, “it would be too bad—got
nothing under ‘em.”

A very good man once said, “Suffer little children to come unto me.”

LLEWELLYN CASTLE Published in Wetmore Spectator—Seneca Courier-
Tribune—Goff Advance—Topeka Daily Capital—October, 1931

By John T. Bristow

A half century ago England got rid of some of her surplus inhabitants
by sending them over to this country to “root hog, or die” as the old
saying is. They drifted in here “like lost leaves from the annals of
men.” Colonies were planted in numerous sections of Kansas. Nemaha
County, with her great sweep of vacant rolling prairies, inviting,
snared one of those colonies.

The settlement known as the old English colony was on section
twenty-five, in Harrison township, five miles northwest of Wetmore. The
section was purchased from the Union Pacific railroad company by the
Co-operative Colonization Company, of London, about 1870.

The London Colonization Company had about six hundred members. They drew
lots to determine who would be the lucky—or unlucky—ones to come over
first, expenses paid.

John Fuller, John Mollineaux, George Dutch, John Radford, Charles
McCarthy and John Stowell were the original six to enter upon the duties
of conquering this land—virgin wild land it was. Except John Stowell,
all these men had families, but they did not all bring their families
over at first.

An eight-room house was built in the middle of the section and all
managed to live in it for a while. It was called Llewellyn Castle.
Later, lean-tos were built on two sides of the big house, and finally,
some smaller buildings were erected around the original house. The men
were supplied, meagerly, with funds to equip the farm.

The idea of the Company at first was to make a town in the center of the
section, and cut the land up into 10-acre tracts. They seemed to think
that ten acres would make a respectable sized farm. The town of Goff,
a mile and a half away, got started and the Colony town project was
abandoned. Also the 10-acre farm plan was changed to forty acres. The
lumber for the improvements was unloaded at old Sother, a siding on
the railroad a mile and a half south of the Colony section. There was a
postoffice at old Sother. Nothing else. Not even a station agent.

Later arrivals of the Colonists included the Wessels, Beebys, Perrys,
Coxes, Ashtons, Trents, McConwells, G ates, Morden, Hill, May, Conover,
Weston, Helsby, Weeks, Mrs. Terbit, and others. Still later, other
members of the Colonization Company come over after the local Company
had ceased to exist –gone bankrupt, it was charged, because of the
extravagant management of the non-producing misfits sent over here to
start operations. At this late date it could not be ascertained just what
was the text of the contracts between the parent company and the
members sent over here. But the impression is that if all had gone well
additional lands would have been acquired to accommodate other members.
The members, however, kept on coming regardless of the lack of advance
preparation.

They scattered out on other lands, mostly around the Colony—usually
40-acre tracts. They were miserably poor. And the privations were many.
Mrs. Terbit, having no mode of conveyance, used to walk all the way in
from the Colony and carry home on her shoulder a 50-pound sack of flour.

Isaac May settled on the 40-acre tract one mile south of Wetmore, which
is now the home of George W. Gill. May lived in a dug-out. John Stowell
settled on the north eighty of a quarter five miles southwest of
Wetmore—known as the Joe Board place, and still later owned by Charley
Krack.

George Cox settled the south eighty, which is still in the Cox
family—now owned by George’s son Fred, of Goff.

The Colony project was a glorious and ignominious failure from the very
first, with romance and intrigue ever in the ascendancy. Those poor
Englishmen were as green as the verdant prairies of springtime that lay
all about them. And the inexorable hand of Fate pressed down on them
heavily. They were besieged by droughts, grasshoppers, prairie fires,
blizzards, rattlesnakes—and, worst of all, an abiding ignorance of all
things American. When Llewellyn Castle was torn down in later years, a
den of rattlesnakes—twenty two in number—was found under the house.

Tom Fish told me that the snakes were offer heard flopping against the
floor, underneath, while the house was occupied.

Those poor misfits had not a chance. And it was little short of criminal
to send them over here so empty handed and so illy equipped for the
duties imposed upon them. But they were now all a part of the big,
sun-filled Golden West. And they were too poor to go back.

Many are the causes advanced for the downfall of the Colony project, but
the one cause on which all seem to be unanimous, more or less, is that
“They were a bunch of rascals.” This is probably an error—or partly so,
at least.

Internal friction with a very shady but treeless background undoubtedly
played its part. But I would rather suspect that the main cause was
ignorance, or to put it more kindly, a lack of knowledge. Tom Fish, our
faithful mixer of British-American juris-prudence—three times Justice of
the Peace backs me up in this contention. Says Tommy, “They just didn’t
knower anythink about farmin.” Our Tom attended their meetings back in
London at the Newman street-Market street headquarters.

But whatever the facts, and admitting that there were among the
Colonists no replicas of the man who walked along the Galilean shores
two thousands years ago, still I do not subscribe to the general belief
that those Colonists were all rascals.

Had they succeeded, handicapped as they were, it would have been a
miracle—and only in ancient history do miracles spring fullblown from
questionable beginnings. A condition soon developed among the Colonists
on section twenty-five where it was “every fellow for himself and may
the devil take the hindmost.” True, there was a lot of poor management
and some shady, if not to say crooked, transactions. And it appears one
man did rather “Lord” it over the others—took the lion’s share of
everything.

George Cox, a carpenter—they were practically all tradesmen was sent
over to superintend fencing the Colony lands. And, very much to the
merriment of the natives, he did that fencing in the dead of winter,
when the ground was frozen. The postholes he and his countrymen dug that
winter cost the Company one dollar, each. Such frozen assets were, of
course, conducive to the downfall of the Company.

But George Cox was not the fool that his ice-bound fence would indicate.
The real fault was on the other side of the big pond. The Company sent
Cox over here in midwinter to build a fence. He was without funds. The
larder at Llewellyn Castle was low—distressingly low. And his brother
Englishmen needed immediate succor. There was money for George Cox only
when he worked. And he couldn’t afford to put in all his time that
blizzardy, snowbound winter hanging onto the coat-tail of one of his
brother countrymen while the bunch of them played ring-round-the-stove
in that old Colony house to keep from freezing, as he once told me he
was compelled to do. So, then, what was really wrong with George’s
congealed fence idea?

Like other Englishmen, after coming here, George Cox had a lot to learn,
of course. He was the complainant in a lawsuit involving the ownership
of a cow. John J. Ingalls was attorney for Theodore Wolfley, the
defendant. The illustrious John J. queried, “What color was your cow,
Mr. Cox?”

“Bay,” said George. The court laughed, and told Cox to try again.
“Well,” said George, “I ‘ave a bay ‘orse, and my cow’s the same color as
my bay ‘orse.”

Then, from over the seas, came the jovial Mr. Murray, clothed in
authority and a superabundance of ego—English to the core. He had been
sent over here to make an audit of the Company’s estate. Murray
stopped first at Wetmore and partook freely of Johnny Clifton’s
“alf-and-alf.” He was a free spender and made friends here readily.

In pursuance of his duties, Mr. Murray said to those Colony delinquents,
“Wots the jolly old idea of all this reticence? Hits most happallin! I
want to see the books, by-jove.” One of those derelicts exclaimed with a
little more mirth than was becoming, “I-si, just listen to ‘im, fellow!
Wants to see the books, ‘e does! That’s rich! Si, mister we don’t keep
henny books!”

Then in unison they shot words at Mr. Murray which were the same as
“You get the hell out of here.” Murray demurred, and not having read the
storm signals quite right, he bellowed, “Ave a care! Want that I should
report you for this hincolence? Hits very hunwise for you to hact this
wy!”

But when the old shotgun was brought out from its hiding place an awful
doubt of his own wisdom assailed the jovial Mr. Murray. Those true sons
of Briton actually chased the auditor away with a shotgun.

In employing the hit-and-miss English words here I am relaying them to
you as best I can from memory as I caught them from one, maybe two, of
the original six, many, many years ago. The quoted words are not my own.
If you could have known the men and could apply either the Stowell or
Radford pronunciation and accent you would improve it a lot. And don’t
forget to speed up a little.

There are now few of the old-time typical English with us. And the
language of those who came over a long time ago has become Americanized
to such extent that the younger generation here have no conception of
just how delightfully funny was the talk of a fresh Englishman. However,
some of those who came over as children and Even some of the American
born who had good tutors retain a percentage Of the pronunciation, but
the inflection and speed which characterized their ancestors have been
lost.

After the collapse of the Colony enterprise the unallotted part of
section twenty-five fell into the hands of Captain Wilson, of London.

He was an officer in the Company. Later, Captain Wilson’s interest was
acquired by William Fish, also of London, and a member of the Company.
In England William Fish was superintendent of the Great Northern
railroad. He came over here in 1881. He was a pensioner, and did not
renounce his allegiance to the Crown.

Captain Wilson thought a lot of the Colony scheme. He was to have given
his fortune at death to the first male child born on the Colony section.
That honor fell to Alfred Wilson Mollineaux, first son of John
Mollineaux, born 1874. While conversing with Alfred Mollineaux a few
days ago, he said to me, “But since I didn’t get me ‘eritage I’ve
dropped the Wilson part of it. Wot would be the good to bother
with it now?”

The Mollineaux heirs are the only descendents of the originals holding
an interest in section twenty-five in recent years. Alfred now owns the
south 80 of the northwest quarter. Harry sold the north 80 two years ago
to Otto Krack. Otto paid $6,000 for it, including the growing crop. The
old house on the place, built more than a half century ago, is the
original John Mollineaux home. The other lands in the section have long
since passed to new owners.

There are now only two of the old Colonists living. William Wessel,
familiarly called “Teddy,” came over in 1873. He is 89, and lives with
his daughter, Mrs. John Chase, in Goff. William Conover lives with his
son Edward, on a farm adjacent to the old Colony section. He is 89.

I took a drive about the old Colony section a few days ago seeking to
refresh my memory and gather additional data for this article. At Goff I
found Teddy Wessel in the Sourk drug store. Still living over the broken
dreams of the past, Teddy exploded, first-off, “They were a bunch of
damned rascals.”

In course of the interview I asked Teddy if he knew anything about a
racy romance at Llewellyn Castle many years ago. “I should say I do,” he
said. He had a momentary flash of it. That was all. Then his mind began
to fag. Laboriously, tantalizingly, the tired feelers of his mind went
fumbling into the dark pool of the past, trying desperately to capture
the lost details, but the whole works went under—ebbed away like a
fadeout in a movie.

George Sourk, who was sitting by and coaching the old fellow a bit,
said, “You’ll have to give daddy a little time, John. He’ll remember it
all right.”

Daddy swam up out of it all right and sure enough recollections were
upon him with a bang. But the main topic was still submerged and in its
place was an ugly memory that should have been dead long ago. “They were
damned rascals,” is all he said.

It is assumed that my very fine old friend’s poisoned arrow was aimed
only at the shades of the original six, or, at most, only those who had
the actual management of the Colony affairs.

Teddy Wessel’s run of hard luck started before he left London. It seems
he bought something—or thought he paid for something—he didn’t get. But
Teddy can thank his stars that there was at least one crooked countryman
in his close circle. Teddy trusted a friend to purchase first-class
passage for himself and family. The friend bought cheaper tickets on a
slower ship, and pocketed the difference. The fast ship passed the
slower one in midocean and was lost, together with all on board, when
one day out from New York.

A happy—and I believe equitable—solution of the matter would allow
the reader who had a friend or relative among them the privilege of
exempting such one, and thus still leave Teddy some targets for his
arrows. For my own part, I think I should like to exempt that little
nineteen-year-old boy, John Stowell. In later years, after he had come
to Wetmore and engaged in business, I worked for John Stowell in his
lumber yard, and in his brick manufacturing plant, and finally, as
type-setter on his newspaper. He was not a crook.

I grew up along with those bally English and I think I knew them pretty
well. They were not all rascals. The Colony section was only five miles
away from Wetmore as the crow flies. And as the crow flew then so did
I gallop my mustang along the prairie grass lane while carrying mail
between Wetmore and Seneca, passing Llewellyn Castle on the way.

There were few fences in the way then. Just prairie grass and wild roses
and more prairie grass. And lots of prairie chickens. I have seen
acres of them at one time on the hillsides in the vicinity of Llewellyn
Castle.

There was no blue-grass then. And no timber along the route anywhere
until the Nemaha was reached just this side of Seneca, at the old
Hazzard place.

And later, in 1887, when I was a compositor on T. J. Wolfley’s Seneca
Tribune, and made drives home with Sandy Sterling’s livery team,
practically all of the twenty-six miles of road was still only a winding
trail.

Willis J. Coburn, the contractor for that Star mail route, went with
me on the first trip. He took me to the home of his old friend,
John Radford, who had then left the Colony and was living on the old
Scrafford place adjoining Seneca on the south. I put up with “Old
Radidad”—as we afterwards called him when he came to live in Wetmore—for
about a month, and while they treated me kindly, I didn’t like their
English ways.

And when I announced my intentions of throwing up my job Willis Coburn
said I should then put up at the old Fairchild Hotel, which was on a
side street north from the upper end of the main street. It was a stone
building. Besides being immaculately clean, the Fairchilds were related
to the Jay Powers family in Wetmore and that made a bond between us that
held for the duration of my mail carrying activities. There were two
stops on the way—one in the Abbey neighborhood, and one at old Lincoln.

As compensation for my services as mail-carrier, I was paid fifty cents
each way, up one day and back the next—twice a week. And I was glad
to get that. Our mail-carriers here in Wetmore, covering about equal
distance, with only two hours on the road, draw about seven dollars a
day.

When Willis Coburn offered me the job I was short of the required age,
sixteen, and I was wondering how I would get by without swearing to a
lie, when our good old postmaster, Alvin McCreery, solved the problem
for me. When he swore me in, he said, “Now, don’t tell me your age.” He
shook his head, negatively, and repeated, “Don’t tell me your age.”

At the Radford home in Seneca, I learned enough about the old Colony
to make a book, but much of it is now shrouded in a fog of haze. On the
occasion of our first trip, Mr. Radford and Mr. Coburn discussed Colony
matters freely in my presence. It was July, and it was out on the border
of the big orchard which came right up to the back door, under the shade
of an early harvest apple tree, where they sat and talked.

I have to admit that at the time I was more interested in the golden
fruit hanging on the apple tree than I was in the conversation, but I
got enough of it to know that there would be a good story in it, if I
could but remember more clearly. Mr. Radford’s agile mind ground out
astonishing facts as steadily as a grist mill that afternoon. Whatever
else may be said of John Radford, he was an educated man. And he had a
wonderful sense of humor.

As I remember it, or partly remember it, the high light of the
afternoon’s conversation—the thing that tickled the men most—was a racy
romance that had budded, bloomed, and died at Llewellyn Castle. The male
participants were of course Wetmore men—one artisan, one professional.
But somewhere along the time-worn trail between that old apple tree and
my present quarters, separated by three and fifty years, the details of
that affair are lost. And like the characters who made it, that romance
has crumbled into dust—is now a part of the past.

But the phantom of the bally old thing, elusive though as a half-formed
thought awakened by a stray wisp of forgotten fragrance, still hovers
over section twenty-five. And if memory were but a trifle more elastic
I could entertain you with something more than the tattered shreds of
Llewellyn Castle’s most charming romance—a jolly old love-spree staged
and destroyed by the heartless hand of Fate.

MORE ABOUT THE COLONY FOLK Not Hitherto Published—1947.

By John T. Bristow

The Colony folk, men and women, came to Wetmore to do their trading—and
to sip ‘alf-an-’alf, beer and whisky. At that time there was quite a lot
of immigration from England, and Britons were scattered about over the
prairies in all directions—and in general they were all regarded as
Colonists.

William Cawood, with his two sons, Walter and Prince, came direct to
Wetmore from Scarborough, England, in the spring of 1870. Other members
of the family—George, Charley, Emma, Kate, and their mother—followed in
the fall.

William Cawood was a large man—a man of means, a man of dignity, ideas,
and mutton-chops. In England he was a contractor and builder—and a
good one, too, it was said. Here, he built his meat-market, and his
residence, his horse stable, his cow barn, and his pig sty, all under
one roof. The structure, founded upon pine studding set in the ground,
was on the alley end of four lots north of Third Street and west of
Kansas Avenue. The boys at school across the street to the east thought
a new telegraph line was coming to town. In later years, wondering if
my memory had served me well, I asked Prince Cawood if it were true that
those studding were set in the ground? He said, “Every one of them.”

Walter Cawood was a large man like his father. He played an important
part in the making of this story—or rather this incident. An outstanding
episode of the early days was a free-for-all fight on the main street in
Wetmore, with Colonists predominating. It was the year 1870—maybe 1871.
Can’t be sure about the exact time. That brawl is recorded in local
history as “English Boxing Day”—though in England, the day after
Christmas is known as Boxing Day, This one occurred on a muggy summer
day.

At this time Wetmore’s main street was flanked with three buildings on
the south side, and four on the north side, in blocks one and four—all
well toward the west end. Lush prairie grass still grew on the east
half of those two blocks. A long hitchrack was in the center of the
ungraded street.

I do not recall what it was that started the fight. Perhaps it was the
old Colony hatred, refreshed by drink. Those Colonists were continually
fussing among themselves. A little fellow with a piping voice—I think
it might have been Bilby—led off by striking a brother Englishman on the
mug. He yelled, “Tike that, you bloody blighter!” They were on the south
side of the street in front of John Clifton’s saloon. The little fellow
started to run away. He dodged under the hitchrack and stumbled in the
street almost in front of my father’s shoeshop on the north side. The
big man who had taken the rap on the face was soon upon the little runt.
Then multitudinous inebriated Englishmen, and at least one German—Bill
Liebig—fell in without waiting for an invitation.

It was a battle royal—everybody hitting somebody, anybody. Blood and
blasphemous epithets, in awkward delivery, flowed freely. When the
battle had run its course a dozen men, maybe more, were prone upon the
ground. A stocky little woman came out of the saloon and met the bruised
and bleeding aggressor. “Hi ‘opes,” she said, “you’re now sart-isfied—my
cocky little man. Been spoilin’ for a fight this long time.”

Walter Cawood appeared to be the big shot of that melee. He was young,
powerful, and extremely handy with his fists. Those tipsy brawlers went
down before his punches as if they were babies. Walter was the big shot
in one more unsavory mixup—it really stunk—before going back to his
dear old England to stay. Single handed, he captured a whole family
of half-grown skunks. He brought them home for pets, with the view of
taking them back to England with him. - Walter said, “Aw, blemmy—the
bloody little ones, they -ad been eatin’ on summick quite putrid.”

The next best skunk collector of that time also was a Britisher. Teddy
Masters, a diminutive Englishman who was farming the Jim Noyes place
over on the county line, with a man named Briggs, chanced to be helping
with the threshing on the John Thornburrow farm, when it rained and
stopped the work. Three of the threshing crew—Irve Hudson, Ice Gentry,
and “Zip” Bean—with Teddy, came to town in a spring wagon. On the way in
they saw a skunk by the roadside. One of the men told Teddy to jump out
and catch it—that skunks made fine pets. He carried the skunk to town in
his hat. Someone told Masters that Dr. John W. Graham would pay well for
that skunk. “Er, rippin’,” said the diminutive Englishman. “A chawnset
to grab a little lunch, rine or shine, eh? Could do myself well wiv a
bob now.”

Dr. J. W. Graham owned a drugstore on the south side of the street. He
also owned a fine bird-dog named York. They were nearly always together.
With the skunk still in his hat, Teddy found Graham’s door locked.
Someone across the street told him to throw the skunk in at an open
window. He did so. A little later, on entering the store, Dr. John W.
sat himself down to work out some materia medica puzzles, sniffing a
little on the side, while York was nosing about a bit. When the dog
found the object of his search, a rising young physician literally
exploded.

Teddy did not wait to collect his bob.

Though John Stowell, the boy member of the original influx of Colonists,
did command me—I was in his employ at the time—to go out on a chicken
foraging expedition one bright moonlight night, neither he nor I was
troubled with conscientious scruples. We were both quite sure that we
would never have to answer to God or man for our actions — I hasten to
say, in this particular instance.

Also, if Will Gill and Augustus Anderson were here they would tell you
that they not only saw me enter a closed but unlocked chicken house
and come out with six chickens, two at a time, and that they themselves
helped me carry those chickens to the rendezvous where they were to be
roasted — innards, feathers and all.

In explanation, John Stowell “burned” the brick for his two-story
building across the street from the Worthy lumber office—the present
location of the Catholic recreation hall. The brickyard was on Stowell’s
land south of the creek just west of the town bridge. Old Hagen, an
experienced brick-maker, was brought here to burn brick for the John
Spencer building—with Masonic hall above—on the alley south of second
street, facing on Kansas Avenue; and the Ed Vilott building on the alley
south of the present McDaniel picture show location, also facing on
Kansas Avenue. For these two buildings, Hagen burned two kilns of brick
on the north side of the creek, west from the mineral spring, on the
present Don Cole land.

My brother Sam and I worked on the Hagen brickyard — and learned a few
tricks. John Stowell said he believed we could do the brick-making
as well as Hagen, and if we were willing to tackle the job he would
“chawnsit.” Sam did the moulding, and I did the off-bearing, carried the
green brick to the drying yard—the same positions we held on the
Hagen yard. Together we set the brick in the kiln for burning. And we
plastered the kiln, top and sides, with mud before starting the fires.

The material used in both yards was common top-soil mixed with
sand—ground in a horse-propelled mill. Sand for the Hagen yard came from
a pit about where Frank White’s barn-lot is, across the street from his
residence. Sand for the Stowell yard came from a pit on the north
side of the quarter section at the northeast corner of town. It was
a treacherous pit. It caved in one time between loads when I was
hauling—and it frightened me so badly that I drove back empty. And never
again did I go into that pit.

Incidentally, I may say that it was claimed later a good brick-clay was
found on the John Thomas farm, a half mile east of town. A promoter made
the discovery. He planned to build a brick manufacturing plant at the
point of discovery, and have a railroad spur run out from town—provided,
however, that the town people foot the bill. Also he wanted to sell his
expert knowledge at a ridiculously high figure. When it was pointed out
to him that a couple of “greenhorn” boys had made fairly good brick from
ordinary dirt, without financial sweetening, he gave up the venture.

At the Stowell yard I had the day shift and Sam headed the night shift
during the burning procedure. For fuel we used old fence rails—mostly.
And it took a lot of them. Rails fed into the five 16-foot fire tunnels
to better advantage than any other wood that could be had. Wherever so
many rails came from I do not recall. Likely from farms whose owners
were making the change over from the old worm-fence to barbed wire,
which came along about that time. Besides the firemen—three to the
12-hour shift — there were always crowds of spectators at the yard, in
the early evenings.

Stowell was feeling pretty good over the splendid progress we were
making, and he said to me one evening, out loud so that all could hear,
“I think we ought to give the boys a chicken roast tonight.” Then, to
the crowd, “Wot you say, fellows? ‘Ere two of you boys go along with
John and bring back a ‘alf dozen chicks—I command John to go.”

Will Gill and Gus Anderson fell in with me. The boys named a place in
the north part of town where they thought we might get the chickens
without incurring too much risk of being caught. We were now passing
John Stowell’s home on the corner where Cleve Battin lives. I said,
“Oh, that’s too far. Why not see what Laura (Stowell’s wife) has in
her chicken house here on the alley?” Will Gill said, “Why, this is
Stowell’s place. We ought not steal his chickens. He might recognize
them—and that would spoil all the fun.”

And, by-golly, those two boys refused to put foot on the Stowell lot—and
I had to do all the dirty work. I couldn’t blame them though, because it
was bright moonlight and the door of the chicken house faced the Stowell
residence only a few rods to the south. But it was, probably, just as
well. They wouldn’t have known where to find the choice chicks, anyway.
And besides, I knew that, let ‘em squawk, Laura and the children were
going to stay put. Back at the yard, the word got around that we had
stolen Stowell’s chickens — and the whole gang broke into a “Chessy-cat”
grin which didn’t come off during the whole evening. Stowell busied
himself with the roasting, without outward signs of recognizing a chick.

John Stowell was very methodical and punctual in the conduct of his
newspaper. He was reasonable in his demands of his help—and mighty fine
fellow to work for. He often paid me extra when particularly pleased
with our accomplishment. He insisted only that the forms be closed by
six o’clock on press days. We usually printed the paper after supper, so
that Stowell might address the papers for mailing—and then, too, in the
winter, we could get a better print while the office was warm.

One time Stowell brought a roving printer upstairs to the composing
room, having promised the fellow $5 to show me how to print in two
colors from a solid cut. I told John that I thought I knew how it
was done. He said, “By-jingo, maybe you can learn something, anyway.”
Turning to the two-color man, he said, “Show ‘im, Mister.” But it was I
who did the showing.

I looked up a cut of our then new frame school house — a carry over from
another ownership—and explained how I had printed the building in
brown, the yard in green, and the sky in blue, with a fleecy white cloud
overhead in the background, all done with three impressions, from the
solid cut. Stowell said, ‘“Ere, Mister, ‘ere’s your five dollars.” The
fellow said, “I think you ought to give this to your printer—he’s gone
me one better in the matter of colors.” Stowell said, “‘Ere John, I’ll
give you $5 too. It’s been worth it to me.” And I said, “I think you
ought to give this one to my brother Sam. He engraved the wood cut,
showed me how to mix colors, and was helpful in figuring out a way to
print it in three colors.” Sam was the artist in our family. Stowell
said, “By-jingo, I’ll give ‘im $5 too. ‘Ow’s our supply of boxwood?” He
had another three-color print in mind.

At the time of this episode, I had only one helper — Stowell’s
sixteen-year-old daughter, Alice. Alex Hamel and John Kenoyer, part time
type-setters, were not working that week. Alice was that sort of girl
who would do pretty much as she pleased so long as her papa would
stay downstairs and attend strictly to his editorial, and his hardware
business.

This day Stowell stayed downstairs until the thing happened—then he
rushed from the editorial office on the first floor in front, eighty
feet back to the rear, then up the stairs to the second floor, and back
again eighty feet to the composing room. Alice, who knew her father
better than I did, whispered, “Oh, Lordy, he’s mad as a wet hen. Don’t
give me away, please!”

John wanted to know, “Oo was it that ‘ad offended little Miss ‘Utch?”
Neither of us had the answer. Coral Hutchison, a frequent and I may say
most welcome caller—preferably on any day but Thursday—and Alice had
put in a couple of hours visiting, as young girls will. And this was
Thursday afternoon, our press day. I asked Alice to speed up her work a
little so that we might make the deadline before six o’clock. It did no
good. I had to speak to Alice a second time, not harshly, however—and
Coral, apparently understanding the situation, left. But when she passed
the editorial office downstairs, Stowell said she was crying.

After John Stowell had gone downstairs that day, Alice said, “If he asks
you again—and I know he will—tell him what you told me about Coral
after she had been up here last week. That would tickle him, and he will
forget all about her tears.”

Well, John Stowell did ask me again. He really wanted to know. And I
told him, shielding Alice as much as I could. He said, “I understand.
You did right. Make ‘er pay attention to ‘er work. But I just didn’t
like to see a nice girl like little Miss ‘Utch leaving my place of
business, crying.”

I squared myself with John by saying—and meaning — that it would be a
grievously short-sighted thing for any young fellow to knowingly offend
“Little Miss ‘Utch. Besides being “some” girl, she would likely some day
be an heiress. But, then, even so, this fact was something less than
a comforting thought to one very fine young local merchant who fancied
himself well entrenched in her future matrimonial plans. When he began
talking about what they could accomplish with her papa’s wealth—she quit
him, cold.

“Little Miss ‘Utch” was the daughter of Charley Hutchison, but everybody
except Stowell called him “Hutch.” I knew Charley quite intimately for a
dozen years before I learned that his name was really Hutchison.

What I had told Alice about Coral that day is not in itself worth
repeating here. But it offers a chance to introduce an outstanding
success story—a success in the redemption of waning manhood, as well
as in a financial way. Also, this injection does not strictly belong
in this story — but, in line with my adopted hop, skip, and jump
reminiscing technique, I shall try to make it fit.

I told Alice that Coral was the only girl who had ever asked me to come
and see her sometime when her papa wasn’t around. And I might say she
was in deadly earnest about this. Her papa would not permit her
to entertain me in the manner she had in mind. It was not that he
disapproved of me. In fact, it was on his invitation that I was in the
presence of the girl at the moment. Also, her papa was at the time just
outside the hearing of the conspirators.

My brother Charley, Clifford Ashton, and I, were cutting sumac for my
father’s tanyard on the Hutchison land south of the big barn. Charley
Hutchison had followed his four-year-old daughter out to the barn that
day to prevent her from going through her stunt—the thing she wanted me
to witness. Charley saw us in the sumac patch, and came out, bringing
Coral with him. He said he had a big watermelon patch close to the barn,
and invited us to help ourselves to the melons—then, and thereafter
whenever working in the vicinity. He also said he had to watch Coral
closely — that whenever she would get the chance she’d climb up to the
beams in the big barn and jump off into the hay. Hay hands were bringing
in the harvest at that time — and of course the barn was opened up.

Bees were buzzing around broken melons in the patch, and the little
girl, apparently frightened of them, tried to hide her face against my
legs. Charley said that while they — the father, mother, and child—were
visiting his people in Ohio, after having attended the Centennial (1876)
in Philadelphia, Coral had sat down on a “live” beehive and got stung so
badly as to make her very sick; the swelling in her face almost closing
her eyes.

Charley Hutchison’s father was a wealthy brewer back in Ohio. Charley
acquired the drink habit. When his family thought they had him shut off
from the liquor supply, he would sneak into the storage cellar, bore a
hole in a whisky barrel, and suck the stuff out through a straw.

Charley was sent out here, in the hope of curing him of the drink habit.
He was given a section of land on Wolfley creek, three miles northwest
of Wetmore—and supplied with money to improve the land. I think he was
then left wholly on his own. I do not recall ever seeing any of his
people out here.

Charley Hutchison came here in 1870, and was about 21 years old—a
modest, likeable young man. He spent most of his first year here, in
town. He lived at the Hugh Fortner Hotel—and while rooming there, lost
$500, which he had placed under his pillow. There was no bank here then.

When Charley loafed downtown—which was much of the time that first
year—he made my father’s shoeshop his headquarters. The shop was on the
north side of the main street, opposite John Clifton’s saloon on the
south side. Charley was really trying to taper off in his drinking,
and seldom entered the saloon. He tried to avoid the amenities of the
drinking gentry. He would sometimes, when alone, take one drink, and
then come across to the shoeshop.

Though not a relative of ours, John Clifton was the step-son of my Uncle
Nick Bristow, and he often dropped in at the shoeshop. My mother worked
with my father in the shop. She asked John Clifton to not encourage
Charley in his drinking. Clifton said “Hutch” was really doing fine, and
that he would help the boy all that he could.

Then a girl came down from the prairie country in the neighborhood of
what is now Goff—”Pucker Brush” it was called then—to work in Peter
Shuemaker’s new hotel. Anna Mackey was a nice looking girl—too nice
looking, Charley said, to go out with the landlord’s “drunken” son. It
really worried Charley. He said one day, “I believe I’ll try to stop
it.” He did. He married Anna. And never again did he take a drink. My
mother and Clifton both took credit for helping him over the hump. But I
suspect it was the girl from the prairie country who had transformed him
short off into an abstainer.

Charley Hutchison was the only one of several whom I knew that were sent
out here from the east, when this country was new, for a like purpose,
that made good. There was no finer man than Charley Hutchison—a
conscientious, upright Christian gentleman. Compared to “Jersey”
Campbell, a New Jersey drinking boy, located on the best half section of
land south of Goff, Charley Hutchison’s performance was phenomenal.
But then, maybe there never was an “Anna” in Jersey’s life. Charley
Hutchison sold his land to Fred Shumaker, and moved to Wetmore in the
early eighties. He built the home now owned by Mrs. James Grubb.

Let me say here that Alice Stowell was an attentive little type-setter
when she worked for me after I had bought The Spectator—and that Coral
Hutchison still was a frequent and most welcome caller. Also, they had
learned that it was important that visitors be seen and not heard on
press days. Coral continued her visits to the office long after Alice
Stowell had married Marsh Younkman, and moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma—and
after Myrtle Mercer had taken Alice’s place in the printing office.
Coral seemed to like the smell of printer’s ink—and she continued her
regular visits long after she married Charley Locknane.

While still quite young, Coral Hutchison was the town’s top pianist and
singer, a distinction she held throughout the years against all comers.
She even competed favorably, in song, with the girls from the Colony,
whose reputation as singers was widespread. The younger generation of
Colonists were superb entertainers, anxious at all times to compete
against or team up with the young people from town, at their lyceums
held in the Wolfley school house. Wetmore had a “literary” society,
which gave entertainments, usually charging twenty-five cents
admission—while the Colonists always gave their shows for free.

Then, the time came when they combined in one big show, an epochal
achievement, at Wetmore—drawing two of the cast from the Colony. Ted
Fish was a specialty man, singing comical songs. His favorite rendition
had to do with the loan of a friend’s girl, the refrain running, “Hand
‘e wounted me to tike ‘is plice and do the best I cooud.” I’d heard him
sing it several times before at their lyceums. Coral Hutchison was also
a specialty singer—on a much higher and more pleasing musical plane,
however. John Stowell, long removed from the Colony, blacked his face,
rattled the bones—and played the concertina.

Bill Dutch, of the Colony, was leading man — and a mighty good one too.
Our own Miss Jane Thomas was leading lady—equally good. The play was
a “heavy” drama. I might say the whole cast except myself, was
exceptionally good. As to my own part, you shall be the judge. It was
not a speaking part. Months before this, I had blundered in a speaking
part on the stage—carelessly called a word what, by all the ethics
of decency, it should not have been called. It provoked uproarious
laughter—at my expense. And on a subsequent appearance upon the literary
stage I drew a concerted giggle before I even had time to open my mouth.
It completely unnerved me—for all time. I was so “befuddled” that I
couldn’t say a word, and I didn’t have the gumption to graciously bow
myself off the stage. I bolted off. And that’s how I became a writer.
It’s safest, anyhow.

When you blunder, you can always—if smart enough to detect it—scratch it
out. But spoken words, once said, can never be recalled.

The director, “Lord” Richard Bingham, was an Englishman — not related,
and unknown to the Colonists—who had dropped in here from, nobody knew
where, or why. He seemed to have a perpetual thirst for strong drink—and
the money with which to provide it. He was a remittance man — which is
to say he was a scion of a wealthy old country family, sent over here on
a monthly allowance, as riddance of a costly nuisance.

Director Bingham was apparently well educated, did not talk the
“Cockney” language of the Colonists — and had some dramatic ability. He
directed this home-talent show without pay—and did a pretty good job
of it. All he asked was a “little more McBriar,” his favorite brand
of whisky. And after he had “steamed up” on a generous quantity of the
nameless stuff from the local “speak-easy”—licensed saloons were out
here then—anything and everything was “good old McBriar.”

The show went over so well in Wetmore that the management decided to
repeat it at Capioma—and maybe go on the road with it. But, in the nick
of time, it was recalled that Henry Clinkenbeard, our photographer—or
rather our taker of daguerreotypes—had sponsored an all home-talent
minstrel show which also had gone over big here, but when tried out on
the road, proved a financial failure—and the road idea was written off.

All due to an outburst of alcoholic conviviality, Mr. Bingham saluted
Miss Jane on the takeoff for Capioma, assuring her that she would not
fail to “knock ‘em cold.” He did not go with the show. The management
willed that he remain in Wetmore where he could have ready access to
Charley McCarthy’s “blind-tiger” and enjoy to the full “a little more”
of his favorite “McBriar.”

The day of our Capioma appearance was cold. There was bright sunshine,
with a foot of snow on the ground. The whole cast—including Henry
Clinkenbeard and his brass band—went in several lumber wagons, arriving
in Capioma in time for supper at the Van Brunt farm home. I believe his
name was Jerry. Anyway, he was the father of Tunis and Teeny. The show
was held in the hall over the Van Pelt store, in town, diagonally across
the road west from the Van Brunt farm home.

I was taken along as assistant property man — and doubled in brass
(b-flat cornet)—but the cramped space for stage and dressing rooms in
the rather small Van Pelt hall developed a better spot for me. I was
made the custodian of the leading lady’s train—carried it in my two
hands just so from dressing room around sharp turns to the stage, and
paid out its many folds, at entrance, in a manner to avoid entanglement.

The twelve mile ride in open wagon, with bright sunshine bearing down on
the reflecting white snow, had done things to the girls’ faces. However,
the wise ones had fetched along cosmetics to make themselves presentable
— but our leading lady said she never had, and by the eternal bonds of
respectability, she never would use make-up. Although conceded to be the
privilege of stage-women, nice girls didn’t paint their faces in that
period. And although our Jane did eventually make Hollywood, I suspect
the day never came when she would use make-up.

Though a native of Wales, with maybe a dozen years in this country at
that time, Jane Thomas did not retain, markedly, the old country manner
of speech. She was endowed with a delightful little twist, all her
own—that is, something apart from that of other members of her family,
which was neither Welsh nor pure English. Jane was a pretty girl. Her
slight elegant body, draped in silk with something like six feet of the
train trailing in the wake as she moved majestically across the stage,
gave her a queenly quality. And she still looked lovely despite her
shiny nose. She was, or rather had been before his demise, my brother
Charley’s girl.

HAPPY DAZE Published in Wetmore Spectator and

Seneca Courier-Tribune — October 11, 1935

By John T. Bristow

In glancing over the current issue of The Courier-Tribune I notice that
the good citizens of Seneca are putting on a Biblical show this week.
That’s fine. Whenever I hear of home talent aspiring to portray those
ancient characters on the stage I become interested right away. It
recalls to mind the time when I myself was, briefly, in the cast of a
local entertainment of that sort held in the old school house here in
Wetmore many, many years ago.

It was a show the likes of which Wetmore had never had before, nor
since—a show that stands out in memory as the one classic of the times—a
show that rocked the whole countryside, rocked it with near volcanic
convulsions.

Considering the extraordinary performers and the conduct of an audience
which ran wild, this little review is not offered as something worthy
of emulation. Nor is it to be construed as criticism. Rather, it
is something to be contrasted with the newer interpretations and
renditions, something to be compared with present-day reactions as
against old-time unbridled responses.

As aforesaid, with other local talent—grownups, and some lesser lights,
including an injection of members of “that tanyard gang”—I was cast
for a minor part in that show. To give you the right slant on this last
mentioned group of my theatrical co-workers, I should say here that my
father operated a tannery in the old days, and “the gang” — frequenters
of the yard—included just about all the happy-go-lucky youth of
the town, vividly alive, and callow. Collectively, we made quite a
record—something short of enviable, it now pains me to relate.

It was my dear old Sunday School superintendent who had selected me for
one of her characters in this Biblical show. I had been marvelous—so
she said—in her Sunday School, committing and reciting as many as twenty
Bible verses on a Sunday morning, for which I would sometimes be given a
little up-lift card. She said that my good work in her Sunday School
was guarantee enough for her that I would handle the part assigned me
creditably. I would not need to attend rehearsals. All that I should do
was to have my good mother make for me a heterogeneous coat according
to specifications. She would instruct me at the last minute so that I
wouldn’t forget.

I was to take the part of Joseph—Joseph, the boy. And, although a
bit irregular, and I might say diabolically devised, to save the
stage-carpenter the trouble of making a pit to cast me into, one of my
Hebrew brothers—I think it would have been Judah, who, off stage, was
a big Swede — was to have batted me on the “bean” so that I couldn’t
protest when he and my other naughty brothers would sell me to the
Egyptians, and thus banish me to the Land of Bondage. I wouldn’t need to
rehearse? Oh, no, of course not! And as it turned out I didn’t perform,
either.

The show was going strong. The audience applauded and yelled itself
hoarse. After a particularly exciting scene, Rolland Van Amburg, the
town clown, jumped up from his seat and yelled, “It’s the best thing
Wetmore ever had—I’ve had my money’s worth already! Come and get another
quarter!” Van was ably assisted in this demonstration by one William
Morris, leading merchant.

The sponsoring lady was in high glee—happy daze. She said to her
puppets, “It’s taking! Oh, dear children, we must give them this one
again!” She flitted about from one to another, saying, “Oh, girls,
please do hurry!”

The scene which had so excited Van was a tableau draped in naught but
thin mosquito bar and set off by the best soft mellowing light effect
that could be had with the oil-burning lamps, depicting some
Biblical event with strictly private and as time goes quite modern
interpretations. Embroidered beyond the original concept, it exhibited
in silhouette some of Wetmore’s fairest damsels—some who will read
this and blush—in an amazing state of dishabille. I should like to—and
probably will—hear from Montana and Idaho, and even faraway Hollywood,
on this statement.

A wag in the audience who was not man enough to show himself, like Van,
yelled, “Take down the bars!” The audience roared! The sponsoring lady
beamed! Things got to going so good for the director that she began
pulling surprises on the performers. Wholly without warning, she ordered
Clifford Ashton to take off his shirt. That young Englishman, ever
obliging and obedient, had about completed the job when Dr. Thomas
Milam cried out in his most dramatic voice, “Put that shirt back on, you
idiot!”


The woman, who was my Sunday School superintendent, overhearing the
Doctor’s remark, forthwith gave another curt command: “Off with that
shirt, Clifford—off with that shirt!” The voice carried, full and
resonant, through the calico partitions to the rear of the auditorium.
That command became a phrase which was hurled at Clifford as long as he
lived here. He is now in Seattle, Washington.

As already stated, I was to have taken the part of Joseph. I had a sort
of vague idea that my beautiful coat of variegated hues was to have been
torn from my person by my brothers to show to my old man as evidence of
a lie they were going to tell him. And not knowing what turn of mind the
now deliriously happy director would take next, I beat it—went outside
and thought I would see the show through the green shutters which
covered the old school house windows.

Outside, I found that other deserters had preceded me. Bill McVay, a
grown young man, bewhiskered for the occasion, with a flowing white
beard the likes of which has seldom been seen on this earth since the
days of Moses, said, in his drawling voice, “I could drink all the
whisky the old town’s got and it wouldn’t faze me—but that thing has
bumped me off my feet. She’ll have to get someone else to take my part.”

Actually, I was afraid to remain in the cast, fearing, the way things
were happening, fast and furious like, that I might be persuaded against
my will to appear before that hilariously responsive audience with
greatly reduced apparel. I really was in a dangerous spot. The plot
called for partial forced disrobement. Knowing the hyenas who posed as
my brothers, and knowing also that those brothers had caught the spirit
of the producer in a large way, I had the feeling that when they would
have finished with me, working in that free atmosphere, that it would
have been sans pants for little Johnny.


It should be borne in mind that the director of this very extraordinary
show was an extremely odd woman, very religious, and sincere—and, having
ideas of her own, she had the courage to mirror them bounteously in her
work.

The show was all right, of course. Biblical, and all that. And, viewed
with an eye for the beautiful, it was all that Van said it was.
But coming as it did in an age of many clothes for women, it was a
revelation.

ODD CHARACTERS — COLORFUL, PICTURESQUE Not Hitherto Published—1947.

By John T. Bristow

The discussion of odd characters was going strong when I entered the
corner grocery store one evening. I did not join in the discussion for
the simple reason that the range of observations did not go far enough
back to take in the really odd ones—as I knew them. Had I told what I’m
going to tell now, without supporting evidence it would, perhaps, have
branded me as a prevaricator, and I wouldn’t have liked that. But I’m
taking no chances now. Supporting evidence is at hand.

Speaking of odd characters, Wetmore had ‘em in the old days—in numbers.
In truth, this assertion takes in just about everyone, except of course
Thee and Me—that is, if Thee are still living. The odd characters
dominating this story were Mr. O. Bates, Mr. Peter Shuemaker, and Mr.
Jim Riley.

But first, an opening paragraph introducing a fourth character that
shall be nameless—that is, in spelled out letters. I think I shall call
my man Mr. June, and guarantee that I have not missed his real name
more than thirty days. Also, he had a brother in the business, and the
firm-name was June Bros.—only this is one month away from it, in the
springtime.

Mr. June came into my printing office to arrange for some
advertising—and also to get a load of fire insurance. I wrote fire
insurance on the side. He was bringing a stock of clothing from his
store in Atchison, and putting it in the Bates grocery store below the
printing office, in the Bleisener block.

Mr. June inquired of me about our fire fighting facilities, and as to
whether or not we had waterworks. When I told him we had no waterworks
and practically no fire protection, he almost let his portly Jewish
self fall off the chair. He promised, “The first thing you should have
waterworks when I come.”

I told Mr. June that he was moving in with a man who had the agency for
a sure-shot fire fighting hand grenade. This seemed to hit him a little
off guard—but he rallied, and said he would investigate. It is presumed
that his investigation was satisfactory. He moved in right away. Also,
he might have heard about Mr. O. Bates’ ineffective demonstration with
his hand grenades. They had “fizzled” on him a while back.

The clothing stock had been in the building only about sixty days when a
mysterious fire occurred at 11:45, in the night—old time. It started
in the oil room under the stairs leading up to my office. I was working
late that night, with a shaded coal oil lamp on my desk. When I looked
away from my work, I was startled by a solid wall of smoke which had
come up through a stovepipe hole in the rear end of the room and stood
only a few feet away from my desk. Alex Hamel had been working with me,
but he had left the office some time before that. Also, Myrtle Mercer
had been working that night, and I had gone out to take her home—leaving
the office in total darkness while I was away.

Alex Hamel and Bill McAlester, a barber, were first to show up after
I had rushed out and yelled “Fire!” It was not long before a crowd had
assembled. Some gave their attention to the fire in the building, while
others rushed up stairs to my office, against my protest. There was no
fire in the printing office. “Chuck” Cawood dashed a bucket of water on
my shaded coal-oil lamp, and rushed out of the room, yelling, “I put it
out—I’ve put it out!” Chuck’s water had also ruined an order of printed
stationery ready for delivery. Others milled about in the dark and
“pied” several galleys of type we had set for the paper which was to
come out the next day. The clothing stock was carried to the street—and
the fire was put out before it had done much damage. Since there were
two occupants of the store room, no one could say with certainty whose
fire it might have been.

The Jew’s insurance was canceled in due course. He said, “If I don’t
got insurance, I’ll not stay in a town which don’t got waterworks.” I
reminded him that he still had Mr. O. Bates, with his hand grenades. It
was but a short while before this that Mr. O. Bates had acquired the
agency for his hand grenades. He planned a demonstration in the public
square, by making a pyramid of wooden boxes, about ten feet high, early
in the afternoon as a sort of advertisement for the event to take
place after dark. This advertising stunt brought him humiliating
repercussions.

The square was filled with people. Mr. O. Bates, a gabby auctioneer who
really knew how to make a spiel, gave them a good one. He said, “Ladies
and gentlemen. I have here the greatest fire extinguisher ever devised!
But you don’t have to take my word for this! You shall see with your own
eyes! Why, my friends, I wouldn’t hesitate one moment about building my
bonfire right up against my own home.”

Then he backed off a few paces from the burning boxes and threw a
grenade at the fire—but it failed to connect with the solid bumpboard,
which had been placed in the center to break the glass bottles, and
passed through the mass as a dud. He then tried again, hitting the
bumpboard, but instead of quenching the fire, it made a decided spurt
upwards. Then, with a huge grunt, Bates, threw them in as fast as he
could, resulting in further spurts of blaze upward — up, up, and up!

It was then boos for Mr. O. Bates. He was a sadly confused man, numb
with bewilderment. He stammered, “I’ll fetch a man here who’ll show
you that they will do the trick.” At a lesser publicized exhibition,
Bates—and his man—had extinguished the fire quickly. Rumor had it that
“Frosty” and “Cooney” had emptied the chemicals out of his grenades, and
had filled them with coal oil.

Mr. O. Bates had unbounded faith in his grenades. He actually wanted
to build his bonfire almost smack-up against the frame hotel building
on the corner where Harry Cawood’s store is now. But “Uncle” Peter
Shuemaker wouldn’t stand for that. “Uncle” Peter was a wiry little man
of Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry—much set in his ways, with a quick tongue
with which to defend himself. He was always on the defense.

“Frosty” Shuemaker had said, with reason, “Granddad, don’t you let that
old windjammer light his fire near the hotel. You don’t know what might
happen,” and “Uncle” Peter had snapped, “Goway, Forrest—who’s asking you
for advice?” But, I think, “Uncle” Peter had “smelled a mouse.”

Mr. O. Bates — pompous, windy, and positive — told “Uncle” Peter that
the proposed demonstration would do his hotel no more harm than for him
to allow Jim Riley to ride his horse in and out of the hotel office—an
occurrence that still rankled. “Uncle” Peter flew off the handle, so to
speak, and spluttered, “It’s no-sicha-na-thing! I never permitted that
lousy drunken pie-stealing galoot to ride into my hotel! And just
who would pay me for my hotel if it should burn down? By-GODDIES, you
couldn’t do it—Mr. Bates!”

Since I have quoted Peter Shuemaker detrimental to the character of
one Jim Riley, I shall now explain. Never like to leave any of the old
fellows out on a limb. Then, too, there is still another reason for this
elaboration. It is to keep the record straight. Some, I now learn, are
inclined to question if I have quoted “Uncle” Peter verbatim. That I
have you may be sure. I make no inventions. You can always bank on that.
Why, I ask, should I want to feed you figments of fiction, when memory
is stocked with so much of the real thing—spoken words by the old
fellows, a thousand times better than anything an antiquated mind could
conjure up now? And then there is always the little matter of accuracy
to be considered. “No-sicha-na-thing” and “by-goddies” were his exact
utterances.

Not to be confused with the Soldier creek Jim Reilly, who built a house
in town on the site where E. W. Thornburrow’s home is now, this Irishman
owned land up in the Capioma neighborhood—a half section north of the
Patrick Hand land. Jim Riley was a substantial farmer and cattleman. He
was not married. Jim bached on the farm—but spent much of his spare time
in Wetmore, always pretty close to the dram shops. He was a periodical
hard drinker. And a prankster of the first order.

But as time went on—and as he prospered—Jim decided that he could change
the baching situation for the better if his sister, whom he had left in
Ireland years before, were here to keep house for him. He made the trip
back to Ireland, but when he got there he learned that his sister was
married and lived in California. He then made a hurried trip to the west
coast—and in due time the sister, with her husband and several little
Ketchums, became members of the Jim Riley household on the farm here.
And through the hand of Fate title to the Riley lands later passed to
the Ketchums.

As Bates had said, Jim Riley did ride his horse into Shuemaker’s hotel.
And as “Uncle” Peter had spluttered, Jim did swipe his pies—baked for a
big dance supper. Riley carted them out on the street in a wheelbarrow,
and passed them out to anyone who would take them. But he paid. Jim
always paid. His reputation for doing that was well established. Like
the time when someone went into Rising’s general store and said Jim
Riley was out in front smashing up a consignment of crockery that had
just been unloaded on the high front porch, giving a war-whoop every
time as the crocks he was throwing crashed in the street, Don Rising
said, “Let him have his fun. He’ll pay.”

Also, Jim Riley did deliberately back his wagon up to the post
supporting Shuemaker’s prized birdhouse, hurriedly threw a logchain
around the post—and drove off, giving one of his famous war-whoops.
“Jim’s on another bender,” the oldtimers said—but I knew he was just
plain drunk.

Jim Riley dearly loved to torment Peter Shuemaker. And he liked to play
hide-and-seek with the town marshal. But most of all, Jim loved his
drink. And it was while burdened with a mixture of the two that he met
his death — in 1887. While making a hurried getaway from the marshal his
team of mules, under lash, turned a street corner too quickly, threw Jim
out his spring-wagon—and broke his neck.

And that bird-house—it was a three-decker, about a yard square, with
entrances on all four sides, perched on top of a 10-foot post out in
front of the hotel. Here the martins of that day nested and multiplied
in such numbers as to greatly overcrowd their living quarters. In the
late summer months the new broods would have to take to the roof.

Jim’s log chain, applied at the height of the nesting season, broke up
all too many bird-nests to suit “Uncle” Peter—and it just about caused
his to lose his religion. “Uncle” Peter took his newly-found religion
seriously enough, but when suddenly angered he was a mite
forgetful. Lapsing back into pre-conversion times, his overworked
byword—by-goddies—was shortened up a bit, and with it went a blast of
other sulphurous words telling the world what he meant to do to that
scoundrel when and if he could ever lay hands on him.

Peter Shuemaker was practically the sole support of the Baptist Church
here for a time, in the old days. The Church membership was poor, and
there came a lean time when the members wanted to close up shop—but
“Uncle” Peter said no, “By-goddies,” he’d pay the preacher himself.

Having lost his wife, Shuemaker, in his late eighties, and always a bit
on the contrary side, was now, with descendents in his home, a little
hard to get along with. But he hit it off fine with his preacher. Then,
one Sunday morning, when a beautiful camaraderie between preacher and
parishioner was running high, the Reverend announced something special,
a surprise, for the evening services. That surprise proved to be “Uncle”
Peter going shakily down the aisle, altarward, with a feeble old woman,
an octogenarian from God only knew where, clinging to his arm. She was
an “importation.” Thus, one perceives, that in casting his bread upon
the waters it had indeed been returned to “Uncle” Peter manifold. And
for his descendents, who were keeping a watchful eye on his modest
savings, it was as a devastating bombshell topping a most disturbing
surprise. Son-in-law Don Rising “swore” the old gentleman had been “sold
down the river.”

The marriage did not endure.

But, at that, “Uncle” Peter fared better, spiritually, “than did the
preacher who showed him the way. The Reverend George Graham, evangelist,
had pitched his gospel tent on the triangular spot of vacant ground
across the street east of the Catholic Church in Wetmore back in the
middle 80’s. With him was a buxom woman, with rosy cheeks — who sang
quite well. And what with her good singing and George’s impassioned
pleas for repentance they garnered a good harvest—very good, indeed.

The Reverend Graham invoked, with the wrath of Jehovah of old, all the
terrors of hell upon unbelievers. Together, they slew the sinners. Even
some quite good people were swayed into the belief that they ought to
make amends and strive to measure up to the high plane of this super
exhorter—and thus make sure of following through to the Great Beyond.
There were among them converts with Methodist leanings, and converts
with Baptist leanings — even one young lady was possessed of the gift
of tongues. When it was all over here, the converts went their several
ways, as the preacher had advised—or rather they began to map a course
by which they might make the takeoff for the long journey. Then, with
the second stand away from here — somewhere down around Lawrence — the
preacher and the lady were publicly exposed for unholy conduct.

And yea, verily, the Reverend had a family somewhere abroad in the land.

Repercussions hit hard back here. The one great wrong done our converts
was, as you might expect, heaped upon them by the unbelievers who had
been consigned to the everlasting fire of brimstone by the now fallen
preacher. As is usual with emotionally recruited converts there was some
immediate backsliding, or cooling off, but when “twitted”—that’s what
they called it then—by the ungodly, the stampede back to normal got
under way and was, in the days that followed, made complete—save one.
“Uncle” Peter was seemingly the only one of the many who could bring
himself to believe that religion was religion—something pure, and worth
keeping, even though it had been delivered to him through the channels
of a dirty carrier.

There is an old saying that “one should give the devil his due.” I’m
sure that, regardless, the magnetic George did a power of good in
his revivals here. While, it is true, his converts did not choose to
“join-up” after the crash, until the backwash of that scandal had become
tempered by time, they did, however, accept the opportunity to come
into the fold under another standard bearer. And, unfortunately for
the Baptists, the Methodists were first to hold a revival—and reap the
harvest. And the girl who was “called” upon to babble in tongues, gave
up the pursuit when it was evident that she was fooling no one but
herself.

At the time of the exposure, I was temporarily working for Bill Granger
on his Centralia Journal, and boarding at the old McCubbin House, down
by the tracks. Ed Murray — later, Mo. Pacific agent in Wetmore for
many years—was clerk at the hotel. Professor Roberts, principal of the
Centralia Public Schools, was the third person present when the Evening
Daily newspaper was brought in. After reading the exposure article,
I passed the paper to Mr. Roberts, with comment that I had attended
Graham’s revival meetings in Wetmore. Mr. Murray had his say about
preachers in general, and about one Reverend Locke in particular—of the
latter, quite complimentary, however.

As he read, Mr. Roberts said, “Say—you, a newspaperman—here’s something
you ought to commit, for future use.” For future use? He meant, let us
hope, only as a model for phrase building to be used on occasion. That
Mr. Roberts, he was a mighty clever young man—quite young, then. It was
a long time ago, sixty-one years to be exact — but I still remember.

The newspaper report was vague as to the exact nature of the preacher’s
misstep, and I shall not attempt to state it here lest I might do
someone an injustice. So, then, let’s let George do it. The paper
quoted him, thus:

“I have the consolation, small though it be, of knowing that though my
bark goes down amid the turbid waters of Illicit love the shores of Time
are marked with many such wrecks.”

Prettily phrased. But no further comment.

NOTE — This is okayed, “No-sicha-na-thing.” “By-Goddies,” and all, by
Hettie Shuemaker-Kroulik, (70), granddaughter; and by Peter Cassity,
(80), grandson. And they go further, saying: The $1,000 he paid to rid
himself of the woman, plus what it had cost him to get her (preacher’s
reward) just about cleaned “Uncle” Peter. And Cassity says the pies
swiped by Riley numbered exactly forty. Jim paid double, as always—and
liked it.

And now wouldn’t it be nice if I could say here that Cassity was one of
those converts? I’d say it, anyway—if I weren’t afraid Peter would tell
on me.

MY BEST INVESTMENT Not Hitherto Published — 1947

By John T. Bristow

Girls — Girls — Girls

After mulling the old thing over, I know now that the boy who sat with
me in the reserved section at Evangelist George Graham’s meetings, as
intimated in the foregoing article, was not Peter Cassity. It was his
brother Bill. Pete tells me that he was farming at the time over on
Wolfley creek and did not attend the meetings regular—but don’t ever
think Pete did not remember his raising, when he did get in.

Bill Cassity had the nerve and the Biblical knowledge to stand up in a
big way for his Maker. That boy had an almost irresistible line, and it
was, at times, questionable whether the minister, or the converts—with
Bill well out in the lead — were doing most in the matter of gathering
in the prospects.

When my uncle, the Rev. Thomas S. Cullom, minister of a Methodist Church
in Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife Irene, and two daughters,
Lora and Clevie, paid a visit to their Wetmore relatives in 1908, the
Reverend told me that in his Church, and throughout the south, it
was customary during revivals to have “exhorters” stationed in the
congregation to give supplementary support to the minister’s pleas for
the redemption of lukewarm and tottering souls.

I asked him if his exhorters ever broke in on his impassioned pleas in
a discordant manner—that is, a little off key? “Cert’nly,” he said,
with fine southern accent. “My exhorters are very devout workers for the
Lord, and sometimes when filled to overflowing with the Holy Ghost, they
say their lines and then keep right on exhorting and sometimes steal
the whole show.” This ungodly reference to his Church as a show was made
with a wink and a grin.

And so, with the old time revivals here, the minister’s exhorters, under
another name of course, sometimes ran away with the show. This brings us
back to Bill Cassity, first born of Newton and Anne Shuemaker-Cassity.
Bill did just that on at least two occasions in the Evangelist’s revival
here. He had the Christian training to do it courageously.

While still a young man, Bill Cassity went to Colorado, worked in the
mines and smelters, at high wages, and ordered the Spectator sent to him
there — and later to Los Angeles. Bill came home once, told me he liked
his work in Colorado, or rather the big wages—but he did not like the
characters he had to associate with. In California, still on the
right side of the laws of God and man, Bill pushed his penchant for
righteousness a little too far for his own good. As a detective,
self-appointed or otherwise, he learned much of the ways of the Los
Angeles underworld—and, it was said, the boys took him for a ride and
failed to bring him back.

And again, some twenty-odd years ago, Than Gustafson, a former Wetmore
man, older brother of our Fred Gustafson — and in a legal way Fred’s
brother was also his brother-in-law, the two Gustafson boys having
married sisters, Adelia and Ophelia, daughters of S. M. Hawkins—is
supposed to have been taken for a one-way ride by the Rocky Mountain
crooks. He left his home in Denver, a wife and two children, one evening
in line of his duties — and was never heard of again. Than Gustafson
evidently knew too much for his own good.

When in gangdom, it is wise to be dumb.

Under the old system, in revivals, the first converts either appointed
themselves or were delegated to work among the congregation as boosters
for the minister—something like Uncle Tom’s “exhorters.” They would
go out in the audience, usually in pairs, and plead with you, cry, and
sniffle over you—an actual fact—in a manner that would - make you
feel mighty cheap. The boy who respected them, loved them through long
associations, was struck dumb.

One particularly sanctified woman—no one could ever doubt her sincerity;
I had known her for years, and she was always so—with redoubled
sniffling tendencies as of the moment, accompanied by the prettiest girl
that ever walked down a church aisle or any other avenue in Wetmore, a
girl whom I had just about given up as lost to a certain rich man’s
son, on account of her papa’s preference for the other boy, and because
“papa” said I played poker, made a firm stand in front of me one night.
I knew before the old girl began to sniffle that, on account of the
young girl, I would, sooner or later, find myself in a front row. More
than one boy went forward in that meeting because he did not have the
heart to disappoint them—and maybe there was also the attraction of a
girl. Girls were more susceptible to the worker’s pleas.

The older woman talked rapidly, between sniffles, in terms only partly
understood by me—but the girl’s radiant smile told me much. I would not
permit them to march me up to the front, as other workers were doing
with prospects, but I promised to sit with the young girl in the
reserved corner on the following night—and see what would happen.

I hope the good people will pardon me for mixing my worldly activities
with the more decent church sittings — but this seems the opportune time
for me to ‘fess up. In this story I mean to come clean—tell everything,
and have as little of the old hero stuff in it as is consistent with the
making of a good story.

I had been to church—Methodist protracted meeting — and then dropped in
on the boys in the DeForest store at the virtual close of a little poker
game. Even now I hate to think what Henry DeForest would have done to
us had he known his dry goods counter was serving as a poker table. One
man, Willard Lynch, dropped out while the deal was in progress, and said
I might play his hand.

This was to be my first poker game. Also, it should have been my
last—but it wasn’t. Not that it ever became an obsession with me. But,
in general, it is not an elevating attainment—and it is something which
any self-respecting young man can very well do without. It was, however,
my last game in Mr. Henry’s store. I wanted to retain, at all costs, his
respectful opinion of me. And the other boys finally saw the error of
their ways — and changed their meeting place. On the cleaner side, I
will say that I never learned to shoot craps, never bet on elections,
ball games, or the horses; never drank or caroused, wouldn’t feel “at
“home” at the popular cocktail party; was never in court as complainant
or defendant—and was only once in my whole life in court as a witness,
at which time, had I told the Whole Truth as I was sworn to do, I could
have been jailed for my ignorance. I was an untutored member of the
Kansas Grain Dealers Association, which was under investigation. Also, I
want to say in the outset that this poker stigma was not the thing
which had lowered me in the opinion of “Papa.” It was the more powerful
evil—money—of which I had none. But there was one bright spot in the
clouded picture. The rich man’s son looked a lot better to “Papa” than
he did to the girl.

Well, in this, my first poker game, I picked up four natural aces, and
if you know only as much as I knew then, you would consider it a top
hand. No one had told me they were playing the joker wild, “cut and
slash.” I bet a nickel. Alfred Anderson called, and raised me a dime.
Two of the other boys called Alfred’s fifteen-cent bet—and the dealer,
Sidney Loop, (clerk in the store), dropped out of the play. I thought my
four aces were good for ten cents more, and not possessing a loose dime,
I dug up a five-dollar bill. Alfred was up on his toes, and said, “You
aiming to bet all that?” I replied, “No—only aiming to call your
dime raise.” Still upon his toes, a little higher now, he said rather
anxiously, “If you want to bet it all, I’ll call it—you can’t bluff me.”
I took one more look at my hand—and not one of the aces had gotten away.
And then I said, “All right, I’ll just bet it all.”

Now, if you know the game, you are maybe expecting to hear that he had
a set of fives, including the joker of course. But it was not Alfred who
held them. His four kings were not good. It was the dealer, the man who
had dropped out because I had dropped in, who had five fives.

But this I did not know until two days later, not until after I had gone
to church again and contributed $5.00 to Mrs. Draper’s fund for buying
Christmas candies for her Sunday School kiddies. Alfred’s sister Phoeba,
as personal representative of our dear old Sunday School Superintendent,
took my contribution with gracious acknowledgment, as though it were
not tainted money. And Mrs. Draper—the less chivalrous boys called
her “Mother Corkscrew” because she wore her gray hair in ringlets at
shoulder length—came to me on the double quick, shrieking her praise of
me, and intimated that this generous gift might get me places.

Alfred said that inasmuch as he surmised he had been cold-decked out of
the five—thankfully with no aspersion attachment—that I should have at
least given the donation in both our names. But that would have been
risky. Alfred was a rather white “black sheep” in a very religious
family, and Sis would most likely have wanted to know how come? The fact
that Sidney and Willard were keeping company with sisters at that time
may have had nothing to do with the introduction of that cold deck. And
then again it might have. Sidney said the fellow needed “taking down” a
bit — and that it was planned to give the losers back their money. A fat
chance they would have of getting their money back now.

Until now I had only stood, by and watched a penny-ante game in the new
opera house over the Morris store, where the clerks — Dave Clements,
Bill McKibbon, George and Chuck Cawood, Bob Graham—and some younger fry,
congregated on Sundays. And then, too, as a kid, I had been present on
several occasions at a somewhat bigger game in the Neville residence on
this same corner. But here I did not have a chance to closely observe
the technique of the game—for I was under the table most of the time.
The men played altogether then with “shinplaster” money — undersized
ten, twenty-five, and fifty cent pieces of U. S. paper currency, and the
breeze caused from shuffling the cards would sometimes blow the money
off the table. Mr. Jim Neville said I might keep all I could get my
hands on — and I think it was a sort of house rule that the players were
not to contend roughly with me for the fluttering pieces. Still I think
I got more kicks than the law allowed.

Also, I once saw the women playing poker in this same home—and they were
using “shinplaster” too—but they were not generous enough to invite me
to go down under. I do not wish to name them. Nor would I have mentioned
the boys’ names but for the fact all of them have now gone to their
reward. And, besides, despite the undercurrent that it was not
considered strictly genteel, everybody, more or less, played poker
then—even, it was said, Father Bagley, our first High Priest, would take
a hand occasionally. There was a regular fellow. For him it was Mass
of a Sunday morning, then base ball or horse-racing in the afternoon,
without fail.

With this slow and awkward beginning it was a long, long time before I
got nerve enough to sit in a private poker game as guest of a friend, in
Kansas City, with a player who afterwards became President of the United
States. He did not impress me as likely timber then. But, may I say,
that when once in the running, he showed ‘em that he was truly from
Missouri—and that, surprisingly, he could, in a pinch, run like a scared
rabbit. Politics was his forte.

In explanation of the Girl-Papa-Richboy incident: I had sent a boy with
a note asking the girl for her company for a dance, a private dance to
be given by our select crowd, of which she was a favorite. The boy came
back without a written reply—but he said she told him to tell me that
she would go with me. This being rather unusual, I asked the -boy if
that was all she said? “Well,” he said, “her mother said, ‘Now, girlie,
you know what your father will say’ — and the girl said, ‘I don’t care,
I’m going with him anyway’.” I had not known about the rich man’s son
trying to edge in, and this indicated slap by her papa was a grievous
blow to my ego.

I sent the girl another note, telling her in simple words—I always made
‘em simple now since having once, to no avail, slopped over ridiculously
— that I had wormed out of the boy the remarks between mother and
daughter, and that in consequence thereof I deemed it wise for me to
cancel the date, until I could find out what it was all about. I may say
I never sent but one formally phrased note to a girl in all my life—and
that got me exactly nothing. That literary boy, Ecky Hamel, dictated
it for me, and to make matters worse, it was to his girl. And he
really wanted it to click—to ward off, in his absence, some dangerous
competition.

However, I once got a neatly written acceptance to an ultra-formal and
gorgeously phrased note bearing my name, which I didn’t write. I was a
new boy in Seneca at the time. I met a lot of girls at the skating rink
in the old Armory building on upper Main Street. Ena Burbery, pretty
and agreeably alert, was good on roller skates. Ena and four other girls
worked as trimmers in the millinery department of the Cohen store. Ena
talked. And the girls, all but one, joined in mailing her a note bearing
my forged signature requesting her company for a swank party three days
hence. Ella Murphy, one of the five, boarded and roomed at the Theodore
Wolfley home, same as I did while working on Wolfley’s newspaper, The
Tribune. Ella said the note was formal and softly silly, and so did Ena
say it was awful — but, she giggled, “I was not going to let that spoil
a date, especially for a party like that.” Now, the ridiculous part of
it all is, that it was an exclusive party to be given by Seneca’s upper
crust, to which I had no invitation. But, even so, it gave me elevated
status for a little while, in a limited way. We compromised on the rink.
And the girls, whom I never did meet, sent me an apology, through Ella
Murphy, for recklessly abusing my name—and getting the girl a date. Ena
was the section foreman’s daughter, but that was no handicap. I myself
married a section foreman’s daughter, picked her for a winner from a
sizable field of promising prospects.

Naturally, I wanted to know more about the status of the rich man’s
son—and I got it too, back at the gospel tent the next night. The girl
said nothing at all about my poker-playing proclivities. She was too
sensible to try to reform a boy. Her idea was to pick ‘em as suited her
fancy—and trust to luck. Indeed, she said in rebuttal of her father’s
expressed opinion of me, that if her mamma only could have kept her
mouth shut everything would have been all right, and that I would have
never known. “And besides,” she said, “You don’t drink, and papa does—a
little; and you don’t smoke, and papa does, though he does not smoke
cigarettes.” A cigarette smoker in those days was considered cheap. How
times have changed. The girl had overlooked one of “Papa’s” weaknesses,
but for me to have mentioned it to her then would have got me nothing
that I was not now likely to get anyway.

This exchange of ideas took place in the reserved corner of the arena in
advance of the regular session while other congregated young people were
likely thinking of an afar off haven having streets paved with jasper
and gold. Something about streets and jasper and gold ran in the lines
of the old song books. Also, I dare say, some of the converts might have
cringed a little at the thought of an everlasting fire of brimstone—this
idea emanating from George, the Evangelist—which the wayward and
lukewarm alike might, if they didn’t watch out, fall into in a
last-minute rush for that afar off haven.

Every evening during his meetings Reverend Graham would institute a
two-minute session of silent prayer. In - view of George’s admitted
downfall at a later stand, I trust it will not now be considered
sacrilegious for me to hazard an opinion that those silent periods
offered the preacher an excellent opportunity to pray for grace.

It was not required by custom then for those seeking salvation to come
clear down to earth, and some merely bowed their heads, rested them on
the backs of deserted chairs, and whispered when so inclined. The girl
and I, we did not desecrate the hallowed moment. We didn’t have to.
Silence was golden. I was conceited enough just then to believe that
this beautiful girl, thoroughly repentant or no, would have gone through
George’s pictured purgatory for me.

And nothing happened that could be chalked up as material gain for the
better life. Well, I ask you, how in the name of high heaven, could it?
I’m not particularly proud of it, though. But, you know, if your chariot
does not come along, you can’t take a ride. I certainly do not wish
to cast reflection on the Church. The Church, as a Church, is really a
grand institution. I should hate to think where we would be in a world
without it. Henry DeForest, Yale graduate, said the tent doings was
proselytizing.

Perhaps you would like to know how I fared in the days to come with this
renewed lease on life which the Evangelist’s revival had brought me?
Well, “Papa” shelved his dislike of my poker-playing, and both he and
“mama” greeted me as a friend ever after. They were really fine people—I
might say the very BEST, with capitals.

“Papa” had played a little poker himself—and that too, by-gosh, in
our penny-ante game—and his wish for a switch in the matter of his
daughter’s company was based on too slim premise to set store by, now
that the girl had told him with flat-footed finality that it would not
work.

And the girl? Well, I had to go away, first to Centralia, then to Seneca
to help Theodore Wolfley print his newly purchased Tribune, and I turned
her over to my best poker-playing friend to keep for me against the time
when I might return.

Now, to do me this small favor my friend had to drop another girl with
whom he had been keeping company steadily for two years. He probably
saw possibilities in the change, but he was really too fine—and too ably
assisted by the girl—to take advantage of a friend’s absence.

As my trusted friend and my girl in escrow were already lined up for the
party that first night after my return, it was mutually agreed that—just
for once—I should line up with my friend’s discarded girl, who was still
free. It worked out all right—and it was wonderful to be back with the
old crowd again.

Now, don’t jump at conclusions. Though she was a mighty fine girl, and
good looking too, I did not find her preferable to the other girl. Just
why I made it a regular habit for nearly a year, was quite a different
matter.

We all belonged to an exclusive clique known as The Silver Stockings.
Why so named I never learned. One unalterable requirement for the men
was that each had to bring a girl—or a wife. No “stags” were permitted
at our parties. This was because a certain unwanted young man had the
disturbing habit of sneaking in at public gatherings and monopolizing
our girls.

The thoughtful young man of that period did not think of marriage the
first time he went out with a girl. In our community none but the rich
man’s four sons were financially (in prospect) able to indulge in such
dreams. And, besides, by this time I had had a change of heart—resolved
to consider the future of the girl. After all “Papa” might have had the
right idea. I figured that an attractive girl like she, would not be
justified in playing along with me until I could make my stake.

And again, were I to pursue my chances—which at this time were, I
flattered myself, in a high bracket—who could say with certainty that
“Papa” would not someday become afflicted with a recurrent attack of
that silly notion the first time that the favored son, or maybe another
of the RM’s sons might strut his stuff in the presence of the girl.
Then, too, something fine—alas, something very fine, was now gone out of
the picture that could never be returned. I reluctantly decided to let
matters drift along as temporarily planned the first night back home—and
see what would happen. It was my hardest decision.

I had seen too many people trying to make a stake and raise a family
at the same time. My father made more money than most—but with ten
children, it was slavery for him. He worked sixteen hours a day at his
trade as shoemaker—and even then he had to skimp, and work and skimp.
But he took a philosophical view of matters, and on the whole his was
a rather contented life. One time when he was complaining about the
difficulty of getting ahead, I suggested that maybe he had erred in
first taking on the responsibility of raising a big family.

He said, “Well, they kept coming and I couldn’t knock ‘em in the head.”

I said, “They didn’t start coming until after you were married—”

He yelped, as if something had stung him, “Of course not, you young
upstart!” That was a time when he would have been justified in applying
the kneestrap, his ever ready implement of correction, to my posterior.
But my father was a forbearing man.

I said, “Gosh, Dad—I only meant to say if you had waited until after you
had made your stake, you would not now be bothered with this burdensome
load.”

He said, quickly, “If I had waited longer where do you think you’d be
now, young man?”

Well, that was something to think about. It might have upset the whole
continuity. I think we older boys reminded him too often of the excess
baggage he was struggling along with—only, however, when he would begin
his lamenting, usually about the high tariff.

I can think of nothing more disturbing than to be caught short-handed
(otherwise broke) in a community marked by a dearth of opportunity to
earn a living—-With dependents to care for. Such was our country in the
early days. My parents had rubbed up against this situation on numerous
occasions. However, unlike some of our neighbors, the time never came
when we did not have enough to eat. But that “hand to mouth” rule of
living could not rub out the anxiety.

It was an era when the ambitious young fellow was of necessity compelled
early in life to begin laying-by for the “rainy day” if he did not wish
to run the risk of becoming an object of charity—and who did in the old
days? It was then considered about the last straw. It took a long time
to lay-by a competence in the old days. The average wage-earner gets as
much per hour now as was paid for a whole day’s work then—when ten hours
was a day. This is not to say the young “sprout” could not marry before
he had a competence. He did—recklessly. And paid the price.

It was to avoid such conditions as this that I made a firm resolve to
defer marriage until I could make a stake.

I set my goal at $10,000, and when things got going good I kept right
on going until this goal was more than doubled — and in subsequent years
learned that it was none too much:

However, in strict honesty, I think this cautious streak was inherited
rather than instilled in me by observations. My father had entertained
the same cautious notions. Orphaned early in life, he made his own
way—saved, and had what he called a nice nest-egg at the age of 25. He
went from Kentucky over into Tennessee to visit relatives, met my mother
while there—and married her the next time he came into her back-woods
community. And had it not been for the cruel Civil War—and the
guerillas—I am pretty sure: that I would have had a rich Dad regardless
of his super-abundance of kids.

However, conditions changed for the better for father. When his boys got
big enough to lessen the burden, and then in time lift it altogether, he
had an easy life. My brother Frank worked with him in the shoeshop,
and at the same time conducted a shoe store in the front end of the
building, with our sister Nannie in charge. When Frank decided to go to
California to join his brother Dave in business, he gave them the shoe
stock. I had written insurance in the sum of $1,000 for Frank, and when
the assigned policy was about to expire I mentioned the matter one day
at the dinner table. Father said, “Oh, I don’t need any insurance.”

I renewed the policy anyway, paid the premium myself, and said no more
about it. Then, some months later, a fire destroyed the old Logue frame
store building across the street, in early evening—and the town was out
in numbers. There was little chance of the blaze reaching my father’s
shop, but he and several excited volunteers were making ready to remove
the shoe stock to the street. I told him that he better just get his
books and records where he could put his hands on them in case of need,
and to leave the stock in the building for a while, at least. Thinking
to ease his fears, I said, “You’ve got a thousand dollar insurance
policy on the stock.” He exclaimed, excitedly, “Oh, that’s not enough!”

By this time—we are now back again on the matter of girls, mostly — the
girl’s papa had been elevated to the Mayorality, and the family was now
operating the Wetmore hotel. On one of my trips home from Seneca, after
spending a pleasant hour with the girl, I dropped in on the poker
game, just to greet the boys, and watch the play. I had reformed then
— mostly, I think, on account of the girl. Incidentally, I may say I
reformed more times than a backslider ever confessed his sins—every
time, I think, on account of a girl—before finally realizing that it was
not the way to build character.

The game then was in the Billy Buzan residence—af ter his wife’s
death—on the corner where Bob Cress’ residence is now, west of the
telephone office. It was the original William Cawood location, with
the west portion of the high fence (seven-foot up and down pine boards)
still standing. That high fence had enclosed four lots, and held in
captivity a “pet” deer for several years. When the Mayor and a guest of
the hotel came in at the front door, I slipped out the back door, as I
thought unobserved by His Honor, and streaked it, in bright moonlight,
to the fence and went over almost without touching. The next day the
Mayor said to me, “Young fellow, I saw your shirt-tail going over that
high board fence last night.” But he hadn’t. It was before the young
sports had begun to wear their shirt-tails on the outside of their
pants. And then again I never was guilty of that slovenly habit.

About that deer. It finally jumped over the gate at the southeast corner
of the enclosed grounds—and was gone for several days. But it came back
and jumped in again. Then, it made a game of jumping out and jumping in
— with periodic trips to the country. Then, one morning there were
two deer in the enclosure. I think the “pet” deer tried its best to
domesticate the visitor — but after three days, the call of the wilds
claimed them both.

Some years later—after he had spent a couple of years in Arkansas, and
was now back in the hotel again, in Wetmore—”Papa” was in a tight spot
at Enid, Oklahoma, the third day after the opening of the Cherokee
Strip, September 16,1893. He had made the run, staked a claim, and was
in line—a very long line—at the Land Office, waiting his turn to file.
I had already filed on my claim. While in line, I observed soldiers, who
were supposed to be on hand to see that everyone would get a fair deal,
were running in people ahead of me—and a little later, a man I shall
simply call Eddie—apparently in the role of chief grafter—whom I had
known in Wetmore, approached me with a proposition to advance me in line
for $5. I was too near the door to be interested—and besides, my brother
Dave who held a filing number next to mine, promised to “wipe the earth
up” with Ed if we should be delayed further. Might say here that the
gang followed this remunerative activity with another dirty practice.
They filed contests on claims, so that the rightful locators would, in
many instances, buy them off rather than stand the expense of fighting
the case. Then Dave had to give Mr. Ed that promised thrashing. It got
Dave a prompt withdrawal of the contest. I was the only one of our
party of four who did not have to fight a contest. My friendship, or
co-operation with the crooks, whichever way you choose to look at it,
had, I presume, saved me.

After I had filed on my claim, I carried the “good” news of Mr. Eddie’s
activities to “Papa.” I knew he was anxious to get back home to his
hotel business, where he was trying hard to re-establish himself after
returning from Arkansas. He asked me to contact Mr. Eddie for him—and
said, “I’ll be your uncle.”

The soldiers advanced him to near the door—and there the line became
static once more, as other advancements were being pushed in ahead
of him. Then Ed told me that for $10 more the soldiers would put him
through the door without delay. “Papa” dug up the $10, and said, “Do
this for me Son, and I’ll dance at your wedding.” Now he could call me
“Son” and offer to dance at my wedding.

There are three girls prominently featured in this story, whose names I
do not wish to divulge. Substituting, I maybe should call the first one
Miss Beautiful, for she was all that. But from here on, until further
notice, I shall refer to them as My Best Girl, The Old Girl, and The
Kid.

In all too short time my nemesis, in the person of a certain rich man’s
son, an older brother of that other boy, got on my trail. I do not think
it was to avenge his disappointed brother, but it could have been that.
He told the boys it was to prove that he was “man enough” to “bump” me.

Well, just for once, it was not a bad guess. He would be working on
fertile ground. I didn’t care too much for the Old Girl anyway. She was
my senior by four or five years, and naturally she would welcome a
good “catch.” It was understood between us that she was only filling a
vacancy, and thereby providing a way to keep us in the Silver Stocking
circle. The thing I didn’t like was to be “bumped” just for the fun of
it, as viewed by the RM’s son.

Mike Norton, clerk in the DeForest store, saw the rich man’s son write
a letter to the Old Girl, and he thought this would be the time when the
RM’s son would try to make good his boast. Three days hence there was to
be a picnic in a grove south of Netawaka, and the Silver Stocking boys
and girls were lining up to go in a body. Mike and other members of the
circle put in two hours looking for me. The boys, and the girls too,
were all for me, in this instance — but not even the King’s Horses
could have stopped that boy in his purpose. The postmaster showed me the
letter with the OG’s name spelled out in bold relief—and I was off at
once, thinking I would now show this RM’s son that he could not do this
to me.

The Old Girl said she was awfully sorry—that she had promised another,
naming the rich man’s son. I said, in substance—though really not
sore at the OG, I think I was not in a frame of mind to phrase it just
so—”Let’s see where we stand. The way things are shaped up now, I’m
out—that is, barred from the Silver Stocking crowd by the rules of my
own helpful making.”

She suggested that I go back to the girl I have designated as My Best
Girl—said, “I KNOW you can, if you will just spunk up a little.” I had
never “spunked” much with the OG.

“But,” I said, “if I should succeed in dating her, someone else would
be out, and that someone is your old beau. Likely timber maybe. Then, in
case your date does not choose to repeat, you might still have a chance
to get back with the old crowd.”

She laughed — the OG was feeling pretty good, just then—and said, “I
hadn’t thought of it that way.” Now she giggled, “But, you know, I could
always be a hanger-on, maybe even go with you and your girl—just in
case.” A boy was permitted to take more than one girl—even a flock of
them if he were unlucky enough.

Now the atmosphere around the OG’s home had changed, with exultant
spirits taking a nose-dive. That letter was for the purpose of calling
off a date. She was really too nice a girl to be buffed around like that
— but please note that I did not hold with any such buffings. She had
forfeited her chance to go with the crowd to the picnic. Now, more than
ever, she wanted to go. She first took her troubles to her bosom friend,
Bessie Campfield, wife of Judge Elwin Campfield. She wanted to know how
could she, with propriety, get word to me that after all she would be
free to go with me to the picnic. Bessie had spent some anxious moments
trying to round up a courier to apprise me of that letter. She said to
the OG, “I don’t know about that now. I could have told you about that
fellow’s egotistical designs.”

The Old Girl lived with her aged parents, and when they would go away
for the night, as they often did to visit another daughter in the
country, she would have a young neighbor girl—not too young, but much
younger than she-stay the night with her. The old folks were away now,
and the young girl had been called in for the night.

The Old Girl was still worried. I’m now almost sorry that I ever started
this “Old Girl” differential, as it smacks of disrespect — and I do not
want the reader to form any such ideas. The OG first asked the young
girl to come up town with her—then, remembering that her best friend had
dropped a hint that the ground upon which she now stood was insecure,
she decided that she was not constitutionally able to face me just then
with her problem. She sent the young girl, alone.

But the Kid—that’s what they called her when we went together to the
picnic, and thereafter as a member of the Silver Stocking crowd—said,
“If you go with her now, you will be the biggest fool in the world. All
she wants to go with you for, is to see who he takes,” naming the RM’s
son.

The Kid was smart.

But please do not think the so-called Kid was betraying a trust. She was
really a woman now. And, besides, she had reason to believe that, to
use a homely expression, she were very soon going to get the OG’s goat,
anyway.

And moreover, the Old Girl later told the “Kid,” perhaps in a gesture of
discouragement, that I had gone with her steadily for nearly a year, and
had never tried to kiss her. Had that not been the truth it would have
been libel. -In the old days, the prudent young man did not dare kiss an
old girl who was only filling a vacancy.

Prior to this, the “Kid” and I had “starred” in a local entertainment
entitled “Beauty and Beelzebub” — and mutual admiration had blossomed
then. She was the Angel and I was the Devil. In the tableau, the Devil,
encased in a tight-fitting black sateen cover-all, with horns and a
four-foot forked tail, was suspended on wires about four feet off the
floor when the curtain went up. Then the Angel, up in the clouds, began
the descent with song, the singing increasing in volume as she came
down bare feet first, with outstretched wings, settling in front of the
Devil. The “Kid” made a pretty picture, with her abundant dark hair —
which, I happen to know, came down nearly to her ankles — spread over
the white flowing covering whose traditional folds parted in front just
enough to indicate that she dwelt in a place where shoes and stockings
were taboo. The Angel departed by the same route—wire and windlass
mechanism—went up into the clouds from whence she had come, with more
singing, at first in full voice, then fading, fading, fading away in a
manner denoting distance. In her young budding womanhood the “Kid” made
a beautiful Angel — and the clear, sweet singing was out of this world.

Coral Hutchison was at first considered for the Angel. She was a
beautiful girl, and a beautiful singer—and while she had a wonderful
head of hair, quite as long as the “Kid’s,” its rather too blonde shade
ruled her out. So the “Kid,” with the requisite dark hair, was given a
place in the spot-light—and Coral did the singing behind the scenes.

Sorry, I can’t tell you what event or setting that tableau portrayed.
There was much more to the show, speaking parts and superb acting. And
though clearly the “Kid” and I were “it,” the whole show was titled
“Beauty and Beelzebub.”

At the picnic, my adversary, the rich man’s son, said to me, “I see
you’ve got a new girl. How come?” I said, “Yeah—likewise you. Thanks
for the assist.” After I had started to walk on, he called, “Hey, John,
whatsha mean by that?”

He was with Lou Kern. Hattie and Lou Kern, and Nina and Emma Bolman,
were four Netawaka girls that were popular with our Silver Stocking
crowd; as were also Caroline Emery, living in the country northeast of
Wetmore, and her visiting friend, Mamie Blakeslee, a former neighbor
whose home was now in Savannah, Mo.

Mamie Blakeslee was a strikingly pretty girl.

I shall now dwell a bit on a personal incident in connection with this
beautiful girl. It was away back in 1884. I don’t think the girl was
on my mind that day when I went to St. Joe. But, in St. Joe, I ran onto
Bill (Hickorynut) Bradley who was on his way to Savannah, and he asked
me to go along with him. One Oliver Bateman was to be hanged for the
murder of two little girls who had caught him in an embarrassing act.
The railroad was offering excursion rates, and the sleepy old Missouri
town was decked out in celebration colors, with refreshment stands all
along the lane from the jail to the gallows in an amphitheater in the
nearby woods—everybody on the make.

Unlike Hickorynut, the hanging did not interest me, but the thought of
seeing Mamie did. I called at the Blakeslee home on the outskirts of
Savannah — it was a farm traded by G. N. Paige for the Blakeslee farm
near Wetmore—on the pretense of wanting to see Mamie’s brother Edwin,
who had been my schoolmate in Wetmore. He was not at home. I remained
a reasonable time with Mamie, aiming to work up a little courage, and
maybe ask her to go places with me—but lost my nerve.

Two hours later I met Mamie, with another girl, on a downtown street
near the St. Charles hotel. Mamie said there was to be skating at the
rink that night, and would I like to go? I certainly would. So now,
after all, we would be going places together.

I called at the Blakeslee home for the two girls, and the ‘skating was
going fine. Then, of a sudden, Miss West told me that Mamie was in a
jam. Her steady, a traveling salesman, had unexpectedly dropped in on
her — and, for some reason, likely well founded, Mamie had not intended
to let him know about her going out with another fellow.

I told Miss West that we could fix that all right, if she herself did
not have a steady sticking around somewhere. Miss West laughed, and
assured me she did not have a steady. “If agreeable,” I said, “you
shall now be my company, and, to all appearances, Mamie shall be the
hanger-on, free to desert me for her steady.” Miss West laughed again,
though she looked as if she were a little concerned about my reference
to Mamie as the new hanger-on. Well, it was a slip. It was a term often
applied to the extra girls in our Silver Stocking circle.

While visiting in Wetmore before this, Mamie had gone to a dance in
Netawaka with a local man who proved to be not to her liking, and she
had quit him cold at the dance hall door. Though it would hardly cause
a ripple now, it was then considered about the worst thing that could
happen to a young fellow’s social standing. I do not wish to identify
him—yet I must give him a name to be used in Mamie’s pay-off to me for
liberating her at the Savannah rink.

In the substitution of names, one is liable to innocently hit upon
somebody’s real name, and to avoid the possibility of making this error,
I shall give him the surname of his business partner, and go through
the customary formality of saying that any similarity in names is purely
coincidental. The man was half-owner of the livery stable from which
we all got our “rigs” that night. And, anyway, the partners left here
together for the state of Washington many, many years ago, and there
should be no chance for repercussions now.

Mamie knew that I was familiar with the Netawaka incident—in fact, it
was I who did the shifting with Sidney Loop to get her back home. When
Miss West had delivered my message, Mamie broke away from her steady,
rolled gracefully around the hall, and plumped herself down by my side,
saying, “Thank you so much! It gets me out of an awful jam! And I want
you to know that this is no Dr. Fisher deal!” I wondered? You know a
girl, in competition with other girls, might strive for long to vamp a
certain good catch—which is always a girl’s privilege—and then when the
chance offers, find herself tied up for the time being with someone that
right away stinks.

The Blakeslee family formerly lived on a farm four miles northeast of
Wetmore, directly north of the old Ham Lynn farm. Mamie’s father, Nelson
Blakeslee, often called at my father’s shoeshop for a visit. One time
they planned on chartering a car together and shipping to California. I
did not know Mamie then—but have since wondered what might have happened
had they gone through with their plans.

Evidently Mamie did not make the most of the opportunity afforded her
that night back in Savannah. She married Frank Schilling, of Hiawatha.
There were some dark surmises that she stole Caroline Emery’s beau.
“Stole” is an ugly word to be written in connection with this sweet,
conscientious girl—as I knew her then. I would rather believe that Miss
Emery’s beau was a man of rare good judgment. I have not seen Mamie
since that night at the skating rink in Savannah. Now widowed, she lives
in Fairview — thirty minutes away from Wetmore.

Back again on the main theme: In the days which followed, I said to
myself—thought it with vengeance, anyway—that I would like to see the
color of the hair of any d—d RM’s son that could make me give up this
one, meaning the “Kid,” of course. And may I say that for once I now
believed I had my girl matters well in hand.

But, believe it or not, still another son of that same rich man tried
his darndest to edge in. At this time the younger boys had the habit of
lining up on the outside of the church, at Epworth League meetings, and
grab themselves a girl, with a polite, and sometimes not so polite, “May
I “see you home?” After the third “No, thank you,” from the “Kid,” the
RM’s son told her to go to that place which is sometimes politely called
hades.

Mrs. Pheme Wood, a well meaning soul who had been an intimate friend of
our family since the first day we came here in 1869, and who apparently
took a special interest in my welfare, stopped me one day while passing
her home, and said, “There’s something I want to ask you. Of course I
don’t believe it, but I’ll ask anyway. Were you out sleigh-riding with
Myrtle Mercer the day her father lay dead in the home?”

Myrtle was the afore-mentioned “Kid.”

I had not intended to name her just yet, but her identity would have to
come out soon anyway, as she figures in this story to the end. And then
some.

“Well,” I said—but got no further. Pheme broke in, “It came to me pretty
straight, and one would think—” I stopped her with a promise to ‘fess
up, if she would not run to my mother with it. “Oh that,” she laughed,
remembering a kindred incident, “was for your own good.” She had gone
to my mother on an errand of mercy. That she had her wires badly crossed
did not deter her. She said she had it on good authority that I was
about to marry the aforesaid Old Girl, who was much too old for me; and
that my mother ought to use her influence to prevent it.

Myrtle’s father, John W. Mercer, section foreman, aged 39, had died
suddenly of a heart attack while milking his cow one morning in
February, 1888. And naturally, the family—the mother and five girls—had
to make preparations for the funeral. Myrtle had a badly sprained ankle
— acquired while ice-skating with George Peters on the creek near her
home—but she managed to hobble up town, taking her baby sister Jessie
with her. I followed them into the store, told Myrtle that I would get
a sleigh from the livery stable and take them home. After driving the
girls three blocks directly to their home, I picked up the Old Girl and
we drove for an hour or more. I knew that Frank Fisher would charge me
$2.00 anyway, and I wanted to get my money’s worth. I was seen picking
up the “Kid” at the store and later seen driving with the Old Girl,
and someone had imagined that the two girls were one and the same — and
that’s how the story got started.

When explained, Pheme could have no criticism of Myrtle, nor of me
either for driving her home. But, being a woman of the old school, she
was bound to have her say. She said, “It looks like you should have had
more respect for Myrtle than to go joy-riding with that other girl at a
time like that.” I was not sure that she didn’t have something there. I
said, “Remember, not a word to my mother.”

“Ah, go on,” she laughed.

I might say here, before passing this incident, that after the family
had split up a few years later, Myrtle was sister and mother too,
as well as guardian, for Jessie. And speaking of pretty girls, this
attractive little one had the makings of a real beauty that in later
years just about topped them all.

The rich man’s sons were all fine boys—I think—but in view of their
penchant for camping on my trail, the only compliment I wish to pay them
now is to say: They did not play poker.

My trusted friend did not marry the girl I loaned him. She went with
her parents and three brothers to Arkansas — and married down there. The
trusted friend went to the Far West, made his stake, and married into a
quite well-to-do family—and lived at Yakima, Washington.

The Old Girl got her man too—an out-of-town man — after she had quit
fooling around with the younger fry, and went with Davey Todd to
Kansas City to live. She became a helpless invalid—and then, not
having prepared himself in a financial way for such eventuality, Davey
literally and figuratively had his hands full. But, to the best of his
ability, he was good to her—carried her around as if she were a baby.
How do I know? Well, the “Kid’s” sisters, -Jennie and Kathy, neighbors
while here, helped him a lot in giving her needed attention.

And now Euphema Wood speaks again. Commenting on this unfortunate
affair, she said to me, “Now you can maybe appreciate all the grief I
saved you.”

Many years later, I met the mother of the girl whom I designated for
this writing as My Best Girl, on the train out of Kansas City going to
Atchison, her home at that time. I knew the girl had married a man whom
the family were pleased to call a Southern aristocrat, living at Bald
Knob, Arkansas. He was a merchant who carried the sharecroppers—mostly
descendants of Ham—on his books until harvest time, virtually owning
them. This gave him status in his home community, particularly with
the colored folk — and in traveling North this mark of distinction was
greatly exaggerated. From what the girl told me, while on a visit
back home, I think Mr. Walker was a worthy man—but that aristocracy
appendage, I liked it even less than I liked the means that had been
employed to push me out of the picture. It is a word that should never
have been coined. I was pleased that the girl herself made no use of it.

In the course of our talking over old times in Wetmore, the mother said,
“I never could understand why those two did not marry,” meaning her
daughter and the boy who had succeeded me. I said, “If you really want
to know,- I can tell you why. He just didn’t have the money to do it the
way she insisted on having it done, an expensive wedding, and all that.”
She, the mother, already knew why I had first gracefully tapered off,
and then backed away from it all—for the girl had told me that her
penitent mother had wanted to kick herself for speaking out of turn.

And the “Kid?” Well, wait and see. Might have to skip a few years,
though. I had not yet made that stake. In reminiscing, one is permitted
to wander about over all creation—provided, always, that he carries
along for blending purposes at least one principal character already
introduced: and makes sure to come back “home” before becoming
hopelessly entangled in a wilderness of clearly unrelated matter.

The “Kid” figures prominently in this episode.

While in Kansas City, I ran onto a street hawker selling fake “diamonds”
for one dollar each. Just for the fun of it, I bought one of the things,
brought it home and presented it to Myrtle Mercer, who was now working
in my printing office, merely to see how a diamond would affect a girl.

After showing me that her heart was in the right place, she darted out
the door before I could stop her, ran down the steps to the Means store,
and showed it to Lizzie Means; then beat it out the back door and ran
across to show it to Mamma Alma. This lady was the wife of Dr. J. W.
Graham.

Mamma Alma was sharp as all getout. Lizzie Means was a shrewd business
woman, but she had a less inquisitive mind. And I guess Myrtle was
pretty sharp too, after the first ecstatic shock had passed.


Myrtle came bounding back up to the office, and bawled me out: “Mr.
Smartie, that is going to cost you a real diamond—and a good one, too!
And I want it right now!” She had reason to believe I was holding out on
her.

I said, “All right, all right—but you can’t have it now.”

Cloy Weaver, my printer, who had been out on an errand, had come into
the office by this time. He stood there with his mouth open, wondering
what it was all about. Cloy had a girl in Stockton, California, and was
aiming to leave the next day for California to marry her. As I needed
him, and as he had told me he had a wife in the Philippines — he was a
veteran of the Spanish American War—I tried to show him that this would
be a bigamous trick. He agreed. Cloy was always agreeable. He remained
with me a while longer—and married Edna Hudson.

Lizzie told me later in the day that the bogus diamond had her fooled,
too. She laughed, “By golly, it did sparkle real prettily, didn’t it?
But it’s going to cost you a real diamond—don’t forget that. Mamma Alma
and I are not going to let Myrtle forget it either, Ough,” she shrugged,
- “that was about the dirtiest trick imaginable. And Myrtle was so
pleased! It was a shame!” And Mamma Alma had told Myrtle that it was
high time anyway for me to be giving her a “real” diamond.

The next morning Coral Locknane—Myrtle’s best friend — came to the
office, and I don’t know what all passed between the two, but it is
pretty certain they didn’t discuss trifles. The three of us went to
Kansas City on the noon train. I said to the girls, “Shall we go to
Cady & Olmstead’s or to Jaccard’s?” I had been to both places on my last
trip, and I knew they had just the right quality of sparklers to tickle
a girl’s heart—now that I knew how a girl would react. But Myrtle,
feeling pretty sure of herself, and in high good humor, said quite
emphatically, “Neither.” She looked down the street and said, “We are
going to Mercer’s on Petticoat Lane. It’s a name I believe I can trust.
You don’t think I’d let you steer me to a place like where you got that
other thing?”

When we went into the Mercer Store, Mr. Waddington, the diamond
salesman, as it happened, pushed his portly self forward, and asked,
“What will it be, please?”

I said, pretty loudly, “A diamond ring for Miss Mercer!” That claimed
the attention of the whole house—the proprietor included.

Coral had several pretty good diamonds of her own. She took a seat with
Myrtle at the salestable in the little black velvet-lined cubby corner,
while I stood back and looked on. When Mr. Waddington told them the
price of the one they had selected, Myrtle exclaimed, “Whe-e-ew!”

Then she looked to me for approval. The modest, one carat blue white
stone was in good taste, plenty big enough for a girl. Coral’s largest
diamond—at that time—was also an even carat, and she was a great help to
Myrtle in making the selection. Coral said, “It’s not good taste to have
them too big.” Later, Myrtle said earnestly and very softly, as if the
thing had taken her breath away, “Do you really think you want to stand
that much?” Mercer’s was the highest priced shop in Kansas City—but in a
case of this kind I figured that a girl must have what she wants.

Then we separated, and I went over to the Cady & Olmstead store on the
corner of 11th and Walnut, and bought for myself—or rather paid for what
I had already bought — the beautiful blue white diamond, nearly twice as
large, which Myrtle’s sister Jennie had helped me select only three days
before. Jennie had warned me not to spring that fake diamond on Myrtle.
Said it might not set just right with her. But I knew that Myrtle was
too smart a girl to let anything make her mad at me for long.

Mr. Cady said, “You are a day early—where’s the lady?” “Yes,” I said,
“I’m early. Got pushed around a little. Never mind the lady now. Though
you may still make it a Tiffany setting, but make it for this hand right
here.” He gave me a sympathetic look. Mr. Cady was such a nice man that
I felt duty bound to tell him, as nearly as I could, what had happened
to the lady.

Sometimes even quality folk didn’t get to see Mr. Cady, in person. Well,
I did—just like I said. I still have the sales ticket, dated May 12,
1903, bearing his notation, “Will exchange Tif. Belcher mounting without
cost—or diamond for other goods any time without discount.” Signed,
“Cady.”

All this was too much for Coral. A woman with money of her own can
stand only so much. She went over to Norton’s—and bought herself another
diamond, nearly twice as big as Myrtle’s. The satisfied expression on
her lovely face was something to behold. My first thoughts were
that this might call for me to do some swapping with Myrtle. But, no
sir—she’d not part with hers. If pressed, she’d claim them both. Trust a
woman!

We had to stay the night in Kansas City with Myrtle’s sisters, Jennie
and Kathy. When she got the chance, Jennie asked me, “How did it work?”
meaning the bogus diamond.

“Well,” I replied, “it looks like it hasn’t blown the top off anything
yet.” She said, “It surely does look that way now, but I wouldn’t be so
sure of it after she sees the beauty we picked out for her.”

The two country girls had talked nothing but diamonds from the time they
had entered the apartment.

The next morning the three of us started out three ways to get our
diamonds—only we didn’t do it just that way. We went the rounds in
a group. Mr. Mercer told Miss Mercer that she had selected the best
one-carat blue-white flawless diamond in his store. And he wondered if
they might not be related. Myrtle came home pretty pleased for keeps
that time.

I’ve always counted it my best investment.

THE VIGILANTES Published in Wetmore Spectator,

August 28, 1931

By John T. Bristow

There was, assuredly, need for the vigilantes at one time in the Far
West, where the idea originated and here there were no laws and no
courts other than “miner’s courts”—impromptu courts set up by the
people on the spot. But, with all the machinery of organized government
functioning normally and in most instances efficiently there in Nemaha
County, there was, seemingly, no call here for the vigilantes when they
hanged Charley Manley.

The courier-tribune

(Semi-weekly)

Geo. C. Adriance Dora Adriance

SENECA KANSAS

Aug. 28, 1931

Mr. John T. Bristow, Wetmore, Kansas.

My dear Mr. Bristow:

We have just read with a great deal of interest your article in the
Wetmore Spectator dealing with the hanging of Charley Manley. This is
the first time I have ever heard of this act of the vigilantes. We are
going to check through our files of April 1877 and see if we can find
anything relating to it. In any event, I write to ask permission to
reproduce this article in a much special issue of the Tribune we are
putting out next year to celebrate Seneca’s 75th anniversary.

The article is so well written and deals with so early history of our
county that I consider it admirably adapted to our purpose. The
next time you are in ‘Seneca I should like to have you call at The
Courier-Tribune office. I have no doubt you have a fund of other stories
that would be just as interesting.

Sincerely yours,

Geo. C. Adriance

It is a tragic story — the hanging of Manley by the vigilantes. It was
Mar. 31, 1877. I was a small boy when I first knew Charley Manley, just
about big enough to turn a grindstone, with effort. There is purpose in
this reference to the grindstone.

I remember the time very distinctly. And, with all due respect to the
memory of my departed elders—the vigilantes—if, after so many years,
I may be permitted to express myself freely and fully, I would say God
seemed to be terribly far away from the scene that night. Before going
into the details of the hanging, let us have a look into the workings of
the vigilantes—that organization of men who set itself up as judge and
jury and executioner. There was tactful veiling of the identity of the
individual members, and little is known of the inside workings of the
local vigilantes.

This much is known, however. There was one little slip — a bungle—that
was, in time, the means of disclosing the identity of the local
operators, but that secret was also carefully guarded until practically
the last one of the vigilantes has passed on to another world beyond the
reach of wagging tongues and the strong arm of organized law. There is
now only one—possibly two—of the originals left.

The vigilante organization or “Committee,” as it was called, had its
birth in the Far West, for the specific purpose of dealing with “road
agents”—banded highwaymen and murderers. The idea traveled East and the
farther it got away from the home of its origin the farther it seems to
have gotten away from its original purpose.

In the sixties and seventies vigilante committees were in evidence the
full length of the old Overland Trail, from California to Kansas, and
the fact that Wetmore and Granada had as residents a half dozen or so of
the old stage-drivers, express messengers, and pony express riders, may
account, in some measure, for the local organization of vigilantes.
And, if so, by the irony of fate, it was in the home of a former express
messenger that the vigilantes claimed their first and only victim. It is
known that at least two of the old stage employees were vigilantes.

Without question, the idea filtered in from the West. The almost
constant stream of returning gold-seekers passing through Granada over
the Old Trail at a time when the vigilantes were very active in the West
— particularly in Montana—may have scattered the seed.

While I was out in the western mining district, a quarter of a century
ago, chasing fickle fortune—which was always just a few jumps ahead of
me—I heard much about the exploits of road agents, and the work of the
vigilantes.

In the Old West, at Bannack, Virginia City, and Nevada, in the Alder
Gulch section of Montana, where a hundred million dollars in placer gold
was recovered in the early sixties, road agents plundered and killed,
without mercy.

Placer gold, as many know, is free gold that has been eroded from
exposed gold-bearing ledges and deposited in the sands and gravel along
the water courses. It was the first form of gold-mining in the West—the
lure that caused the great stampede to California in 1849. It has
rightfully been called “the poor man’s gold,” because of the comparative
ease in which it is recovered.

The flush times in the Alder Gulch section, which contained about twenty
thousand eager gold diggers, made rich pickings for the road agents.
They preyed upon individual miners, on express companies, on anyone,
anywhere they could grab gold-dust, or minted gold, the money of the
times. And they were killers, every one of them.

The Montana vigilantes, sworn to secrecy and loyalty, with a by-law
boldly asserting, “The only punishment that shall be inflicted by this
committee is Death,” undertook the job of exterminating the road agents.
And in one month’s time twenty-one of the notorious Henry Plummer gang
were hung. The job was pepped up a bit when the first victims squealed
on the others. This is history of the Montana vigilantes. They patterned
after the California vigilantes. And it is to be assumed that vigilantes
everywhere were organized along the same lines.

There was a vigilante committee in Nemaha County at least nine years
prior to the hanging of Manley. In September, 1868, Melvin Baughn, a
horse-thief, was legally hanged at Seneca for killing Jesse Dennis, one
of the deputized men who helped capture him. In writing of that hanging
George Adriance said there was a vigilante committee at the time, and it
wanted the officers to turn Baughn over to the committee.

Charley Manley and Joe Brown were charged with being implicated in
stealing John O’Brien’s horse. O’Brien lived on the Dave Ralston place
west of Granada and Brown lived on a quarter section of land west of the
Charley Green farm in the Granada neighborhood, about two miles from the
O’Brien farm. Charley Manley lived with the family of W. W. Letson at
Netawaka. He had lived with the Letsons at Granada and at Wetmore before
they moved to Netawaka. Letson and Spencer kept a general store here in
the old corner building now owned by Cawood Brothers, originally built
by Rising and Son.

At one of their meetings, it appears, the vigilantes decided to hang
Manley and Brown. One member who lived close to Brown pleaded for
the life of his neighbor. Brown had a family of small children. The
discussion waxed hot — and there was a great rift in the personnel of
the organization. They did not agree in the matter. The determined ones,
however, went ahead with their plans for the hanging. And on the night
of the execution some of the vigilantes, not in accord with the
plan, spent the night at the homes of their neighbors so as to clear
themselves of suspected participation in the hanging.

Charley Manley was arrested at Netawaka and was to have been given a
preliminary trial in Justice H. J. Crist’s court at Granada. He was
brought to Wetmore early the day of his execution and held under
guard in the office of the old Wetmore House until evening. The delay
supposedly was occasioned in order to bring Joe Brown to the bar of
“justice” at the same time. Later it appeared the proceedings had been
delayed, waiting for nightfall.

Robert Sewell, constable, liveryman, ex-stage driver and Indian fighter,
was the arresting officer. On the plains, and here, he was known as “Bob
Ridley.” George G. Gill was deputized as assistant constable. Dr. J.
W. Graham, a Justice of the Peace in Wetmore at the time, was appointed
special prosecutor by County Attorney Simon Conwell. Sewell, Gill, and
Graham, with Manley, drove to Granada in a spring wagon.

On the way to Granada, all unconscious of what was in the air, Dr.
Graham, seeing a tree by the roadside with a large overhanging limb,
jokingly said, “Whoa, stop the team, Bob—-we might just as well hang
Charley right here.” Manley laughed and said, “Oh, no—let’s all have a
drink.” He passed his bottle.

Court was to have been held in the Hudson hotel at Granada. But before
proceedings had started, the vigilantes, in black-face, with coats
turned insideout, appeared upon the scene and began shooting up the
place — with blanks. They seized Manley and rushed him away—to his
doom. Pandemonium reigned, and in the excitement the president of the
vigilante committee, it is said, raised a window and told Brown to “beat
it.” So, it would seem, the neighbor’s plea for Brown’s life, while very
costly to himself, as you shall see later, had made its impression.

Earlier in the evening, one high up in vigilantic officialdom, had
taken the precaution to relieve the three constables and the prosecuting
attorney of their revolvers—borrowed them “for a few minutes.” Dr.
Graham says he never did get his back.

Charley Manley was taken to a big tree down on the creek west of
Granada, and strung up. The tree was on the old Terrill place, now owned
by the Achtens. Monoah H. Terrill, a store-keeper at Granada, was a
brother-in-law of Manley. Terrill had died a long time before the Manley
hanging.

Manley was buried on the Terrill place—or rather what afterwards proved
to be the roadside—by the grave of his brother-in-law. Later the bodies
were removed. Terrill was placed in the Letson lot in the Netawaka
cemetery. Some say the body of Manley was also taken there. The Letson
lot has no such marker. Others say he was re-buried in the northeast
corner of the Granada cemetery. There is no marker or other visible
evidence of his grave there. His grave now seems to be as irredeemably
lost as was his life on that fatal March night fifty-four years ago.

It is said by those who were in a position to speak at the time, that
Manley made no protest, spoke not a word when the mob took him from the
room. Whether it was sheer shock that robbed him of all power to speak,
to think, to feel, no one knows. Dr. Graham says that after they started
away with the prisoner someone fired a gun, and he heard Manley say,
“Don’t do that boys, it’s not fair.” Just what happened after that was
never made public. The knowing ones didn’t seem to want to talk. There
were, however, many conflicting rumors afloat—sub rosa reports, you
understand. One rumor was that Manley was dead before they left the main
street with him—died from fright and rough handling.

On the way out one of the vigilantes lost his cap. Someone picked it up.
The same man who had “borrowed” the officers guns, acting as rear guard,
rode back and took the cap. He said to the people who had followed from
the court room, “We don’t want to hurt anyone—but keep back.”

Some of the men in that mob were recognized, but, as one old timer
aptly puts it, no one at that time seemed to care a “helluva” lot about
knowing who they were. However, as the veiling gradually lifted, it
became known that the major portion of the respectable adult male
citizens — and a few bad eggs—were numbered among the vigilantes. They
were, mostly, fair-minded and just men. But, even fair-minded men, under
stress, can sometimes be auto-hypnotized into doing strange things—and
it would seem some of the vigilantes got terribly out of hand that
night. From all accounts the performance was a rather disgusting
exhibition of mob passion. Later criticism of the vigilantes was based
very largely on the inexcusable savage demonstration attending the
Manley hanging. And mistake not, there was criticism—criticism that
stirred the whole countryside.

Vigilantes did not tell their wives everything. It might have been
better if they had. And if the Manley demonstration had met with the
approval of the good wives and mothers of the participating vigilantes,
the women might have taken a hand in the general clean-up and scrubbed
the burnt-cork, or whatever it was that blackened their faces, from back
of the men’s ears and thus obliterated the telltale marks that lingered,
like the itch, with some of the boys for several days. The women
generally deprecated the hanging.

Just what evidence the vigilantes had against Charley Manley, and how
authentic or damaging it was, never was made public. Nor will it ever
be. Had the vigilantes permitted the trial to progress far enough to
establish the prisoner’s guilt, their actions would, no doubt, have
received less criticism. The friends of the vigilantes—the vigilantes
themselves never talked, as vigilantes—said that it would have been
difficult to produce convicting evidence as Manley was too good at
“covering up.” He was credited with being the “brains” of the gang.

Two business men in Netawaka were also suspected. They evaporated. In
fact, there were a dozen or more men scattered about over the country
who were under suspicion.

It was rather a hard proposition to handle. The farmers—the vigilantes
and the farmers, with a sprinkling of town people, were practically the
same—were terribly incensed because of the thefts of their horses, and
they were determined, at any cost, to put a stop to it. And while the
convicted horse-thief did not draw a death sentence, the courts were
efficient enough and willing enough to impose ample punishment on
offenders. But the real trouble was in getting convicting evidence. And
the courts could not, of course, play “hunches” in so serious a matter.

And where convicting evidence was lacking, it would seem about the
best—or worst—the vigilantes could do, was to make an example of some
one of those under suspicion, and hope that they had hanged the right
man — a rather dangerous procedure, and hardly sufficient excuse for
taking a life.

But one thing that worked then against bringing suspects into court was,
that in case of failure to convict, the court costs were assessed to
the complaining witness, and that meant a lot to the pioneer
farmer—especially to one who had just lost his horses. At least, that is
the way the John O’Brien complaint was handled.

The old court record shows that Constable Sewell traveled twenty-four
miles in making the arrest of Manley, for which he received $2.40.
George G. Gill, as deputy, received a like sum. The attorney received
$7.50. There was also a charge of $1.00 for the keep of the prisoner,
and another $1.00 for guarding him. Isaiah Hudson traveled only six
miles, three miles out and three miles back, in making the arrest of
Joseph Brown, for which he received $1.20. One witness, J. W. Duvall,
was subpoenaed in the Brown case. None in the Manley case. And,
presumably, because of the disrupted court proceedings and the loss of
the prisoners, it was “considered and adjudged” by the court that the
costs in both cases be charged to John O’Brien, the complaining witness.

Then, after the hanging of Manley, someone made a mistake—a very serious
mistake—which, coupled with the previous disagreement, came very close
to disrupting the vigilante organization. A letter, purporting to come
from the vigilantes, was sent to the rebellious member. It gave the man
ten days to leave the country, and warned him that if he failed to do so
he would be given the same treatment as was meted out to Manley.

This was a hard jolt to the obstreperous member. And it was a harder
jolt for the man’s wife. The woman opened and read the letter first, and
only for that she might never have known what it was that caused her man
to so suddenly develop a bad case of ague. Then, every day, for weeks,
as the gathering shades of night began to fall upon his home, this man,
with his wife and three small children, trailed off through the woods,
across lots, to the home of a relative to spend the night.

That letter was the cause of much mental and even physical misery for
the woman. She suffered heart attacks at the time: And in the weeks that
followed she suffered the mental torments of the damned. In relating the
matter to me very recently, she said, “Every time the dog barked I would
have a fit.” According to her version of it, those were the blackest
days of her life. And, like a scar, she will carry its horrors to her
dying day—to the grave. She knew what a crazed mob was capable of
doing. As a matter of fact, she knew what a guerilla mob had done to my
father’s family.

Many, many were the times that my mother—sweet, patient, administering
angel—was called upon to be with that woman in her hours of great
distress. And once, when the insidious thing was about to consume her,
my mother brought the woman home with her for a week.

The marked member finally took the matter up with other vigilantes, and
to save the sanity of the man’s wife — and no doubt to appease the man’s
fears also — after all denying knowledge of the letter, the vigilantes
signed a paper pledging protection to the man. The marked man — and his
friends in the organization—however, had a pretty good idea who wrote
that letter.

With such a document in evidence the identity of the vigilantes, which
had been so closely guarded up to this time, was no longer cloaked. At
least the veil of secrecy now had a big rip in it.

The hanging of Manley had a tendency to slow up activities, but it did
not stop the horse-stealing. And once more the Committee set out to make
an example of an accused man. Frank Gage, charged with stealing a horse
from Washie Lynn, was being tried in a Justice court somewhere over
in the Powhattan neighborhood — probably Charley Smith’s court. The
vigilantes were in readiness to “storm” the court and take the prisoner,
as they had done in the Manley case at Granada, but the plan was
abandoned at the last minute.

Two horsemen, young and daring, with a whiff of what was in the air,
made a hurried run to the scene. They told the vigilantes that they were
about to make a mistake—that they, the informers, knew positively
that Gage was elsewhere the night the Lynn horse was stolen. The
high-stepping modern Paul Revere of that heroic dash still lives. The
other has gone to his reward.

Gage, of course, was acquitted, for lack of evidence. Later, the real
thief, convicted for stealing wheat, confessed to stealing the Lynn
horse, and told where it was. Washie reclaimed the animal.

The man who was credited with being the president of the vigilante
committee afterwards became a very popular and efficient peace officer
of Nemaha county. And, if I understood the man rightly, I think he would
have fought forty wildcats, and maybe a buzz-saw or two, before he would
have surrendered, for unlawful handling, a charge of his to any set of
men—vigilantes, clan, mob extraordinary, or even a regiment of soldiers.

Soon after the Manley hanging a branch of the Kansas Peoples Detective
Association was organized here. Unlike the vigilantes, its purpose was
not to override the law, but to assist it in capturing and convicting
horse-thieves. W. D. Frazey was president and E. J. Woodman was
secretary.

Now a line about the Old Overland Trail. Besides carrying a faint flavor
of Manley handiwork, it was the avenue by which I myself came into this
country. But I did not ride the old Concord coach drawn by its four
spirited horses. I came by the slower mode of the ox-team.

The Old Overland Trail, or military road, as it was sometimes called,
was vastly different from the good roads of the present time—very, very
much different from the elaborate specifications for Number Nine, now
building through Wetmore. It was little more than a wide rut worn deep
by the constant movement of horse-drawn vehicles, including, of course,
mules and oxen. There were stage-lines, pony-express riders, and heavy
freighting outfits. The commerce of the West was handled over the Old
Trail.

Starting at Atchison, the Old Trail came into the Pow~ hattan ridge
settlement at the southwest corner of the Kickapoo Indian reservation,
and, keeping to the high ridges as much as practical, it passed
through Granada, Log Chain and Seneca, and on westward to Oroville and
Sacramento, in California. The stage company maintained a change station
on the old Collingwood C. Grubb farm—called Powhattan. Noble H. Rising
was in charge of the station after it had been moved three miles
north, and the name changed to Kickapoo. His son, Don C. Rising, was a
pony-express rider. W. W. Letson was express messenger. Bill Evans, Lon
Huff, and Bob Sewell, oldtimers here, were stage drivers.

The road made a sharp turn to the north before reaching Granada. Peter
Shuemaker lived on the farm now owned and occupied by Charley Zabel,
west of the turn. Shuemaker wanted the road to pass by his farm, and,
at his own expense, built a cut-off in the hope that traffic would be
diverted that way.

Roads in those days were built, mostly, by the simple process of going
out with a plow and running a couple of parallel furrows, with the
proper spacing to accommodate all anticipated traffic. Peter Shuemaker’s
cut-off veered off to the northwest, across the prairies just anywhere
the going seemed to be good, until it intersected the Old Trail again.
And though as simple as that, road building in those days was not
without difficulties. Some would want the road and some wouldn’t want
it.

“Uncle” Peter’s road bumped into a circumstance when his engineer
projected the cut-off across the farm of a certain female importation
from the Emerald Isle. And right there Irish wit and Missouri temper
mixed. William Porter, not so very long removed from the Rushville
hills, was chief engineer and contractor for the prairie division of
“Uncle” Peter’s cut-off. Mrs. Flannigan met the Missourian head-on, with
an old horse-pistol wrapped in her apron. “Off with you, I’ll not have
the place torn up,” she commanded.

Entirely unaware of the ominous clouds rolling up in the sky of his
destiny, the wily William squared himself in an attitude of defiance,
squinted his eyes in the peculiar manner of his people, spat out his
tobacco, and said, “I carkilate I’m running this road.” Whereupon Mrs.
Flannigan unbound her pistol, and replied, “It’s a fine young man you
are, but I’m sorry to tell you that you’ll never see your old mother
again.”

Contractor Porter decided to take fate in his own hands and change the
plans of destiny as decreed by Mrs. Flannigan. He took another chew of
tobacco and then meekly backtracked for a mile over the perfectly good
road he had just built—and ran some more furrows. You couldn’t block
a road project with a horse-pistol, or even with injunctions, in those
days. There was too much open land.

The generous spacings and fine appointments of Peter Shuemaker’s
cut-off—it had a corduroy bridge, over Muddy Creek, with nigger-head
trimmings—were out of all proportion to the scanty travel that passed
his way. And when “Uncle” Peter found that he couldn’t bring the
traffic to him, he, like Mahomet, went to it. Shuemaker built a hotel in
Granada.

Recollections are now about as dim as the Old Trail itself, but there
is one oldtimer who asserts that it is his belief that Ice Gentry
and Charley Manley were credited with being the axe-men who made the
slashings on the timber division of “Uncle” Peter’s cut-off. But, says
another, that may have been before Manley came into the neighborhood.
Nothing certain about that, though. So many of the old fellows have
their biographies so scrambled that it is hard to get at the truth. The
suggestion was, nevertheless, timely. And, anyway, Charley Manley spent
his last day on earth in Peter Shuemaker’s hotel at Wetmore.

As I remember him, Charley Manley was a rather quiet, pleasant mannered
man. And, although a matured man himself — he was about forty, and
unmarried — he made friends of the youngsters about town and seemed to
enjoy their company. He could always find a way to help a boy with a few
dimes.

Early in his career here in Wetmore it was settled that I was to have
the job of turning the grindstone for Charley Manley whenever he needed
help to grind his axe. Since that time I have often wondered why he
had so much axe-grinding to do. But I thoroughly enjoyed, with all the
thankfulness of a growing young boy’s” healthy heart, the dimes and
quarters he gave me. And sometimes I have thought that maybe he ran in a
few extra and needless grindings solely to gladden my heart.

Then came the time when Charley Manley fitted his grindstone with foot
pedals. I used to sit by and watch him do the grinding without my help,
and long for the dime I was being cheated out of by the introduction of
that new labor-saving device. One time Charley Manley let me pour water
on the grindstone while he ran it with foot-power. He said the tin can
suspended over the stone, which was releasing a steady stream of water
where it was needed, did not do the work so satisfactorily. He gave me a
quarter for that.

With all his axe-grinding, I never knew Charley Manley to do more than
chop wood on the Letson wood-pile. No coal was burned here in that
axe-grinding period. Wood was brought in from the timber, a wagon-load
at a time, in the pole, or in cord-wood lengths. It was chopped into
stove lengths as needed, enough to cook a meal at a time. And sometimes
the chopper would make the supply very scanty, or even renege on the job
altogether. Then the cook would have to go out and scrape up chips. How
well I know that. Aside from my axe-grinding activities I spent some
time on the Bristow wood-pile in my younger days. And I am now sorry to
say there were times when my patient mother would have to gather in the
chips.

The last words Charley Manley ever said to me were, “Come over to
Netawaka and see me sometimes, Johnny, and I’ll let you turn the
grindstone for me.” He smiled pleasantly. That was while he was held
in custody here the day of his execution. Poor fellow, he did not then
suspect what was to be his fate. Naturally, I felt badly about the
hanging—and the loss of my opportunity to make another honest dime. And
the worst that I could now wish for the shades of his executioners, is
that they be compelled to take turns in turning Manley’s grindstone,
over there in the vast beyond, until his axe is made sharp, sharp,
sharp—and then, that Charley’s ghost be licensed by Him who judges
all things, to use it—provided, of course, that he didn’t steal their
horses.

MOUNT ERICKSON Published in Wetmore Spectator—

March 27, 1936

By John T. Bristow

It was sixty-two years ago. Our quiet little village, surrounded by
almost continuous open country, with grazing herds all bedded down for
the night, slumbered. A gentle rain was falling.

The night train brought to Wetmore a man bent upon a desperate
undertaking. Jim Erickson was a resident of these parts, but had been
absent for some time. He did not seek lodgings in town. Under cover
of the night he walked west on the railroad track for two miles, then
turned off to the timber on the south. He spent the remainder of the
night in a hay stack at the timber’s edge. Here he loaded his revolver
for the cold-blooded murder of his neighbor and supposedly his friend,
Adolph Marquardt.

With the coming of dawn on that spring morning, May 10, 1873, Jim
Erickson-plodded on foot through the wet grass from his hay-stack bed
to the Marquardt home two miles to the southwest. He knocked for
admittance. The door was opened. Erickson’s gun flashed, and Marquardt
fell dead by the side of the door.

Just what all happened after that is mere conjecture — but rumor had it
that the whole abominable affair rested with Erickson’s burning desire
to break the Tenth Commandment; and as expedient to this insane impulse
he deemed it important for him to break also the Sixth Commandment.
And as it turned out, he just about smashed the whole category of “Thou
shall nots.”

Jim Erickson took the two small Marquardt children over to the home of
Peter Nelson about a quarter of a mile away. He told Nelson that he
had killed Marquardt; that he had shot Mrs. Marquardt in the thigh,
crippling her, so that she could not get away, and that he intended to
kill her when he returned to the home. Erickson also told Nelson that he
had intended to take Mrs. Marquardt away with him, but she had refused
to go.

It was never definitely established that there had been any promises or
understanding between Erickson and Mrs. Marquardt. If there had been any
clandestine meetings, they had the good sense, or more likely the
good luck, to keep it well under cover. The one certain thing is that
Erickson coveted his neighbor’s wife — and that was bad business.

The Marquardt children were too young to realize what had happened. The
older child, a boy of four, could say nothing but “Boom!” The younger
child died two years later in the home of William Morris.

The older boy — now Adolph Nissen — still lives. He was taken into the
home of Christian C. Nissen. Or rather, the Nissens came to the boy’s
home, acquiring the right through due process of law. And they adopted
the boy.

The Marquardts were regarded as fine people, and if there had ever been
any rifts in the family, the world did not know it. Jim Erickson was a
rather quiet and apparently honorable man who owned a homestead north
of the Marquardt home. The Marquardt land is now owned by Mrs. C. C.
Nissen, Christian’s second wife, mother of Frits Nissen, and C. C.’s
other four children—Bill, Homer, George, and Mrs. Charley Love. Peter
Nelson owned the intervening eighty then. Erickson was a bachelor. The
residents of that settlement were all countrymen. That is, they or their
ancestors had immigrated to this country from that little corner of
the old world known as the land of the midnight sun—Sweden, Norway, and
Denmark.

There were no telephones then and the process of summoning the law was
necessarily slow. William Liebig was constable. He was reputedly a very
brave man, but that was one time when he displayed more caution than |.
bravery. With a posse of deputized men, Liebig went to the scene of the
murder—that is, they went near it. For long hours the men hung around on
the fringe of the premises, watching and waiting. Finally Liebig crept
noiselessly up to the house and very cautiously pushed the door open.
His tension relaxed a bit. All occupants of the house were dead. Jim
Erickson had killed Mrs. Marquardt while in bed. He then sent a bullet
through his own head.

At that time there was a small publication at Netawaka whose outspoken
editor believed in calling “a spade a spade.” His printed version of the
affair, purporting to be based on revealments in the house on entry of
the officers, was, to say the least, racily rotten.

Erickson’s body was brought to town and rested for a while in the
wareroom of the DeForest store building. The doctors sawed Erickson’s
head open, and decided that he had an “abnormal brain.” But evidently
they were not satisfied with their findings. Anyhow, it would seem they
craved another whack at him, as will be observed later. In making the
post-mortem the doctors used a common carpenter’s hand saw. I saw them
do it.

Marquardt and his wife were buried in the Wetmore cemetery. Marquardt
was a Union soldier. His grave is marked with a slab bearing only his
name.

There was no one here to claim Jim Erickson’s body. Neil Erickson, a
cousin, lived in that neighborhood—but the crime was too horrible for
him to have any part in the disposal of the murderer. Neil Erickson was
a respected citizen. Neil later married Peter Pope’s widow. She was the
sister of a Wetmore shoemaker named Reuter. Pope gave Reuter a cow
for bringing his sister here—as a prospective bride—besides paying the
woman’s way from Germany. She took with her into the Erickson home one
child — Charley. I do not know if Charley was her son, or Peter Pope’s
by his first wife. Likely the former. Pope had a daughter—Louise. She
was old enough at her father’s death to make her own way. She worked in
Dr. J. W. Graham’s home for several years. Neil Erickson was the father
of Dick Erickson. Jim Erickson’s brother George came later, and lived
here many years. He was an honorable man.

The town people decided that they did not want a murderer buried in
the cemetery, so what was left of Jim Erickson after the doctors had
finished with him, was dumped into a packing box, and he was buried on
top of a high hill just south of town. This hill, then regarded as “no
man’s land,” is now a part of the Bartley farm. It has been locally
known ever since as Mount Erickson.

On the night following the planting of Erickson, two groups of doctors,
with numerous assistants, started out to recover the body. But, as it
turned out, the corpse was left undistributed—at least, for that night.
Rumor had it that it did not remain long on the hill-top.

The Wetmore group, led by Dr. W. F. Troughton, was first in the field.
Close on their heels came the Netawaka group. Dusk was upon them. One of
the Netawaka men rode a white horse. That rider and his companions moved
silently across the slough-grass swamp skirting the big hill, steadily
gaining on the Wetmore men who had halted at the base of the hill.
One of the local hirsute sentinels — they nearly all wore whiskers
then—exclaimed, “It’s a ghost!” That was enough. The Wetmore group
stampeded. The Netawaka group followed suit. And the cattle which had
bedded down for the night at the base of the hill stampeded. The cattle
bellowed, and what with terrified men and frightened beasts running this
way and that way, pandemonium reigned supreme for quite a spell. Perhaps
the cattle, too, had seen Erickson’s ghost.

TURNING BACK THE PAGES Published in Wetmore Spectator and

Horton Headlight—1936.

By John T. Bristow

The Old Overland Trail

STATEMENT BY CHARLES H. BROWNE

Editor Horton Headlight

EDITOR’S NOTE—Nearly a year ago, J. T. Bristow, pioneer resident of
Wetmore and former editor of the Wetmore Spectator, promised Charles H.
Browne, editor of The Headlight at Horton, Kansas, he would prepare
an article dealing with early history of this corner of Kansas,
particularly as it was affected by the Old Military Road, which became
the Overland Stage route to the Far West and also the Pony Express
route.

It was hoped Mr. Bristow would have the article ready for the 50th
Anniversary edition of The Headlight, published on October 29, 1936,
but this he was unable to do. However, he furnished the article several
months later, and The Headlight published it in seven installments.

The article is so unusually well written, so authentic, and of such
absorbing interest that the editor has taken the liberty of reproducing
it in a small booklet in order that it may better be preserved for its
historical importance.

Kansas pioneers living in south-central Nemaha and southern Brown
counties a little more than three-quarters of a century ago, witnessed
the inauguration of a stage line over an old trail passing their very
doors, so to speak.

That road, thick with horse and mule drawn vehicles and long ox-drawn
wagon trains, grew quickly into the greatest thoroughfare of its kind
on the face of the earth. Simply a winding trail, ungraded and almost
wholly without bridges, it was by far the greatest line of vehicular
traffic of all times. It was a road with a golden background. It is the
major topic of this article.

At that time there were no railroads or telegraph lines west of the
Missouri river. A vast wilderness, uninhabited except for Indians and a
few isolated white settlements, all territory between the river and the
Rocky mountains was designated as “The Great American Desert.” By many
it was considered the most worthless stretch of country in the western
world. An error, of course, and one agreeably noted by those living here
now—notwithstanding the New Deal brain trust’s prophecy that much of
this land is to revert to the desert.

WANTS INFORMATION W. F. Turrentine, in Spectator

A few days ago J. T. Bristow received a letter from Albert T. Reid,
national vice-chairman of The American Artists Professional League,
Incorporated, complimenting him on his article, “The Overland Trail,”
and asking for information regarding “Old Bob Ridley,” a famous
frontiersman well known to what few of the old settlers are left in this
vicinity. “Old Bob Ridley” was Robert Sewell who lived in this part of
Kansas in an early day and had a lot of vivid experiences, some of which
Mr. Bristow recorded in the article mentioned. Robert Sewell’s wife,
several years his junior, was a sister of Mrs. V. O. Hough. We quote the
following from Mr. Reid’s letter to Mr. Bristow:

16 Georgia Ave., Long Beach, N. Y., November 14, 1937.

Dear Mr. Bristow:

Ralph Tennal of Sabetha sent me your story, “The Old Overland Trail,” a
few days ago and I read it from kiver to kiver without stopping to catch
my breath. It is very fascinating and a swell job.

I was particularly interested in it because I had done a sketch which
I intended painting sometime. I made the sketch about two years ago
and from my memory of the incident which fascinated me particularly. I
called it “Old Bob Ridley Brings in the Mall.”

Recently I put a mural in place in the Post Office at Sabetha which
was called “The Coming of the New Fast Mail.” It is of the Pony Express
rider passing the old Mail Stage. It has made a hit far beyond my
wildest hopes and leads me to believe this is the sort of thing the
public likes, and particularly our Kansas people—they like something
which is out of their past, realistic, romantic, colorful.

Possibly you may remember me as the fellow who published the Leavenworth
Daily Post for 18 1/2 years and the Kansas Farmer for almost eleven
years during that period. I started to stick type on the Clyde papers.
Was born up in Concordia and I never saw a railroad train until I was
well up to six — just my father’s old stages which ran from Concordia to
Waterville and Marysville.

So you see why the painting of our old past particularly interests me
and why I have a considerable first hand knowledge and feeling for it.
The details are most important to me. I made a most careful research for
my Pony Express and I want to be very accurate with Old Bob when I start
in to paint it. There are a few details I want to get straightened out,
so I am imposing on you to help me, thinking you may have some interest
in seeing the incident preserved.

I gave Mr. Reid the information he desired, but I do not know if he ever
finished a canvass of “Old Bob.” Probably not—for it was my impression
(from reading between the lines) that if and when it should be completed
that I would be expected to approve it, in return for his compliment
to me. Bob’s home town would have been the natural place to exhibit it.
Albert was concerned most as to whether the stage-team driven by Bob
at the time of the Indian attack near Cottonwood Springs, in which he
killed three Redskins and wounded a dozen more, were horses or mules. I
said in my story that “Ben Holladay gave him a gold watch for saving
the stage and the four mules.” And this was Bob’s version of it. So I
gathered that Mr. Reid had this incident in mind for his painting. Only
recently, Dec. 10, 1950, the Topeka Daily Capital ran a story, with
illustration of a canvass by Albert T. Reid, “Main Street—1873” of the
Artist’s old home town, featuring his father’s four-horse stage coach
on the takeoff from Concordia. The Capital article said the women’s
organizations of Concordia were raising a fund of $1,500 to purchase the
canvass.

Bob Ridley (Robert Sewall) brought his colorful record with him when
he came to Wetmore. Here, he was just like everyone else—maybe a little
more so. He took life easy, did not brag overly much about his past
exploits. Early in his career as stage driver on the Overland Trail, he
fell into the habit of helping a red headed girl wait table at Mrs. D.
M. Locknane’s celebrated eating house just west of Granada, grabbing
bites now and again from his plate in the kitchen, as he worked, all
through the twenty minute stops—and when this got monotonous he pepped
up matters by grabbing the redhead, all in one take. He married Cicily
Locknane—and established her in an eating house of their own at a
station in the Little Blue valley west of Marysville, while he himself
continued driving stage. But the frequent Indian raids in that section
soon sent Cicily back to her mother at Granada. Then, when there was no
more stage driving, Bob and Cicily moved down from Granada to Wetmore.
Their activities here have been noted in other articles. Robert Sewell
died in 1884.

J. T. B.

The Overland Trail, along which the mighty traffic of the plains moved,
was first laid out from Fort Leavenworth to Fort Kearney in 1849. The
road was definitely established in 1858, with a weekly mail route from
Saint Joseph to Salt Lake. In its settled state, the line ran daily from
Atchison to Placerville, and Sacramento, California.

Prior to that the route through this section was used by gold-seekers,
following the discovery of gold in California in 1849. It was used by
emigrants, trappers, and adventurers coming from the East. Military
stores from Fort Leavenworth to the posts in the northwest were handled
over this trail. Also, freighting by ox-train was carried on extensively
from Leavenworth to the Mormon settlements in the Salt Lake valley.

Mormons, too, may have traveled the road. And, as has been asserted in
print, Mormons there might have been who camped in a clump of timber a
few miles west of Atchison, causing it to be locally known as “Mormon
Grove.” Straggling Mormons, maybe. But not the main exodus. Contrary to
fixed assumption, the great migration of Mormons to the Salt Lake valley
in 1847 did not pass this way. Driven out of Missouri, they went to
Illinois; and again driven out of Illinois, they traveled through Iowa,
crossed the Missouri river at Council Bluffs and did not touch ground on
which the Old Trail was subsequently established until they reached the
Platte valley at or near Fort Kearney. The offense that had so incensed
the righteous citizens of Missouri and Illinois was flagrant polygamy.

The main group of Mormons camped for nearly two years in Iowa while
Brigham Young, with a few of his disciples, went on farther west is
search of a place outside the United States where he hoped they could
carry on without interference. The Salt Lake valley was then in Mexican
territory. But almost before Brigham’s people had become settled the
war with Mexico was over and Brigham’s refuge was ceded to the “hated”
United States. Then for years the enormous migration across the plains
to California poured through the land of mormon.

Brigham didn’t relish that—and in the following decade he kicked up
quite a disturbance. On every hand, he showed his hatred of all peoples
not Mormon. He climaxed matters with the Meadow Mountain massacre. In
1857 the Mormons plundered and murdered an emigrant train numbering
nearly 150 people. To be exact—a historical fact—120 men and women were
slaughtered. Seventeen children under seven years of age were taken
alive into Mormon camp. Also rumors, and some overt acts, indicated
that the Mormons were planning rebellion. This bit of history is related
merely to clarify statements which follow.

Now the Old Trail through this section came into active use again.
General Albert Sidney Johnson’s army of 5,000 men, with a long ox-train
bearing military supplies, was sent out from Fort Leavenworth to put
down the so-called Mormon uprising. And, incidentally, that new mail
route through here was to give quicker service between Washington and
General Johnson. Prior to that, mail went to Salt Lake and the northwest
forts monthly, out of Independence, up the Kaw valley.

All this business about the Old Trail happened of course before my day.
True, I came into this country over the Old Trail—when traffic was at
its peak—but I was too young to note much. Therefore, in compiling this
article I must draw from memory of what I have read, of what was told in
my presence, by old-timers after the closing years, together with what I
have been able to pick up at this late date—and from what I really know
about subsequent incidents that shall be given consideration. It is not
alone the story of the Old Trail.

I know of no old-timer from whom I could have obtained more reliable
information than from my Uncle Nick Bristow. His first-hand knowledge
of the Old Trail, and of the early history of the West, is reflected
throughout this article.

My uncle, Nicholas Bristow, who died here November 12, 1890, age 69
years, came to Kansas before the Old Trail was in active existence—just
how early, I do not know. When my father wrote his brother from their
old home in Tennessee, he would send his letters in care of the Floyds
at old Doniphan, a steamboat landing on the Missouri river about five
miles north of Atchison. How often my uncle would get his mail depended
upon how often he drove his lumbering ox-team across the forty mile
stretch of intervening prairies to the river for supplies. Uncle Nick
kept that yoke of oxen a long time. I remember seeing him break prairie
with old Buck and Jerry, two rangy Texas steers with long spreading
horns tipped with brass knobs.

And when my Uncle Nick wrote his cousin, Stephen Sersene, in California
to ask, in substance, if he were really finding the gold—the lure that
had snatched the said relative from his old Kentucky home and sent him
scampering across the plains to the Pacific slope in 1849—and could he
himself, should he go out there, stand a reasonable show of filling his
own poke with gold-nuggets, he posted that letter at old Doniphan and it
went to California by way of the Isthmus of Panama.

Had Uncle Nick been so fortunate as to get that letter in the mails so
as to reach the Atlantic seaboard in time to connect with a semi-monthly
sailing it would have reached his cousin Steven in about thirty days.
With the inauguration of the Central Overland Stage Line, letters mailed
at Granada or old Powhattan were taken through to the western coast in
seventeen days—and later, by Pony Express, in ten days. Now, if he
were living, my uncle could have his letters delivered in California by
air-mail in ten hours. Thus have we progressed! Now, too, as all know,
with three enabling devices, one can telegraph, talk, and sing to
California, at will—and, if your photograph is of importance to the news
service, it can, within certain bounds, be wired to California at the
rate of an inch a minute for the breadth of the finished picture.

And had my uncle decided to go to California, the Isthmus route would
have been his quickest and best way, if not the only safe way. However,
notwithstanding the perils and delays of overland travel, more than a
hundred thousand people crossed the plains in the first two years of the
gold rush—many of them passing this way.

Our former townsman, Sneathen Vilott, whose home was then in Illinois,
and who came to Kansas in 1855, went to California by way of the Isthmus
of Panama during the gold excitement. I have often heard him talk
entertainingly about that experience. Also, William J. Oliphant, father
of Mrs. Robert T. Bruner, of Granada, went overland to California in
1849, and returned by way of the Isthmus. However, the goddess of gold
did not smile upon either of these men. Indeed, they both worked in
menial pursuits to earn return passage.

Like nearly every one else in those days, Uncle Nick was gold-minded. He
coveted some of that gold. In fact, we all did in our day—uncle, father,
brother, and I.

With sails all set for California and the placers, my father, William
Bristow, actually got out as far as Kansas in 1856. But someone in old
Doniphan, a relative of the Floyds who had been to California, took
the wind out of his sails with a negative report. My father was then
twenty-one years old. He visited his brother here, then went back to
Nashville, got married, and came out here again with his family in 1865.
He finally went to California to live out his last years. He died at
Fresno in 1908.

In California, my father did not take up the hunt for gold—though, on
one occasion when I was visiting him, he drove with me over to the old
site of Millerton, which was one of the rich placers in the early days.
It is where the San Joaquin river comes down out of the mountains.
The only remaining evidence of that once hell-roaring town of 10,000
inhabitants is the old territorial jail, a large stone building with
heavily barred windows and three foot walls — a relic of the wicked
past.

While standing on the west bank of that swift flowing stream, watching
the foaming waters among the boulders rush past, my father, pulling
at his own whiskers in a sort of meditative way, said, with apparent
regret, “If it hadn’t been for that old long-whiskered cuss back there
at Old Doniphan, I might have been out here when there was something
doing; and probably”—he glanced toward the old jail which was then
closed to the public—”have gotten to see the inside of that building.”

While at old Millerton my father told me that my brother Dave, then
in business in Fresno, had sent a representative and $5,000 into the
Klondike country. In passing, I may say here that my brother’s five
“grand” found a permanent home in the frozen north. Also, the miner
sent to Alaska on a grubstake agreement got back within two years with
nothing more than a sizable tale of hardships—and ten frosted toes.
Julius Pohl, from Horton; Col. Ed. Post, from Atchison; and Sam
Ebelmesser, formerly of Wetmore, now living in Los Angeles, were in
that frenzied, frozen, Alaskan gold rush. Also, my brother Dave had some
non-productive experience in seeking “black gold” in the Bakersfield
oilfield—$15,000 worth of it.

My Uncle Nick was a Union soldier in the Civil war, and before that a
soldier in the Mexican war of 1848—the war that dashed the heaven out of
Brigham’s haven. Also, in a way, he was a soldier of fortune. He hunted
gold, and he hunted mountain lions in the Rockies.

But Uncle Nick did not go to California. Almost before he had had time
to hear from his cousin Steve, he got his chance to dig for gold—and
strange as it may appear, it was in Kansas! My uncle was among the
first at the sensational Cherry c reek gold diggings—the present site of
Denver—in 1858, advertised at the time in the East as the gold-fields of
western Kansas. For want of a better known landmark, probably, the scene
of that gold strike was inaccurately laid in the shadow of Pike’s Peak.
Though visible on clear days, through the sun-drenched haze that lies
always, like a pall, over the mountain fastness, Pike’s Peak is a good
hundred miles south of Denver. But that gold find was truly in Kansas.
At that time Kansas territory extended west to the backbone of the Rocky
mountains. The city of Denver—first called Auraria—scene of the Cherry
creek placers, was named after the territorial Governor of Kansas—James
W. Denver.

Uncle Nick located a claim at the Cherry creek diggings and sent home
to my aunt Hulda a small bottle of gold-dust, saying in a letter to
her that she was “no longer a poor man’s wife!” That was, as my aunt
afterwards said, a “sorry” thing to do—like giving a reprieve to a
condemned man, and then revoking it. My uncle brought home no gold. He
must have neglected his claim for the more hazardous business of hunting
mountain lions.

That ferocious beast, if you don’t know, is the big cat with four
names. In the East and South he is the panther. In the Rockies he is
the mountain lion. In Arizona and on the Pacific slope he is the cougar.
Somewhere he is the puma. And everywhere he is the killer!

No Government bounty was paid on cougars then, as there is now; but the
pelts were much in demand for rugs. Hunters went after the lions for the
same reason that early-day trappers sought the beaver. I recall that the
lion rug in my uncle’s home, measuring eight feet from tip to tip, with
stuffed head and artificial eyes—a trophy of his Rocky mountain hunts,
killed at the risk of his own life, was a scary thing. The great beast
was shot in the nick of time — in mid-air, after that two hundred pounds
of destruction had made the spring for my uncle from an overhanging limb
of a great pine.

And, incidentally, I might say my father had some terrifying experience
with that killer, the panther. He was walking through the dark woods
in his native Tennessee, nearing his home, when a night prowler fell in
behind him, coming so close that he could feel the animal’s breath on
his swinging hands, and he thought nothing of it—just then. Likely one
of his dogs come to meet him. But in the yard, he could see by the light
of the lamp in the window, which my mother was always careful to put
there to show him that he would not be trespassing on the home of a
wicked woman living in a lonely cabin in the nearby deep wood—a witch,
they called her; but there was suspicion that she was more than that to
some of the menfolk—he could see that his trailer was a panther. It had
feasted on the offals from the day’s hog-killing, or butchering—and,
with a bellyful, was in a rather composed mood. Not so my Dad. Did he
run? He did not. He had learned from old hunters to not show fright when
in a tight spot with that ugly animal. However, he said his stimulated
mind reached the door about twenty “shakes of a sheep’s tail” ahead of
his paralyzed legs.

Uncle Nick’s recounted experiences with the lions were enough to fire
the hunting blood in his young nephew. Later, however, the nephew going
over the same ground said to himself, “To hell with the lions—me for the
gold!” The contagion had gotten me. Recounting the great wealth of the
five major placers, I “cussed” myself—mildly, of course — for not having
been born earlier.

Too late for the placers, and thoroughly imbued with the idea, I took a
dip at hard-rock mining—and, paradoxically, “cussed” myself again. Less
mildly, however. Ah, that delving for gold—it is a dramatic game, a
business wherein the element of chance runs rampant and the imagination
is given unbridled play.

Bedeviled by Indians and highwaymen, there were perils and hardships in
travel along the Overland Trail in those days—but nothing, absolutely
nothing, slowed up the westward march. The race to acquire new wealth
was on! “Pike’s Peak, or Bust,” was the slogan! In swinging up through
Nebraska the Old Trail made a wide rainbow circle to reach Denver.
There was literally “a pot of gold” at the end of the rainbow! Gold,
glittering yellow gold! Nothing else in the wide world has ever stirred
men more deeply, driven them to greater tests of endurance, or robbed
them more swiftly of reason.

Still, gold changed the whole history of the country. It sent a mighty
migration of people across the continent, built a trans-continental
railroad, and established an American empire on the Pacific coast. And
gold—magic gold — was the life-stream of the old Overland Trail!

The Cherry creek placers were the first after the California discoveries
to attract the throngs of that gold-mad era. It was gold here in
mid-continent! Gold in Kansas! It was new business for the Old Trail.
The great bulk of western travel, with attending heavy commerce, was to
the goldfields.

Again, in 1863, when placer gold was discovered in the Alder Gulch
section of Montana, traffic on the old line became enormously heavy.
The three principal camps—Bannock, Virginia City, and Nevada—yielded
a hundred million dollars in placer gold. Twenty thousand gold-hungry
miners frantically worked the streams for the yellow metal, while
thousands more men were on the road to and from that Eldorado. They were
mostly from the East—men who had traveled the Old Trail through here.

Indians have been mentioned. They were notably troublesome at times,
especially in the buffalo country west of the Blue river. In that
territory there were four hostile tribes—Sioux, Cheyenne, Comanche, and
Pawnee. The Indians had the Overland Stage line between the Blue and
Julesburg blocked for six weeks in 1864. Station-keepers, stage-drivers,
and travelers were killed; stations were burned and stage-stock stolen.
The congestion along the line extended back to Atchison. Numerous
itinerant outfits were detained at Granada.

Even in my time, on this side of the Blue, the sight of a red blanket
out in the open was enough to send a spasm of fear surging through
children, and adults did not feel any too comfortable. Always there
was that feeling that approaching Indians in numbers might not be our
Kickapoos, but hostiles from the other side of the Blue. Then there came
a day when our citizens were sure of it—no mistaking that band of four
hundred redskins for the peaceful Kickapoos!

It was a queer looking cavalcade — tall braves and Indians squatty,
squaws fat and greasy, bronze maidens passably “fair”; children,
papooses, ponies, and dogs galore — with luggage lashed on long poles
hitched to ponies in buggy-shaft fashion, with the rear ends dragging on
the ground. The Indian travois.

At four o’clock of a rather hot summer day, those Indians, unannounced,
made camp at the old ford near the edge of town. Two of our influential
townsmen—one professional, one artisan — invaded the Indian camp, and
through speech, signs, or somehow, gleaned the information that
the Indians were from Nebraska and were on their way to the Indian
Territory.

Come early bonfire-light that night, those two white men re-entered
the Indian camp. They took along a Scotsman’s “wee bit” of the Indian’s
“firewater,” but whether they unlawfully gave it to the braves or
drank it themselves, was cloaked in silence. The charitable townspeople
preferred to believe they drank it themselves—hence the mess. But the
best “kid” analysis at the time favored the belief that the trouble had
all come about through the white man’s ignorance of Indian etiquette—as
with respect to bronze maidens passably “fair.”

Those two white men were ejected from the Indian camp—not exactly thrown
out on their ears, but definitely dismissed. Expressed in Indian terms,
here was a tribe whose braves “no like paleface put nose in Indian’s
business.” In the telling, those two rebuffed men themselves did not
seem to care very much—but all through the night the town waited in
suspense. No exaggeration, there was needless apprehension. And may I
add that this episode did not react unfavorably against the future high
standing of those two influentials.

Traffic on the old dirt road, known as the Overland Trail, began in a
big way in 1859, when the powerful freighting firm of Russell, Majors,
and Waddell acquired the stage and mail business of John M. Hockaday,
who held the first mail contract. The road was given another big
boost when Ben Holladay, with his famous Concord coaches and four and
six-horse teams, came onto the line in 1861. Holladay took over the
stage and mail business of Russell, Majors, and Waddell.

About three thousand horses and mules were in the stage service. Eight
to twelve animals were kept at each station, which were spaced on an
average of twelve miles apart. At its highest the stage fare to Denver
was $125, and to Sacramento $225.

The Russell, Majors, and Waddell firm, with headquarters at Atchison and
Leavenworth, continued in the freighting business. This company employed
8,000 men, and was equipped with 6,000 heavy wagons, and 75,000 oxen.
At the same time there were about twenty other firms and individuals
freighting out of Atchison.

The Russell firm, with other interests, established the Pony Express in
1860. The route from St. Joseph to Sacramento, 1920 miles, was covered
in ten days—semi-weekly, at first. When the Civil war commenced, it was
changed to daily. In the service were eighty riders and 500 horses — not
ponies of the Indian class, but the best blooded horses that money
could buy. They had to be fast to outrace the hostile Indians. The
Pony Express, carrying first-class letters and telegrams only, lasted
eighteen months. Telegraph connection with the Far West was established
then. For a half-ounce letter a 10-cent Government postage stamp and
a dollar Pony Express stamp were required. The Pony Express charge was
much more at first.

Riders starting from St. Joseph and Sacramento simultaneously every
morning kept a constant stream going both ways—day and night. Like the
stage drivers, each rider had a given territory to make, with a change
of horses every twelve miles. The first lap was from St. Joseph to
Seneca. Lightweight riders only were used—mere boys they were. Don C.
Rising was a Pony Express rider. He made his home in Wetmore after the
close of the staging days.

The old road, with St. Joseph and Leavenworth as initial starting
points, had a junction at Kennekuk, one and one-half miles south of the
present site of Horton. On the St. Joseph branch were three stations —
Wathena, Troy, and Lewis.

Later, Atchison was made the starting point for the stage and mails. At
this time railroad service was extended from St. Joseph to Atchison—and,
on the west end, river service was had from Sacramento to San Francisco.
The first station out of Atchison was Lancaster, 11 miles. Then
Kennekuk, 24 miles; Kickapoo, 36 miles; Log Chain, 49 miles; Seneca, 60
miles.

From Seneca the line continued westward to Marysville. It crossed the
Big Blue river at Marysville, went up the Little Blue valley, crossed
over to the Platte valley, then up the Platte to Fort Kearney. At
Julesburg one branch turned south into Denver. The main line crossed the
South Platte at Julesburg, touched at Fort Larimer and Fort Bridger
in Wyoming. From Salt Lake it took a western course across Nevada to
Virginia City; thence over the Sierra Nevada mountains to Placerville
and Sacramento.

Considerable attention is given to the routing through Nemaha and Brown
counties. For historical purposes, it is important that this should be
done now while it is yet possible to trace the route with some degree
of accuracy. Only slight evidences of the Old Trail remain. Practically
everything obtainable now is a carry over from another generation,
hearsay. In a few years more all information pertaining to the old road
will have been relayed to a third and fourth generation, if not, indeed,
forgotten altogether, locally. There are people here now, some living
almost atop the Old Trail, who have never heard of it. There are none
living now who were adults then, and even very few who were children.
Albert Pitman, of Sabetha, aged 90, is probably the oldest person now
living who was in the Powhattan-Granada neighborhood during staging
days. Mrs. Martha Hart, E. J. Woodman, Volley Hough, Edwin Smith, and
Ed. Vilott, now living at McAlister, Oklahoma, were children.

Tracing the Old Trail, locally, we find: The road at first came almost
due west from Kennekuk across the Kickapoo Indian reservation, but
probably bent over into what is now Brown County, as it followed the
ridges. It crossed the Delaware at a point about eighty rods upstream
from the crooked bridge on the present south line of the reservation—the
Jackson-Brown County line. The Kickapoo reservation at that time
contained about 150,000 acres. It has since been diminished three times.
Now it is a block five by six miles in extent, thirty sections, 19,200
acres — with much of the land owned by the whites.

The first mission, built in 1856, was located on Horton Heights, inside
the present city limits of Horton. The site was marked by a red glacial
boulder on December 1, 1936 — 80 years after the Indian school was
established by E. M. Hubbard—the first school of any kind in Brown
County.

Also, there is confusion about the name of the stream spanned by the
crooked bridge. Some call it the Grasshopper, and others refer to it as
Walnut creek. It is neither. Lewis and Clark, explorers, named it the
Grasshopper in 1804. It was changed to the Delaware in 1875 by an act of
the Kansas legislature.

From that creek crossing, the trail followed the ridge to the old town
of Powhattan in section 33, Powhattan township—the same section on which
the East Powhattan school house is located, at the present intersection
of U. S. 75 and the new graveled highway now running 11 miles straight
east to Horton. The change station was on the northeast quarter, owned
by Henry Gotchell, who had charge of the station, and also the post
office.

My mother got her first letter written by relatives in Tennessee, at
the Powhattan post office. Her cousin, Gaius Cullom, a school teacher,
wrote: “Powhattan—why, that’s an Indian name! I am grieved to believe
my dear cousin Martha is residing dangerously close to wild Indians. Be
careful, my favorite, and don’t let those accursed aborigines get your
scalp!” Alone for the day with her three small children in her country
home, a year later, some such fears must have gripped my mother, when,
on approach of a meandering band of blanketed Kickapoos, she hurriedly
gathered up her brood and made a dash for the cornfield.

The old town of Powhattan—not to be confused with the present town of
Powhattan farther over in Brown county—which was established 11 miles
northeast when the Rock Island railway went through in 1886 — was in the
center of the northwest quarter of section 33. There was a store, hotel,
blacksmith shop, and numerous dwellings. Although regularly surveyed in
town lots, nobody really owned the land on which the town was located
at the time. It was held by “quatter’s rights,” in succession, by three
men—Peter Shavey, Riley Woodman, and C. C. Grubb. It is now a cornfield,
owned by Mrs. James Grubb.

From Powhattan, the line ran west across the Timber-lake and Cassity
lands. The Timberlake land is now owned by Mrs. Cora Jenkins. The road
then followed the ridge to Granada, passing from Brown county to Nemaha
county at that point.

In 1860 the Powhattan change station was moved to a point three miles
north. The change was made to take out a big curve and save mileage.
The new station was called Kickapoo. It was on Indian land near the
new mission on the west edge of the reservation. Noble H. Rising was in
charge. Later, he was a merchant in Wetmore; as was also W. W. Letson,
Express messenger.

Going back to the Grasshopper-Delaware crossing, the new line ran
northwest to the mission, crossing Gregg’s creek—now Walnut creek—about
midway. From the mission, the road crossed the Bill Garvin lands and
went almost due west to Granada, crossing Gregg’s (Walnut) creek again
downstream from the present bridge east of Granada. Joe Plankington
recently found a cache of rough “diamonds” in a hollow at the base of a
tree near this crossing. The “rocks” were supposedly hidden there by a
returning traveler, back in the sixties—probably a prospector afraid to
chance crossing the Kickapoo reservation, carrying his precious find.

NOTE—Since this article was printed in 1936, Joe Plankington tells me
that one of the old Kickapoos—Pas-co-nan-te, father of John “Butler
” —told him the Indians were stalking the traveler and that he,
Pas-co-nan-te, watched the wayfarer hide the rocks in that tree, many
moons ago. And Joe said the old Indian accurately traced the way — on
paper—tree by tree, from the Trail to the right tree.

And furthermore, Joe believes he has seen the scalp of the former
possessor of his rocks—and at the same time had his own hair standing
on end. Because of a slight favor by Joe, Pas-co-nan-te asked him if he
would like to see a scalp, and at the same time told a young Indian whom
Joe thinks was a grandson, to fetch one. When the scalp was laid down
where Joe could get a good look at it, Pas-co-nan-te grabbed Joe by the
“topknot” saying, “Maybe me show you how.” The knife the Indian held in
his other hand cut Joe to the quick—but the blood froze in his veins,
and not a drop was spilled. Then the old Indian said, “Me foolin.’ Me
know better now.” The young Indian told Joe, later, that he was pretty
sure the old Indians had killed the traveler.

Joe also says he sent one of the “diamonds” to a niece in Boise, Idaho,
and that the cutter who dressed the stone—for $25—pronounced it a
high-quality pigeon blood ruby.

The old stage drivers “bumped” into many exciting and some amusing
incidents. In the Far West “Hank Monk” held the record for fast driving
and tall stories. And fictitious or not, “Hank” was the ranking driver
in the West. Here it was Bob Ridley, Bill Evans, and Lon Huff—with Bob
well out in front. My cousin, Bill Porter, says his uncle Bill Evans
told this one. His run took him across the Kickapoo reservation.
Whenever his stage would pass the Indian Mission the young Indians would
put on a demonstration — race their ponies around the stage, compelling
him to stop. Then they would ask for tobacco. Bill was always prepared
for them. On one trip out of Saint Joseph he had only two passengers
— mere boys, from the East. They said they were going West to fight
Indians, and they had the guns strapped on them to do it. Knowing how
the young Indian bucks would perform, Bill told his passengers that he
was now coming into Indian country, and was liable to be attacked—but
they, the boys, must not start shooting until he gave the word. It would
be suicidal for them to start the fight. He told them other reasonable
and some* highly unreasonable stories about the Indians. The boys were
expecting the worst. The young Indian bucks appeared as usual, and
circled the stage—yelling, screaming, yelling like assassins pouring out
of bedlam. Bill tossed his plug of tobacco out to them—then climbed
down from his high seat and looked in on the boys. They were down on the
floor, hiding. Before completing his run, the boys told Evans that they
were going to abandon the notion of fighting Indians. Bill said, “I told
them that I was sure they would change their minds after having one good
look at the Indians.” One of the boys said, “We didn’t really get a good
look at them—.” but we heard their blood-curdling yells, and that was
enough. The other boy said, “What I want to know is—how do we happen to
be alive?”

After the removal of the Powhattan change station, Henry Gotchell sold
to Riley Woodman. Woodman sold to C. C. Grubb, who came to section 33
in 1857. Grubb was postmaster after Gotchell. Mail was carried down from
Granada. Later, the Powhattan postoffice was moved to Wetmore.

Riley Woodman, father of E. J. Woodman, came in 1863. While the mail and
stage now went on the north road, some traffic still followed the old
line. In December, 1863, an ox-train transporting Government supplies
was snowed in at the Woodman place and remained there until March. In
the outfit were seventeen men, two saddle horses, and ninety-six oxen.

The Government paid Woodman one dollar a- bushel for corn—not an
excessive price, under prevailing conditions. But often freighters and
travelers were compelled, in emergencies, to pay ruinous prices for
feed. Scarcity and the high cost of provisions at times, also taxed the
travelers’ slender resources.

In 1860, the driest of all years in Kansas since the first efforts at
farming, nothing was produced. Potatoes, Mrs. Martha Hart tells me, did
not grow as large as hazelnuts. That year William Porter yoked up four
steers to his lumber wagon and drove them over into Missouri, where he
traded one yoke of oxen for provisions—and he didn’t get a burdensome
return load, at that. There was a little short slough-grass in the
lowlands, which the farmers cut with cradles and sold to overland
travelers at twenty cents a pound.

From Granada, the road went past the cemetery, touched at the Sneathen
Vilott farm, section 24, Capioma township; thence northwest to Log Chain
in section 19. From Log Chain the line ran northwest to old Lincoln,
section 13, Mitchell township—about one mile northeast of the State
lake—thence to Seneca. Granada and Lincoln were not change stations.

If the hills about old Log Chain could talk, doubtless one could find
a lot of story material there. While to my knowledge the only thing
to distinguish that station was the mud-hole that gave it its name, it
really has a colorful background. Rich in legendary lore and historical
fact, there is no telling what an enterprising artist might do in
painting the old picture over. It is said Abe Lincoln got as far west as
Log Chain. The land is now owned by Dr. Sam Murdock.

Nearly all the old-timers here took one or more turns at bull-whacking
across the plains. It was the only sure money “crop” for the pioneer
farmer. Usually one trip was enough. Fred Liebig, Henry McCreery, and
John Williams made several trips.

Fred Shumaker, father of Roy and “Hank,” who came here in 1856, was a
driver for the freighting firm that transported the stores for General
Johnson’s army. After the army had reached Fort Bridger, where it was
detained through the first winter, Shumaker was detailed as driver for
a guard sent on beyond Salt Lake to meet the army payroll coming in from
California. The safe containing the money was transferred to his
wagon. On that trip he saw, scattered about on either side of the road,
bleaching in the desert sun, the bones of those ill-fated emigrants who
lost their lives in the Meadow Mountain massacre. Fred Shumaker earned
enough money on that trip to pay for his first farm, which cost him
$1.25 an acre. He married Rachel Jennings, the sister of Zeke Jennings
who lived on a farm northeast of Wetmore for many years. She was
employed in the Perry hotel at Kennekuk.

Bill and Ben Porter, who came here first in 1856—left, and came again in
1858, drove oxen for a transport company hauling Government supplies. On
one trip, the company feed supplies ran short out in Wyoming and most of
the stock died. The train was hauling corn to the northwest forts, but
it could not be used, even in emergencies like that. A guard was left
with the train while waiting for fresh oxen to move it. The weak cattle,
still able to travel, were taken back to Leavenworth. It was a bitter
cold winter. The drivers protected themselves as best they could from
the Arctic blasts in snow drifts.

Wagon trains of the larger outfits consisted of twenty-five wagons, five
yoke of oxen and a driver for each wagon — with wagon-boss, assistant
boss, and herder.

My Uncle Nick Bristow and Green Campbell took a turn at bull-whacking
for that major freighting firm—Russell, Majors, and Waddell. But imbued
with the spirit of the times, they forsook the bulls for the more
exciting business of panning gold. My uncle’s exploits have been
mentioned. In other articles I have referred, with no little degree of
pride, to the Campbell mining success—he having gone from here into the
West in company with my uncle—and then, too, he “schooled” one connected
with my own efforts in the mining game. That we failed to duplicate his
enviable success was no reflection on that able tutor.

This, however, has never been in print. Green Campbell made his first
money at mining in the Cherry creek diggings — $60,000. He spent most of
it while in that camp. He told my mining partner, Frank Williams, that
he spent his money rather too freely, in the customary way of that
period, at old Auraria. It was money he very much needed later. With
only $1,500 of his stake remaining, he went to the Alder Gulch diggings
in Montana. At Bannock he and a partner, Mart Walsh, located claims
which sold for $80,000. Walsh, a merchant at Muscotah in the early days,
at one time owned 600 acres of land north of that town. He died in a
county home in Oklahoma, penniless. He was a brother-in-law of Mrs.
William Maxwell, of Wetmore.

Later, Green Campbell made his big fortune, millions, in lode mining in
Utah and Nevada, which, since his death has, largely, been kept intact
by his wife and two sons, Allen and Byram — his second family — now
living at 705 Camden Drive, Beverly Hills, California. The first boy was
named for his father, who, in the halls of Congress, was the Honorable
Allen G. Campbell. The other boy was named for Campbell’s partner in
the famous Horn Silver mine—August Byram, of Atchison. There was a girl,
Caroline.

Given space, I could make of this in itself a very interesting story.
Green Campbell’s second wife was Eleanor Young, a reporter on a Salt
Lake newspaper, and daughter-in-law of the famous old Brigham himself,
who hated all peoples not of the Mormon faith. It is not recorded that
the lady said to her man, like Ruth of old, “Thy people shall be my
people, and thy God my God.” But the inference is, she did. Campbell did
not go Mormon. Indeed, he was poison to the saints after he contested
the election of his Mormon opponent, Bishop Cannon, and took unto
himself the Canadian’s seat in Congress after it had been occupied by
the alien for nearly two years.

Several of the old stage drivers, after closing days, married and
settled down in Wetmore. Robert Sewell married Cicily Locknane; Lon
Huff married Clara Rising; Bill Evans married Kate Porter. Through
their activities on the stage line, and breathing the free atmosphere
of frontier life, these men were all moulded pretty much into a like
pattern. Good story-tellers all, they lent themselves to the occupation
without stint. Jovial and courteous at all times, they shunned
work—unless it be with horses. Lon Huff drove the hearse for the local
undertaker. He had a black team for adults, and a team of white horses
for children.

Robert Sewell, the outstanding character, known on the plains as “Bob
Ridley,” owned a livery stable here. Shall I tell the auto-minded young
sprouts that the livery stable, now in the discard, was an enterprise of
the horse-and-buggy days—a place where rigs were kept for hire?
Sewell’s wife, Cicily, ran a hotel. Her mother, Mrs. D. M. Locknane,
had conducted a famous eating house just west of Granada during overland
days. Those two early-day enterprises of the Sewells were known as the
“Overland Livery Stable,” and the “Overland Hotel.” Bob Sewell had a
record of killing three Indians and wounding a dozen more in a running
fight near Cottonwood Springs. Ben Holladay gave him a gold watch for
saving the stage and four mules.

About the Old Trail, I have heard my uncle say that in the flush times
of 1865 and 1866, when traffic was at its peak, there was hardly an hour
of the day when one could not see the road lined for miles—one seeming
endless procession moving westward. No other road ever had such a
promiscuous, persevering throng—a weary plodding throng, whose way was
fraught with many hardships, whose dead were left all along the Old
Trail from the Missouri river to the Golden Gate. Other stage lines
threaded the West and the Southwest—but the Overland has gone down in
history as the greatest of them all.

Three score and ten years have now gone by since the last Concord stage
coach made its final run from Atchison, through Granada. All equipment
was at that time moved west to the end of steel—leaving the eastern end
of the great Overland Trail abandoned and waiting, a lost ghost, for the
day when Fate, slow but sure, should plow it under. And with poignant
memory was gone, too, a stirring bit of frontier life in the West.


MEMORY’S STOREHOUSE UNLOCKED Published in Wetmore Spectator,
Holton Recorder, Seneca Courier-Tribune, Atchison Daily Globe—

December, 1938.

By John T. Bristow

Green Campbell’s Colorful Mining Career

The train wound its way by easy stages down from the mountain heights
into the desert valley. The railroad split the great basin in halves.
On either side treeless mountains rose in endless succession. It was
mid-summer in the great inter-mountain region—and the sage-fringed
valley, broad and almost level, stretching ahead for miles and miles,
shimmered frightfully under the glaring rays of the noonday sun. And
winds swept out of the south like withering blasts from a slag furnace.

It was the Utah desert.

Far off to the right, shrouded in desert haze, could be seen the tip of
a mountain which marked the approximate location of a famous early-day
mining camp. The scene — barren, desolate, and so familiar to me —
brought back a flood of memories. Instantly my mind dwelt upon events
of the long-ago in that old mining camp and simultaneously with the
home-life back in Kansas of the man who made it.

In that brief flash I saw it all. In that jumbled picture I glimpsed
a sturdy hoist over a deep shaft at the base of that mountain,
whose cables had in times past brought up daily tons of high-grade
argentiferous ore, every ton of which, though it greatly enriched my
erstwhile Kansas.

The last installment of J. T. Bristow’s fascinating tale of the career
of Green Campbell is a fine piece of writing. We have heard many
commendable expressions on this biographical sketch. . . . The author,
J. T. Bristow, is a resident of Wetmore, a former newspaperman,
well known to many of our citizens. That he is a good writer is the
conviction of all.

—WILL T. BECK, Holton Recorder, neighbor, had spelled defeat for him in
the most sacred phase of human life.

In that flash I glimpsed too a stretch of rich rolling Kansas prairie
lined with streams of running water and a healthy growth of timber,
in the center of which, down by the timber’s edge, was once this man’s
place of abode, and which was then, and still is, but a few miles from
my own home. And I saw a wrecked home; a court house thronged with
curious people; and a lonely woman, a distraught wife and mother of a
little boy, fighting desperately for her freedom—and alimony.

The scene is now in Kansas. It will shift back and forth between here —
meaning, roughly, Wetmore, from which place this writing issues—and the
old mining West again and again as this narrative unfolds.

THE CHERRYVALE ICE CO.

Watkins Brothers, Prop’s

CHERRYVALE, KANSAS

Feby. 17, 1939.

Jno. T. Bristow, Esq., Wetmore, Kans.

Dear Friend John:

“Memory’s Store-House Unlocked,” by J. T. Bristow, appearing in the
Wetmore Spectator, came to me through the mail recently and I sure
enjoyed reading it more than anything I have read in some time.

Having attended the Campbell University and knowing personally many of
the characters in your article makes it of unusual interest and I wish
to congratulate you for writing such an interesting historic record and
thank you for the copy sent me.

Sincerely yours,

F. M. Watkins

Among the emigrants from the East during the early settlement of the
Sunflower state, were John and Green Campbell. Tall, stalwart young men
they were. Green was then twenty-two years old. John was a few years
older. With their sisters, Caroline and Sally Ann, and their mother,
Ruth Campbell, born in North Carolina in 1803, they came to Nemaha
county by ox-team in a covered wagon from down around Springfield,
Missouri, in 1856. Their father, James Campbell, had died in Missouri.

Passing up smooth high lands, the brothers selected adjoining claims in
the breaks of upper Elk creek, section thirty, Wetmore township. This
selection of rather rough lands was influenced no doubt by the presence
of some timber and a spring of “living” water—two indispensable
requisites of the pioneer farmer. Then, too, they might have entertained
the notion of becoming cattle barons. Many of the early comers had
such dreams. Here was the ideal location. Here they would have few
neighbors—and unlimited free range.

Goodsprings, Nevada, February 12, 1939.

Mr. John T. Bristow, Wetmore, Kansas.

Dear Sir:

I want to thank you for the copies of the Wetmore Spectator which you
sent to me, which carry the life of father. Frank Williams had already
given me one issue, which I have loaned to several of father’s friends,
a few of whom are still alive. The new copies will be treasured by my
brother, my sister, and myself.

Father died while I was still so young that I have been able to retain
but few memories of him. However, I have gathered so many impressions
from friends who knew him well, not to mention mother, that I feel that
I have gained quite a true picture of him. In this connection it seems
to me that your life of him is not only accurate, in its main for I know
this to be true features, but that it goes deeper, and gives some
of the spirit that animated him. And particularly do I like your last
paragraph, and your reference “. . . . in whose heart there seems to
have burned an inextinguishable desire for something that never came.”;

Sincerely yours,

Byram C. Campbell

In that same year, 1856, Isaiah Thomas, with his family, came here from
Newton, Iowa. He had traveled all the way from Indiana to Iowa, thence
here, with ox-team and covered wagon. Custom and bovine traits had
caused him to walk alongside his oxen for practically all those wearying
miles. Isaiah Thomas settled on a quarter of land north of that taken up
by Green Campbell. His eldest boy, Elwood, was a lad of fifteen years,
seven years younger than Green Campbell. The destinies of these
two young men were to be subsequently linked together in gigantic
enterprises in a still newer frontier environment.

Times were close for the Campbells. They were compelled, as were many
early Kansas settlers, to pick up here and there a few extra dollars,
as opportunity offered, while becoming established on the farm. Green
Campbell found employment with the freighting firm of Russell, Majors,
and Waddell, at Leavenworth. His work took him often into the West.
When the Cherry creek gold excitement on the east slope of the Rocky
mountains broke out in 1858, he joined the throngs in that mad rush.
He cleaned up $60,000 from the placer mines, but had spent most of it
before coming back to his homestead.

Then for a while Green worked his land while the boy Elwood grew up.
Elwood was not to come into the picture, the gigantic doings, for some
years yet. In the meantime his father, Isaiah Thomas, had gone to the
war and had died in Arkansas. His mother, Martha Thomas, with her family
of seven children, had moved over to the north part of the township and
settled on forty acres a quarter mile east of Wetmore, which place has
been, until a few months ago, the home of her son, Manning. Unmarried,
and the last of that pioneer family, he died May 12, 1938. Though very
young, Elwood Thomas also joined the Union ranks and was held prisoner
of war at Tyler, Texas, for nearly a year. Shortly after returning
from the war, he married Maria Adamson, of Holton. They had four
children—three girls and a boy. Charley, the son, died at Beatty,
Nevada, in August last year.

Five years after his first mining venture, in 1863, Green Campbell was
again panning gold at Bannock, Montana. His take this time was $40,000.
Then, after one more desultory try on the farm, he married Florence
Oursler, of Circleville, in 1867. She was the daughter of Rufus Oursler,
wealthy resident of Jackson County. She was a beautiful woman.

For a few years contentment reigned in the Campbell home. I remember
going with my Uncle Nick Bristow one time when he visited in that home.
We went in a covered wagon, a wagon that was little more than a ghost of
the old “prairie schooner,” having all five of the bows still in place,
with a tattered canvas over only the rear half. But my uncle walked all
the way alongside his nigh ox. Uncle had a “log-wagon” for heavy hauling
on the farm. He kept this one for special occasions and Sunday driving.
He owned no horses.

Uncle Nick and Green Campbell had mined together in the Cherry creek
diggings—and the fact that his host of the day had cleaned up big, while
he himself brought home only alibis, and a cougar pelt, had not impaired
a fine friendship. Conscious of Mr. Campbell’s mine-made money, it then
seemed to me, a youngster, that the Campbells had everything—even a
“hired” girl. That girl was Elizabeth Dittman, now Mrs. Ed. Keggin,
living in Wetmore, who would tell you that everything was fine and
lovely with them then, as it had every reason to be.

Then rumor of a new mining strike in the West changed everything. Green
Campbell now found life irksome on his then none too productive acres
down on the banks of Elk creek. And as he turned over the soil with
his plow on a bright May day in 1871, he also turned things over in his
mind. His brother John, he decided, could remain on the farm and keep up
the fight against odds if he wanted to, but as for himself the Far West
was calling. That call had struck the man of my story with all the force
of a Kansas tornado, and it moved him from his anchorage on the farm
with a suddenness that brought a protest from his relatives.

So it was that Green Campbell, with his family now shifted to
Circleville, the home of his in-laws, went out again in quest of a third
fortune. And though millions came into his coffers, one cannot be sure,
after all these years and in the light of what followed, whether he
profited or lost by that abrupt decision back here on that bright May
morning sixty and seven years ago.

They called him a tenderfoot when he reached the end of the trail which
led out into a sand-blown waste two hundred miles and more beyond rail
transportation. Here, on the east slope of the San Francisco mountains,
in southwest Utah—about thirty miles from Milford, on the San Pedro
line—this man from the plains country, ripe for more adventure, was to
have a try for a third mining fortune. It was his first hard-rock mining
venture.

Green Campbell got the gold all right—millions of it — and distinguished
himself by developing one of the greatest silver mines of the age. But
that is only part of the story.

The great fortune was won by so close a margin that it hurt. Then there
was, to some extent, the usual anti-climax — spiced with complicated
domestic relations, growing out of an improvident situation.

But the name “tenderfoot,” as applied to Green Campbell, was not quite
right. He had already taken $100,000 from the placers; certainly enough
to lift him out of that classification. Even so, granting that he was
a seasoned miner at the time he entered the Utah field, Green Campbell
did, however, slip just a trifle.

The erroneous application of that appellation came about through a
little misjudgment of the waters of that desert country—springs they are
called. But the springs in that section, as in all other desert country,
with few exceptions, are not the bubbling, sparkling, steady flow of
waters generally visualized with the mention of springs. Rather, in most
instances, they are only seepages of water which must be collected in
ground reservoirs through a system of trenching the earth. Some of those
springs supply what is termed on the desert as sweet water, while other
springs—those issuing from volcanic rocks—are brackish and unfit for
domestic use, or for steaming purposes. The first spring developed by
Green Campbell was of the latter class.

Thus it was that when in later years Green Campbell went over into
Nevada to establish a new camp, he first had the waters analyzed by a
chemist, then very appropriately named his new camp Goodsprings. And
it so remains on the map today—a gold, silver-lead-zinc, and vanadium
mining camp down among the gentle slopes of the Spring mountain range
in southern Nevada. The next two camps established by Green Campbell,
in California, were named Vanderbilt and Providence. We may be sure the
water there was good also.

Here, I want to interrupt my story to say that it was at Goodsprings
where the writer was, some thirty-odd years ago, initiated into the
mining game along with Campbell followers, and where much of the
material for this narrative was picked up, first-hand. Here at
Goodsprings were Elwood Thomas and his nephew, Frank Williams. Elwood
Thomas had been Green Campbell’s right-hand man all through the latter’s
colorful mining career, having gone out from the old home town in Kansas
to join him in 1873. Frank Williams went direct from Wetmore to Mr.
Campbell, at the age of twenty-one, and has spent forty-seven of his
sixty-eight years on the Nevada desert. And perhaps I should say here
that much of the information presented in this narrative was obtained
from Mr. Thomas and Mr. Williams.

In the Utah field, then a new and isolated country, under conditions
that tested the fiber of the man, Green Campbell prospected the hills
of Beaver county for a while. Then, nearly five years later, his big
opportunity came when he secured an option on a mining claim for which
he agreed to pay $25,000. That claim was later developed into the famous
Horn Silver mine, which, up to the time of my last visit nearly thirty
years ago, had produced slightly in excess of twenty million dollars.
The mine, owned now by New York interests, is still producing at great
depth. Few metal mines there are that have had such long run of life.

But, as I have already stated, chance played a big hand in this game of
millions. At that time Green Campbell had all his funds tied up in other
properties. He was then operating the Hickory mine at Newhouse. Green
Campbell turned to his friend, August Byram, of Atchison, Kansas, for
financial assistance. Byram and Campbell had become acquainted while
they were both in the employ of that major freighting firm. Byram had
already spent some money at the suggestion of Campbell without results,
in the Star district, close by. After considerable correspondence, Byram
decided to take another chance at the game, promising to come through
with the funds to take over the Horn Silver claim before the expiration
of the ninety-day option. Byram was to advance the full amount, half
of it as a loan to Campbell, and they were to own the property on a
fifty-fifty basis.

But here caution stepped in and robbed those two men of exactly one-half
of an immense fortune—a fortune in the making. After the agreement had
been made Byram wrote and asked Campbell to see if he could find someone
to take a quarter interest in the risk. Campbell found two men, Matt
Cullen and Dennis Ryan, who would come in for a quarter interest. But
Byram still thought he was taking too great a chance, and wrote a
second time asking Campbell to try induce those two men to take a half
interest. It was so arranged.

Green Campbell then settled down to a game of waiting. Thoroughly imbued
with the spirit of the times, he told himself—and rightly, too—that he
had only to await the coming of Byram to jump in and win. But, without
further word from Byram and the final day of the option drawing near, he
became very nervous. New developments had caused the owners to look for
some chance to void the option, and Campbell sensed danger in delay.
Then came the awful blow that set all his emotions to working at high
speed.

August Byram, on his way out to the mine, had stopped over in Salt Lake
City and there he was discouraged by designing individuals who wanted
to pluck the mine for themselves. Developments had increased, its
value fourfold. But this fact was kept from Byram by his Salt Lake
acquaintances—indeed, they stressed the fact that the claim had but
recently been optioned for $1,500, and that the option had been allowed
to lapse. The result was August sent word to Green that he would have
nothing more to do with it.

However, Campbell managed somehow to get Byram over to the property on
the last day of the option, but up to the eleventh hour he was filled
to the brim with nerve-wracking suspense. For hours he had kept his gaze
constantly fixed on the sage-fringed road leading out across the broad
valley to the east, where was open to the eye a twenty mile sweep of
sun-baked waste, looking for that distant dust cloud which might mean
that relief for his tired nerves was on the way. Then, late in the
afternoon, as the last golden tints lingered along the ragged edges
of the mountains, the stage bearing Byram, full four hours late, was
sighted far out on the road—a mere speck in a great cloud of dust.

There was yet time for speedy action. For a brief ten minutes the two
men faced each other—Campbell full of words, Byram deep in meditation.
It could hardly be expected that after floundering in a bog of
indecision and doubt for so long, that understanding would come to Byram
in a flash. But Campbell’s great anxiety in the matter caused him to
believe, for the moment, that Byram’s resolutions were still wavering,
while his own thoughts whirled like leaves in an autumn blast. Byram’s
final words, however, kept Campbell’s spirits from suffering further.

I was not there at that particular time, of course, but this minute
accounting, the reactions of those men, is as I caught it from Elwood
Thomas. “If it hadn’t been such a serious matter with Green,” said
Elwood, amid chuckles that sent ripples all over the old miner’s
weathered face, “it would have been downright amusing.”

The transfer of the Horn Silver claim took place in the shadow of the
mountain as the sun dropped out of sight on February 17, 1876. And it
was a joyous occasion for the little group of interested men—except,
possibly, the two original locators who were now beginning to realize
the true worth of that little piece of ground. Fate dealt a mean hand to
the locators of the Horn Silver claim. After sinking a shaft thirty
feet on ore, Samuel Hawkes and James Ryan bartered away millions on the
belief that the ore would not last.

And I might say here that the Horn Silver lode, the main ore body, was
found by sheer accident. Jimmy Calvering, a young Irishman employed to
do the location work, following the custom of the shiftless miner, went
away a considerable distance from the outcrop to find “soft ground”
in which to dig his ten-foot hole, as required by law. Jimmy was not
looking for ore, but in doing that ten foot of work he opened up the
main lode. And nowhere else did it come that near the surface. Jimmy was
ever after that proclaimed “A man with a great nose for ore.”

The Horn Silver mine was operated by Campbell, Cullen & Co., for three
years, with a gross production of nearly three million dollars. The mine
was then sold in 1879 for six million dollars, and title passed to the
Horn Silver Mining Co. An interest equivalent to about one-sixth of the
mine previously had been given to an eastern promoter for securing a
railroad to the mine.

Green Campbell had other interests at Frisco, the camp which had sprung
up about the Horn Silver mine. It was a town peopled with all kinds
of characters known to frontier life. It had all the mining-camp
trappings—dance halls, saloons, and what not. This camp had caught the
overflow from the older mining camp of Pioche, in Nevada, where the
boast was, “A man for breakfast every morning!” And in lawlessness
Frisco flourished like the green bay tree! Life at the high tide was
almost as cheap as water! But Green Campbell’s personality was such as
to keep him out of harm’s way. Green was a good mixer. He drank some,
but in moderation. In no sense was he a dissipated man. And here at
Frisco he made more money! Lots of it! The Carbonate mine alone gave
him five hundred thousand dollars in profits! He was classed with other
mining moguls of that day. Hearst, Tabor, Walsh—he knew them all.

Green Campbell’s rise in the financial world was spectacular. Within the
brief span of a few years he could have returned to his old home and
to his family with enough money to live in luxury. But friend Green had
other notions. Like the noble beast of burden of the Sahara bearing his
name, Campbell was now a permanent fixture of the desert.

Man’s ambition is seldom satisfied. Visions of greater wealth and the
thrills that go with the making held Green Campbell with a vise-like
grip. He willed to stay in the West.

His wife preferred to stay in Kansas with her people, at Circleville.
Or, maybe, it was decided that the untamed West, the desert with its
sizzling summer suns and unbridled winds, was no place for Florence
Oursler Campbell and her little boy Charley. Anyhow the situation
brought about an estrangement and, finally, a separation. Ofttimes men,
too much absorbed in chasing the pot of gold, unconsciously make this
supreme sacrifice.

Clouds began to appear on Green Campbell’s marital horizon soon after he
went West, but the storm did not break until he was virtually in the
big money. He was enormously engrossed with his mining operations,
while back here at home, because of his continued absence, a growing
resentment was piling up against him day by day. The time was coming, if
he would see it, when he must give up either his mines, or his family.
He heeded not the signals, seriously. Like his royal highness across the
Atlantic—the self-deposed king—until disaster was upon him, he proposed
to keep them both.

Florence Campbell filed her petition for divorce and alimony in the
Jackson County court at Holton. Case Broderick of Holton and Judge
Stillings of Leavenworth were her attorneys. Green Campbell was
represented by Hayden & Hayden of Holton and Colonel Everest of
Atchison. The stage was set for a spirited legal battle. The whole
country buzzed with gossip. Because of the prominence of the Campbells
and the Ourslers people traveled for miles on horseback and in wagons to
attend the hearings.

The plaintiff and her witnesses occupied the stage for a day and a half.
Then the defense attorneys armed with depositions and a liberal line-up
of witnesses, told the court what they had up their sleeves. But the
judge, being somewhat of a sleuth, had already detected that something
was wrong with the plaintiff’s legal machinery. Gears didn’t mesh. The
charge was out of alignment with the facts as adduced by the
plaintiff and her own witnesses. In short, her lawyers had experienced
embarrassment in their endeavor to twist a prolonged absence from
Campbell’s fireside — and whatever else that was offered—into “extreme
cruelty.”

There had to be a “charge,” to be sure, but it would appear that the
plaintiff’s attorneys might have more profitably selected for their
client, out of their cabinet of ready-made complaints, something more
reasonable, something less galling to the fine sensibilities of the man.
Judge John T. Morton said that inasmuch as the plaintiff had failed to
prove her case, defense testimony would not be heard. Moreover, he said
Mrs. Campbell would get no alimony.

There was not, as one might suspect, another man in the case—not a
breath of scandal. Mrs. Campbell was too fine for that. It was her
unalterable conviction that she and her child were being unduly
neglected. It was “blue” blood in revolt—indignant, regrettable
rebellion.

The decree was given the defendant, Green Campbell, on February 23,
1878. Custody of the little boy, Charles R. Campbell, was given to the
mother. Mr. Campbell was required to pay $250 a year for the boy’s “keep
and education,” with a lien on the northeast quarter of 22-6-14. Two
hundred and fifty dollars a year from a potential millionaire to
keep and educate his son! All right then, perhaps, but it sounds like
parsimony now.

Henry C. DeForest, pioneer merchant of Wetmore, was made custodian
of the impounded land. He also acted as agent for Mrs. Campbell. The
allowance for the boy was not held down strictly to the court order.
Indeed, Mr. Campbell did much more for his son. It is alleged that,
after the separation, the boy would meet the train on occasions of his
father’s infrequent trips in from the West, and that Mr. Campbell would
fill his son’s hat with gold coins. And in time Charley was given the
impounded land, together with several other valuable tracts of Jackson
County land. Green Campbell still kept his Nemaha County homestead.

No property settlement appears of record—leastwise my investigator does
not report any—though, I believe, there was a private settlement. Little
enough it was, no doubt, if any, but the disillusioned Mr. Campbell was
not niggardly with his money, as the plaintiff and her kin backers, and
all who listened in on the trial were soon to know.

As if in preparation to carry out the educational phase of the court
mandate handsomely, Green Campbell endowed a college right in the boy’s
door-yard, so to speak. Work began on Campbell University at Holton
in 1880, and the school opened on September 2, 1882, with Prof. J. H.
Miller, president. For a small-town school it became quite noted. After
a successful run of nearly a score of years, it fell into decay and
finally ceased to exist. The old stone building standing on an eminence
at the northwest corner of Holton, long in disuse as a college,
was razed in 1931 to make room for a new $139,000 brick high school
building.

It would be interesting in this connection to know what Green Campbell’s
reactions really were, what motivated that splendid school? With
a knowing smile on his weathered face and without amplifying his
surprising assertion, Elwood Thomas once told me that had there been no
divorce there would have been no Campbell University. And did the boy
Charley actually “finish off” at Campbell University? I think not. A
recent casual inquiry at Circleville told me nothing in that particular.
While yet quite young, he married Kate McColough. He went West—and,
backed by his father, tried his hand at mining at Providence,
California, with little or no success.

With his marital differences adjusted in the divorce court, Green
Campbell now, like as not, a morose misogynist, went back to his beloved
golden West and in the immediate years which followed was as grim
and silent, on one very ticklish subject, as the barren peaks of the
mountains about him. In his mine, Mr. Campbell had encountered and
conquered some extremely refractory ore. He had hauled in cord-wood from
as far as sixty miles to roast that stubborn ore in outdoor fires, to
make it amenable to the smelter. But in marriage, a bit of clay—he had
no workable method for that.

Green Campbell came back to his old home only a few times after the
separation. But Kansas still claimed him — claimed him until he went to
Congress for Utah, claimed him until he sold his homestead here to Bill
Hayden. He was Nemaha County’s first millionaire!

Green Campbell, first of all, was a miner. Close attention to business,
as has been pointed out, brought him great riches—and a dilemma! The
memory of this last named acquisition persisted, ghost-like, to haunt
him for long years. But it did not haunt him for all time.

In the mining game, a hope never fades that another doesn’t bloom
brightly in its place. Likewise, generally speaking, it is so in
matters of the heart, only the flowering is not always so spontaneous.
Sometimes, not infrequently, after the romantic love of other days has
passed, the withering love-instinct must be carefully cultivated for
years if it is to flower again.

Fourteen years and fourteen hundred miles lay between Green Campbell and
the subject of his marital woes when at the age of sixty or thereabout,
after he had reached the peak of his financial flight and experienced
some setbacks, and after he had grown a fine flowing snow-white beard
and become quite bald, it bloomed for him again.

This time the bride was Eleanor Young, a reporter on a Salt Lake City
newspaper. She was a daughter-in-law of the famous old Brigham Young.
And the stork, that industrious old bird of world-wide habitat, at
home on the desert as in the oasis, brought the Campbell’s three fine
children—Allen, Byram and Caroline.

Green Campbell would, of course, want to do something to perpetuate
the school that bore his name. But in his will he made the fatal
mistake—fatal for the school—of first taking care of his family with
the more tangible assets. He bequeathed $100,000 to Campbell University,
conditionally, however. It was to be paid out of the proceeds of two
mining properties, namely, his Vanderbilt and Goodsprings holdings.
A minimum price of $500,000 was placed on his Vanderbilt mine, and
$200,000 on his Goodsprings claims, and they were not to be offered for
less than the stipulated price for two years. The properties have
not yet been sold. While really promising properties, with the future
pledged, largely, by the terms of the will, there was no one to continue
developments to make them bring the price. Green Campbell had expended
something like a half million dollars in developing his gold mine at
Vanderbilt.

Secure in the fortune left them, the Campbell heirs — Green’s second
family—have risked no money in mining. Besides his various mining
interests Green Campbell owned, at death, a magnificent home on Brockton
Square, in Riverside, California; numerous tracts of California ranch
lands, and real-estate holdings in downtown Los Angeles. Also, a
substantial cash operating fund, and some income property in Salt Lake
City—notably, the Dooley block. Mr. Campbell often expressed his faith
in the future of Los Angeles. The fortune has largely been kept intact.

When last contacted a few years back, Mrs. Campbell was living at 705
Camden Drive, Beverly Hills, California. The two unmarried sons lived at
the same address. Caroline, the daughter, was married to a Los Angeles
banker, Leland T. Reeder, a son of the fiery and famous Congressman W.
A. Reeder, from the sixth Kansas district, back in the nineties.

Idle mining properties, or mines worked only spasmodically by lessees,
do not readily attract buyers, especially when filled with water, as in
the case of the Campbell mine at Vanderbilt. Incredible as it may seem,
there really is water deep down—in places—in that desert country, and
it even rises sometimes. The shaft at our own mine, in the very heart
of the desert, situated in a small depression on the mountain side, was
once filled to overflowing during a heavy rain.

Other bequests, principally to relatives, also were contingent upon the
sale of those two properties. And hope, tenacious hope, once bloomed so
very brightly but now devoid of sparkle, still lingers with heirs around
here.

Henry Campbell, a nephew, who was sheriff of Nemaha County for two terms
about the turn of the century, with his two sisters, Mary and Frances,
the son and daughters of John Campbell, all deceased now, were named
jointly for $100,000. The surviving heirs are: Emma Swarm Campbell, wife
of Henry, Bancroft, and two sons by a former marriage, living in
the West; George Cordon, husband of Mary, Ontario; Ray Drake, son of
Frances, Norton.

The heirs of Caroline Campbell, who married a Mr. Steele and went West,
and the heirs of Sally Ann Campbell, who married Henry Stanley and lived
near Circleville, were named jointly in the will for $100,000. William
and Edward Stanley and Laura Hart, all dead now, were children of Sally
Ann. William worked with his uncle in the mines and was named for an
extra $100,000.

Two daughters of Green Stanley, another son of Sally Ann, are married
to “Jack” and “Kid” Rudy, and live at Soldier. A daughter of Sally
Ann—Julia Alice Stanley — married Albert D. Chamberlin, now living in
Holton. Mrs. Chamberlin is dead. Her heirs are: Mrs. Lee Able, Holton;
Mrs. S. B. Moody, Centralia; Mrs. Ernest Hogg, Payette, Idaho; Mrs.
Mary Gaston and Nathaniel Chamberlin, Whitehall, Montana; and Charles
Chamberlin, Salt Lake City.

One small payment was received by the heirs here about two years back,
which revived interest in about the same degree of satisfaction as
that of a sprinkle of rain to a thirsty earth. Time was, though, George
Cordon tells me, when they could have accepted settlement at fifty cents
on the dollar.

It is probable that the inheritance of Charley Campbell was tied up in
this or by some other uncertain condition. Whatever the case, he settled
with the estate for $50,000. Crediting rumor afloat at the time, it
is my recollection that, in recognition of close—and perhaps
menacing—kinship, this was paid with money left by Green Campbell to his
second family.

Leaving an ex-wife and two sons, Allen and Robert, in the West, Charley
Campbell later returned to Circleville. There, in 1920, he married Laura
Deck. He is now living in or near Philadelphia.

His mother, Florence Campbell, did not marry again. She went to work.
And by the irony of Fate she became a teacher of art in the college
founded by her divorced husband, along about 1895. Later, years later,
when I saw her last she seemed merely to be waiting, in emptiness and
dead memories, for the end. She died in Pomona, California, about 1920.

Elwood Thomas was administrator for the Campbell estate—in Nevada. After
spending thirty-eight years on the desert and in the mines, without
receiving so much as a damaging scratch, Elwood was fatally injured in
a horse and buggy accident while back Here on a visit to his daughter,
Mrs. Maude Ralston, at Holton, in 1915. He died three days after the
accident. He was buried in the Wetmore cemetery. Elwood Thomas lived
apart from his family from the time he he went West in 1873. Family
ties, it seems, were not strong enough to bridge the distance between
them. Maybe it was the desert again.

Turning momentarily aside from the path that leads toward the rainbow’s
elusive end, let me here interpose a brief paragraph about John
Campbell, the brother whom Green had said could remain on the farm and
keep up the fight against odds if he wanted to. John did remain on the
farm; and kept up the fight—and won. He even elected to remain on the
farm after pressing invitations to join his brother in the land of gold.
He lived on the original homestead in Wetmore township until he died, in
1894. As the years became more seasonable for the production of grain,
John Campbell made a good living—and more—from his acres and his herds.
And, best of all, he found contentment and happiness with his wife and
three children on the farm. I think that in all my life I have never
known a more kindly, considerate, and contented person than was this
tall, slim, fine man.

Luck was a bit fickle with Green Campbell. It both smiled and frowned
on him in a few fleeting years. Alert, with a keen mind, he made good at
first on everything he touched — save, of course, that first water-hole.
Then, abruptly, as if a great cloud had obscured his vision, he lost his
charm. Two outstanding reverses followed in quick succession.

Irreparable damage is often done in the name of friendship. With
millions of dollars to the good, Green Campbell was picked by his
friends to turn the tide of politics in Utah, to break Mormon rule. He
was on the minority side, to be sure, but what did that matter? Clean
and ambitious, with bulging pockets, he would be a formidable figure in
bringing about the change so much desired—by the outs of course.

Thus, Green Campbell was launched upon the perilous sea of
politics—literally shoved off into its unfriendly waters, slightly, but
assuredly, beyond his depths. The warm and manifest enthusiasm of his
friends, so goes the story, inspired in him a feeling of confidence—and,
unschooled in the hard-played game of politics, he set sail upon the
turbid political waters with never a thought as to the many, many
wrecked political ships that mark the shores of Time.

Infectious enthusiasm had spread over the field. Voters and non-voters
alike cheered for him. The Italian colony piped, “Viva Campbell—bigga
man!” John Chinaman, it was related, yelled in badly Americanized
Cantonese, “Hoola Campbell! All-o-same-e, no like-e dlam Mormon
lenny-way!”

Deliverance, it seemed, was at hand. Still in the first flush of his
great financial triumph, Green Campbell spent money freely for the
cause, and incidentally tried for a seat in Congress. This experience
cost him a lot of money—just how much no one knows. Some said it was
nearly a million dollars.

Green Capbell was defeated for delegate to Congress by the Mormon
bishop, Cannon. But he contested the election upon the grounds that
Cannon, a Canadian, was not naturalized. In this he won, but not until
the two-year term was almost over. He went to Washington as the Hon.
Allen G. Campbell.

I shall not attempt to tell you his politics, because I don’t know—for
sure. But when I tell you his fine saddle horse was named Cleveland,
you can make your own deductions. It was a common sight to see Green
Campbell mounted on that spirited horse riding about the streets of
Vanderbilt, often with one of his little boys up in front of him or
riding behind, while his luxuriant white beard, always well groomed,
billowed gracefully in the desert breezes. Green Campbell was a large
man, about six feet tall and rather portly, though not really fat. He
always presented a prosperous, dignified appearance.

And now, while a million dollars, or whatever sum it really was, out of
one pocket was a lot of money wasted in priming the political pump, it
wouldn’t have been so bad for Green Campbell, seeing that he had obliged
his friends, had there not been other heavy and unexpected drains upon
his purse. It was a partnership with Jay Cooke and Company, a Washington
stock brokerage firm, at a most unfortunate time, that really hurt.

Jay Cooke was perhaps the foremost broker of that day. Hard luck
bankrupted him. His brokerage houses in three eastern cities collapsed
in 1873, causing one of the greatest financial panics of all time. He
was financing the building of the Northern Pacific railroad and had made
too many advances. But Jay Cooke was still the promoter par-excellence.
He was the promoter previously mentioned as having received an interest
in the Horn Silver mine for securing a railroad to the camp.

Jay Cooke was heavily involved when Green Campbell became a member of
the firm, and through an oversight a protecting clause was omitted. With
new money in the firm, Cooke’s old creditors forced their demands. Green
Campbell’s first check was drawn for nine hundred thousand dollars! And
that was by no means the end of enforced payments. However, much of this
loss was salvaged through securities turned over to Campbell by Cooke.

It was not at all strange that at some time in his financial career,
after climbing up to the heights, that Green Campbell should take his
turn on the toboggan. Nobody ever wins every step in life. But these
two reverses, falling so swiftly and so heavily as to make them the high
points of the drama, cut a jagged gash in the fabric of his dreams.
And while the hand of Fate continued, for a time at least, to carry the
Campbell fortune steadily downward, he did not lose all. Far from it!
There was no time after selling the Horn Silver mine that he was not a
rich man!

But the winds of adversity, mighty dream-wrecking gales though
they were, had not swept away the flame of hope. Back to his mines,
unflagging in his efforts to do it all over again, Green Campbell was
full of plans for the future when he died rather suddenly of pneumonia,
in 1902. Thus, the call of the desert, the lure of the mining game, held
him until the last.

And this is the true story of Green Campbell—gentleman, miner, and
great wealth-builder, in whose heart there seems to have burned an
inextinguishable desire for something that never came.

DESERT CHIVALRY Published in Wetmore Spectator,

March 13, 1931.

By John T. Bristow

There were not conveyances enough to handle the influx of gold-seekers
when I got off the train at Nipton, California, and a long walk across
a dry sun baked waste lay ahead of me. I was on my way to the new mining
camp of Crescent, just over the line in Nevada, and on my way to a
fortune—maybe. Rainbow visions began to rise before me, and hot though
it was I did not mind that six-mile walk one bit. I was not alone. She
was young, slender — and pretty. And Elsie was a “gold-digger” too.
There were others.

With Frank Williams, a former Wetmore boy, as partner, I was in from the
start at the “hell-roaring” mining camp back in 1907. Born overnight, it
was a stampede mining camp, growing from nothing to a tented city of
one thousand people in a few weeks time—followed quickly with saloons,
dance-halls, and whatnots.

image7

Crescent was wild, mad, wide open.

When the big news broke, I beat it for Nevada. Frank and I and
associates owned three claims in the very heart of the Crescent
district. Also, I personally owned an adjoining claim on which Frank had
caused one of his men, Paul Stahmer, to do the required ten feet of work
to hold it for one year, at a cost to me of $100. The work was done on a
$544 gold showing.

Having operated with Frank rather disappointedly in the
lead-zinc-vanadium camp of Goodsprings, thirty miles away, through the
years since 1904, I believed that here at last—at Crescent—I was about
to pounce, in one fell swoop upon the legendary pot of gold. It was a
fantastic notion, of course—but oh, the magic thrill of it!

Charles M. Schwab, Pennsylvania multi-millionaire steel magnate, who
held mining interests in Nevada, lent encouragement with an on-the-spot
pronouncement: “In the past the great fortunes have been made in
manufacturing, but henceforth the really big money will be made in
mining.” Also, operators from Goldfield, the Nevada camp that gave
George Wingfield, a lowly cowhand, twenty million dollars almost in a
jiffy—men in the big money up there said in my presence, “If we had such
surface showings at Goldfield as you have at Crescent, any old claim
would sell for a fortune.” I don’t mind telling you that I had fed
rather too optimistically upon the glorious prospect of grabbing a quick
fortune at Crescent. But the unveiling of facts there proved a solvent
for the nightmare in which a lot of us had been living for months.

With fabulously rich surface showings — high assays, $500 to $20,000 to
the ton reported almost everywhere — Crescent proved, in the end,
the greatest bubble of them all. Countless thousands of dollars were
expended, over a period of two years, in a frantic effort to bring out a
profitable producer. But if there ever was as much as a shirt-tail full
of ore shipped from that camp, I don’t know it. And though I never had
the time nor the inclination to compare notes, I’ll bet Elsie had better
pickings than any of the hopeful miners who wore pants.

It was with reluctance that we pulled out of Crescent. It’s most
fascinating, this thing of prospecting for gold — like participating
in a big-game hunt. Were I full-handed, even now, I would go back to
Crescent and give our Shreve-port group another try. Someday, somebody
is going to find the “mother lode” there.

There was honest effort—a lot of honest effort—as well as the usual
faking, at Crescent. A $20,000 gold strike was reported near the summit,
between our claims and Crescent. The first day out there, I was all
for seeing this strike right away. My partner said, “Oh, wait until
tomorrow—we’ll be going past it when we go over to Crescent.”

The next day, starting from our claims by way of a perfectly good wagon
road down the canyon a ways, Frank took me by a tortuous climb, off the
road, to near the top of the mountain. He pointed out the spot where the
assay had been obtained. When I began to examine the shallow trench, he
said, quickly, “It took all the ore in sight to make the assay.” Twenty
steps farther on we reached the summit where we could look down on
Crescent a mile below. And then we stepped out onto a very good wagon
road. On inquiry, he said, “It’s the same road we left back there in the
canyon.” I asked him how come we made that rough climb? Frank said, “You
know, it’s about as much as a man’s life is worth to be caught showing
up that strike to a tenderfoot.”

This was an eye-opener—the first clear signpost on a long and uncertain
road.

At another time, later, Frank and I paid a saloon keeper in Nipton, the
railroad station, twenty dollars to drive us over the Crescent
district, for the full day. We visited our claims first, got dinner
in Crescent—then to a saloon where drinks were 50 cents each, whether
whiskey, beer, or water. The bartender simply counted noses or glasses,
as it were, and summed up the charge. There were about twenty saloons in
the camp, and our “host” deemed it his duty to visit them all. I am sure
he dumped the $10 I paid him on twenty glasses of water for me. It was a
spot where you couldn’t afford to shake your head and say, “No thanks.”
When asked to drink, it was wise to call your drink.

The main object of the drive—on my part, anyway — the thing we had paid
twenty dollars for, was to visit a highly newspaper publicized mine two
miles south of Crescent, where it was shamefully claimed immense bodies
of rich gold ore running into the millions, were blocked out. But the
desert twilight caught us still drinking Adam’s ale and the Indian’s
“fire water.” Our driver knew his business all right—and I suspect Frank
knew from the start that we would never fetch up at that mine. Nothing,
absolutely nothing—but the truth—was barred in that camp.

I shall now leave the desert momentarily, and write candidly about my
earlier “mining” experience. This, and other notations here—until we get
back to Crescent—are throw-ins, kindred situations not contained in the
printed’ article.

With our townsman Green Campbell’s enviable mining success as an
incentive, it has ever been my hope that I might someday also strike
it rich—and mining seemed to offer the best lure. I therefore joined a
group of Wetmore and Horton men in an effort to rejuvenate a gold mine
at Whitepine, Colorado, twenty miles north of Sargent on the narrow
gauge branch of the Denver & Rio Grande railroad. With the Wetmore
group—Dr. Augustus Philip Lapham and wife Elzina Brown-Lapham; Jay
Wellington Powers and wife Helen Hoyt-Powers; Charles Samuel Locknane
and wife Coral Hutchison-Locknane; and Mr. C. A. Mann, the owner, backed
by Scott Hopkins, Horton banker, and other moneyed men of that city, I
spent a week at White pine looking things over.

The mine was really six miles up the canyon from White pine—just beyond
the abandoned town of Tomichi, not far from the “Top of the World.”
Tomichi had been hit by a snow slide which wrecked a number of houses,
killing several people. The residents, numbering about 1,000, had
abandoned their homes and places of business, leaving the buildings
intact—a true “Ghost Town.” Thinking in terms of the present, one might
wonder why had the buildings been left to rot down? A mill had sawed the
lumber on the site — and in that out-of-the-way place, the material was
not worth salvaging.

The tunnel of the Mann mine was about 150 feet up-slope from the wagon
road on the floor of the canyon, which road was also Main Street in
Tomichi. To get up to the tunnel, the trail started several hundred feet
up the gulch and then swung back around a projecting ledge where the
footing was rather insecure. To negotiate it the men would use the lines
off the harness. The women could remain at the wagon and watch the men
fall, if such might be the case.

And here I pulled a boner—not my first, nor last, I frankly admit. I
looked across to the “scary” ledge, and straight up to the tunnel—and
then I started up on the run, the loose rock in places sliding me back
almost as fast as I was gaining. However, I made the tunnel, completely
exhausted. I did not sit down to rest. I fell down. And I crawled into
the tunnel where there was ice—in July—and revived quickly. One of the
men was hampered in that climb with a wooden leg, which afforded me
ample time to recover before their arrival—but my own legs were still
shaky as I eased myself around that projecting ledge, grabbing the strap
now and then, while coming down. I don’t know how the first strap-holder
got around without help—nor the last one, either.

Mr. Mann said I had taken a great risk; that he had called to me to come
back; that the exertion required to negotiate that heap of sliderock
was really too much for one unaccustomed to the high altitude; that he
himself—a seasoned mountain man—would not have undertaken it for the
whole mine. And, you know, after I had taken one peep at the spot of
interest in the tunnel, I thought, “Neither would I.”

The prospect did not look good to me—nor was I fooled by the enthusiasm
of my inexperienced associates, but I wanted to go along with them. The
other Wetmore men thought enough of the prospect to locate adjoining
claims, naming them for their children—The Marsena, The Gracie, and The
Marguerite. I had no child, not even a wife—so no claim. But I then and
there made a resolve to learn something more about that enticing mining
game, perhaps elsewhere. And in the final analysis I suppose I have.

Doctor Lapham was the principal exuder of enthusiasm, an inborn trait
which came to the fore again in a big way on the train enroute to Salt
Lake City. The Doctor had spent some time in the smoker, and came
back to the coach all “hepped” up. Rubbing his hands together in his
characteristic manner, he said he had gotten—on the qt—a tip from the
newsboy that an observation car was to be hooked on at Gunnison, for the
trip through Colorado’s most colorful canyon. The observation car would
be on a siding to the left of our train—and that the favored few were to
make a dash for it the moment the train stopped.

The Doctor was always putting forth his best efforts to make us all
comfortable—and happy. He said he had bought a book of views, paying
$2 for it, something he really didn’t care a whoop for—but he wanted to
reward the boy for his kind tip. With an eye for business, the newsboy
had also tipped off other passengers.

The “observation” car was only a coalcar having temporary backless board
seats placed crosswise of the car. One had to climb over the seats,
or step across from one plank to another to get to the rear end of the
car—all right for the fellow who had so recently clambered up the tunnel
dump, but very awkward for the women and the man with the wooden leg.

Many of the passengers looked at the thing and went back to the
coaches, and some abandoned their seats and went inside after the train
started—but our men folk, being well to the rear and encumbered with
helpless women whom they did not wish to lose just then, couldn’t even
do that once the train headed into the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, a
narrow gorge with 2800-foot almost perpendicular walls, following
the serpentine course of the Gunnison river, on a steeply down grade,
switching the “observation” car like a whipcracker from one black
wall to the other. Hot cinders rained down on us so that we could look
neither to the right, or the left—nor up. Now, Lap’s newsboy came aboard
crying, “Goggles, goggles, goggles!”

And the appreciative Doctor gave the boy some more money.

We had done Denver, Colorado Springs, Manitou and Pike’s Peak—and
Cripple Creek. And we had all climbed “Tenderfoot” Mountain while
waiting over-night at Salida for train connection—and I individually
had literally sat on the proverbial powderkeg for three hours during a
twenty-mile overland drive. Mr. Mann had provided a spring wagon for the
other members of the party, and I, being unexpected, was conducted to
a freight wagon going our way. When told, near the end of the journey,
that I was sitting on a box of dynamite I blew up—in spirit. But nowhere
had we experienced anything so disappointing as this “observation”
car ride. It is anchored in my memory as the one really big scene that
beggared description.

NOTE — The railroad through the Black Canyon of the Gunnison has been
abandoned, and sightseers may now view this colorful canyon from their
automobiles over a highway—a “highway,” mind you, more than a half mile
down in a narrow slit in the earth.

Then, again, my newspaper friend, William Allen White, of the Emporia
Gazette, toured the western mining districts and wrote enthusiastically
about some newly discovered mining opportunity in the west, known as
Thunder Mountain. It stimulated my desire. I wrote William Allen, asking
him if he would, as one newspaperman to another, advise me to try
my luck at Thunder Mountain? His personal letter to me was even more
optimistic than was his editorial. Like Horace Greely, his advice was
substantially, “By all means go west, young man, and give it a try.”

But I did not fetch up at Thunder Mountain. On the advice of another
friend, I dumped the proceeds from the sale of my newspaper, sight
unseen, in a hole in Nevada — while the wise Mr. White kept on
publishing his Gazette; wrote a best seller book, “A Certain Rich Man,”
and got rich himself. His name and fame are to be perpetuated in the
erection of a public library building in Emporia; while I, his misguided
friend, still have my laurels to make. And, incidentally, as a mining
man, after that first big blow, I never again heard of Thunder Mountain.

Now back to the desert—and the printed Crescent story.

Our contribution here at Crescent, with a minimum of outside help, was
a 500-foot tunnel driven into the side of a mountain—the rock shot with
high assay in gold and silver and copper. But the cost of this work,
though a dead loss and highly disheartening, was as nothing compared to
the outlay for the 2197 feet of tunnels and shafts we have driven—also
with a minimum of help—through solid rock on our Goodsprings claims,
where production, though quite good at times, has never caught up with
expenses.

And the end is not yet.

You can take it from me that a man has to be insensible to pain to laugh
this off.

On the train away back in the valley on this my first trip to Crescent,
the conductor had pointed to a distant cluster of white flecks barely
discernible through the shimmering, sun-drenched haze that lies always,
like a pall, over the desert, and said to me, “There she is—the biggest
thing in all Nevada!”

I had become chummy with the conductor, and that chumminess increased
mightily when we learned that we were both on the way to become
millionaires—as we visualized it then—through the mining route. He told
me that he knew my mining partner, that he had engaged Frank Williams to
look after the assessment work on some claims he himself owned over in
the Goodsprings district. And when I asked the conductor his name and
made a move as if to write it down, he shook his head negatively
and threw out his hands in a gesture of utter uselessness, and said,
“Oh-hell, man, you couldn’t forget it as long as you are in this
country. It’s Dry—just plain William Dry.”

My friend’s parting words to me were a mixture of jocularity and serious
hope. “Well, so long, old top,” he said. “See you again when we fetch up
at the end of the rainbow.”

And do you know, the next time I saw that conductor, two years later—and
I might say before either of us had made any appreciable advances on the
rainbow’s elusive end — he recognized me at once, and in offering his
hand, said: “It’s Dry.” And I said, “Oh-hell, man, don’t I know it!”

And so it was.

That meeting was in Superintendent J. Ross Clark’s private car, hitched
to the flyer. We had exchanged some correspondence before, and Ross
wanted to tell me in as hopeful words as possible that the officials of
his railroad were still watching the situation closely and would build a
branch line into our district—to our claims and to his claims — just as
soon as the required tonnage was assured. You see, J. Ross Clark, too,
was possessed of the desire to harvest a quick fortune and owned mining
claims across the flat from our claims in the Goodsprings district.

That meeting with J. Ross Clark bore fruit for me, though—and it was
the means of holding up the Los Angeles Limited for an hour, as well.
Several years later I had an important engagement at Goodsprings and was
delayed seven hours in Pueblo on the way out there, owing to a change in
time of the Denver & Rio Grande trains. The best I could do then was to
arrive in Salt Lake five minutes after the Limited’s leaving time,
at one o’clock at night, with depots a mile apart. Failure to keep my
appointment at Goodsprings would mean disappointment to others and a
money loss to me, as well as a wasted trip. In desperation, I went to
the up-town office of the Denver & Rio Grande, and asked the agent there
to try to have the Los Angeles train held for me at Salt Lake. Nothing
doing. That important personage swelled up to full capacity and said,
“Evidently, if the San Pedro people wanted to neighbor with my Company
they would change their leaving time.”

Next, I asked the conductor on the Rio Grande train to wire ahead for
me—and I am happy to state he was a gentleman. Also he was a one-time
miner. “Tried it once over at Aspen,” he told me. And right away there
was a bond of sympathy, or something, between us. That conductor really
wanted to help me. But, as he told me he had wired the San Pedro people
several times without results, I had to think of some other way, for I
wanted to make that Limited as a lost soul wants to make Paradise.

It was then I thought of J. Ross Clark. What was the good of making
friends, if you could not use them? The Rio Grande conductor obligingly
held his train for me at Green River, Utah, while I filed a message to
the Superintendent of the San Pedro lines. We arrived in Salt Lake ten
minutes ahead of time, and the conductor, pointing to a hack-stand, said
to me, “Now hurry—the Los Angeles train may be a little late in getting
away.”

At the San Pedro station I found the Limited all steamed up, ready to
go—and I boarded it quickly, all out of breath. But there was no need
for hurrying. Presently the conductor came along and asked me: “Did you
come in on Rio Grande Three?” I told him I did. Then he asked, “First or
second section?” I admitted that I didn’t know the train had been split
up at Grand Junction. The conductor, wanting to be sure of his order,
drew a yellow slip from his pocket, and re-read: “Hold for one or more
passengers off Rio Grande Three.” He then said, “Yes, that’s it. I’m
sure you are the man I’m holding for—but I’ll have to wait for the
second section.” And it was an hour late.

I think perhaps Ross had put in his order the words “one or more” solely
as a precaution against the possibility of being accused of showing
partiality to his mining neighbor, in breaking rules. Anyway, J. Ross
Clark had no call for worry. His brother, William A. Clark, a mining
man, controlling, among other holdings, the fabulously rich United Verde
mine at Jerome, Arizona, owned also forty-nine per cent of the San
Pedro lines—and was at this time operating the road under a twenty-year
control agreement. It is now in full control of the Union Pacific.

The Limited was not scheduled to stop at Jean, Nevada, my destination.
The regular procedure would have been for me to go on down the line
forty miles or more and then double back on a local train. But when the
Limited began slowing down on approaching Jean, the conductor said to
me, “No, don’t jump—wait ‘till she stops.”

The engineer climbed down from his cab. The conductor hopped off the
train and yelled, “Hey, Bill, what’s wrong?” I knew what was wrong. And
Bill knew; and the conductor knew; and possibly one other knew—but that
was all. And whose business was it, anyway?

The lost hour had been made up before the train pulled into Caliente,
Nevada, where it halted ten minutes. And, paradoxically, it gained
another hour there in that ten minutes. Caliente—Mexican for hot—is
where Pacific time begins.

Bill had left that division point “on time” and held to the fast
schedule all the way. And I’ll bet Bill and his relief engineer landed
the old Limited in Los Angeles on the dot — even though there were
miles and miles of desert wasteland, with two high mountain ranges, and,
finally, a beautiful irrigated valley with orange groves and banks and
banks of roses, yet to be crossed.

As the Limited started to move again the conductor threw me a last
cheerful word: “You’ll have only a little way to walk.” And I could only
hope that there was no one to report that conductor—nor my friend Ross.


You see, it was Dry again.

All about lay the eternal waste of the desert and mountain slopes,
barren and desolate, walled in that arid corner of the world.

THE WIFE—AT GOODSPRINGS Not Hitherto Published — 1947

By John T. Bristow

To round out the foregoing story, I might say here that my wife was a
guest for the week during my absence in Crescent, at Mrs. Yount’s hotel
in Goodsprings. Sam Yount, the landlady’s husband, was leading
merchant, postmaster, private banker—and miner. And he backed the hotel
proposition too. The sleeping quarters of the hotel were a detached row
of ground-floor rooms close by the main structure. It was before the
building in Goodsprings of the Southern Nevada Hotel, said at the time
to have been the most commodious hotel in the state. It was before the
camp boasted a newspaper, even before the camp got electricity.

My wife was not versed in the ways of the West; and she had some
misgivings about making this stop-over on the desert, particularly
because of the lateness of our train, while on our way to visit my
people in California. I had told her that of the many times I had been
out there I had never seen a gun-toting man—and that there was a fixed
impression that it would be about as much as a man’s life was worth to
molest a woman.

This trip was made at a time following the great flood that had wiped
out all the railroad bridges for many miles along the Meadow Valley
Wash, in eastern Nevada. Owing to a slow track, our train, due in Jean
in the forenoon, did not arrive until near midnight. There were no
accommodations at Jean when I was last out there, and I had told Myrtle
that, as we would now miss the stage, we might have to sit in the depot
until morning, or walk ten miles across the desert to Goodsprings.

Frankly, she was not of a mind to do anything of the kind. She said
we could remain on the train, go on to Los Angeles, and maybe stop at
Goodsprings on our return trip—or we could, as far as she was concerned,
pass it up altogether. I pointed out that we could hardly do this,
with her trunk and all her fine clothes—clothes she didn’t need at
all—checked through to Jean. And besides, we would be returning by way
of San Francisco.

Remember, I had told her that I had never seen a gun toter in the West.
Remember also that this was before Crescent. Then, imagine my surprise,
and the wife’s renewed misgivings, when, on getting off at Jean, the
first and only man to be seen had a murderous looking six-shooter
strapped on him. And the wife had so little respect for my veracity as
to tell me right out loud that in her best judgement I had purposely
misrepresented matters to her.

George Fayle, whom I had known in Goodsprings — associated with
Sam Yount—had come over to the railroad to engage in the mercantile
business. He owned a general store, a restaurant, and was building a
hotel. This made matters fine for us—almost. Fayle was postmaster, and
handled pouch mail between the postoffice and the trains. The gun he
carried was only routine.

George Fayle took us to a ground-floor room in his unfinished hotel. The
room had wallboard partitions, bed upon springs flat on the floor, with
a blanket hung across the outside door opening, leaving one-fourth of
the space with nothing but thin desert air between us and the unknown.
George did not tell us what kind of characters he was harboring beyond
the cardboard—but he did wish us a pleasant good night, and, patting his
six-shooter, said we would be perfectly safe, as is.

But the wife did not readily catch the spirit of the West. I had
told her that the desert was overrun with lizards and sidewinder
rattlesnakes, the poisonous kind that travel in spiral form with head up
ready for a strike at all times. She put in most of the remainder of
the night watching the 18-inch opening between the blanket and the
floor—precisely for what, she could not be sure. Luckily there was no
wind. The blanket hung limp throughout the night. I can swear to that.
Two of a kind, you might say.

At breakfast, George told me there had been a manhunt the day before
over in the country west of Goodsprings — that an escaped convict was
reportedly holed up in the hills east of Sandy. That would be in the
neighborhood of our lead mine. The wife took this in without comment
— but it was plain to be seen that she was stowing it away for future
consideration.

When Frank and I had returned from our tour of inspection at Crescent,
after nightfall, we found the Good-springs camp in an awful state of
alarm. My wife, fully dressed, was sitting upright in the middle of the
bed in our ground-floor room, afraid to put foot on the floor. She had
been so since shortly after dusk. Dusk—that indeterminate translucent
veil which, like a mist, screens and magnifies, transposing even the
most common objects into phantom figures.

She had heard a scraping noise, likely a block away, but at such times
the imagination does tricks to one’s reasoning. In her state of nervous
tension, it was but natural for her to imagine that indistinct noise had
come from under the bed, the obvious place for an intruder to hide.

Ordinarily Myrtle was not given to such fits of timidity. But she had
entered the country under trying conditions, and therefore was not
prepared for the many unexpected irregularities. We had not counted on
our train being so far behind time as to land us out there in the middle
of the night. With my memory of the surroundings as I last knew them,
it required a lot of silent argument with myself to get up courage
to subject her to the risk we must necessarily take in finding
accommodations of any sort, at Jean. I knew there were ten miles of
desert on either side of the railroad station. That the country was
not inhabited might or might not have been in our favor. Certainly, it
presaged loneliness—and it was dark.

A woman at the hotel in Goodsprings thought she had glimpsed the deadly
thing, at dusk, near the sleeping quarters—and Myrtle’s door had been
left open for a brief spell while she was out. Or rather the door had
been found open on her return—she just wasn’t sure how it was. Myrtle
informed me that all the other women in camp were just as frightened as
she was. And she bade me look under the bed, forthwith.

The thing I was supposed to make sure was—or wasn’t — there, had an
overall length of about two feet, a width of four to five inches, an
inch or so less in height when inactive—and it was a little pot-bellied.
It was rusty in color, with yellowish spots distributed the full length
of its body. It had a fat meaty tail, and a broad ugly looking head.

There really was something alive under the bed. It moved. Its eyes
moved toward me. Also there were now two people upon the bed. And
simultaneously the door swung open, as if the devil was in cahoots with
the thing, bent on letting in all the demons of a wicked world. I had
hit the bed on the bounce with a jarring thud, causing the door to
swing in, as it invariably did when not securely latched. And the cat
“hightailed it” out into the night.

But the house cat was not the thing so much dreaded.

Mr. Springer’s Gila Monster, a lizard-like reptile, even more poisonous
than the rattlesnake, was on the loose. It had got out of its place of
confinement two days back, and diligent search by the whole camp had
failed to locate it. On the third day, however, the Monster was found
at a water-hole, an old trench dug years before by our former Wetmore
citizen, Green Campbell. The camp demanded that the reptile be killed
immediately.

Elwood Thomas, also formerly of Wetmore, was a close neighbor to Mr.
Springer, and he had carried the word of caution to Myrtle. It was all
so very exciting—even worse than a panther scare. And, miraculously, the
wife was to experience that one too before leaving the Goodsprings camp.

We were to go with Frank Williams to stay over Sunday at our lead mine,
which was twelve miles over the mountain range on the west side. The
daily stage (except Sunday) passed within a few hundred yards of the
mine. Frank and I started to walk over, at sunup, on Saturday morning.
Myrtle was to go over on the stage in the afternoon.

image332

To make a short cut, Frank and I took a burro trail at the summit, near
the Columbia mine. While trailing that rugged miner ten yards in the
rear, going down on the west side, I sprained my right ankle, badly,
rolling down the slope almost to where Frank was—my camera trailing in
the wake, taking the bumps.

We stopped for a brief rest at the Hoosier mine—formerly owned by
Frank’s uncle, Elwood Thomas—where the miners were taking out zinc ore,
a new find in that district. And “tenderfoot” though I was, I made a
discovery there which had escaped my seasoned miner-partner for a whole
year. At least I thought I had done this to him. Frank had cut through a
12-foot body of identical appearing stuff in running the tunnel, and had
several tons of it ricked up on the dump. It would require an assay to
convince him that we had a zinc mine, as well as a lead mine.

In accordance with the miners’ code we were invited to stop at the
Hoosier shack in the foothills and get our dinners. By this time my
swollen ankle was hurting so badly that I preferred not to stop until
we could get out to the stage road a mile farther on—but Frank said
it would be an insult to the Hoosier boys for us to pass them by. And
besides he was hungry. Also, according to the miners’ code Frank had to
wash his dirty dishes. This is a must in the mining country.

image333

This is where I went down—second time. Took this picture while waiting
for the stage. Frank’s mail box is about a mile around the bend of the
road. The trail—foot path—going over the mountain starts near the right
edge of this view’ and tops the mountain starts near the right edge of
this view, and tops the mountain at the head of a canyon, on the other
side.

We reached the stage road about two hours before the stage was due.
Frank walked on three miles farther to the mine, and I hobbled along
until within a mile of “our” mountain—then my ankle toppled me over
again, and I lay there with my head shaded by a single sagebrush. As the
sun moved along on its westward course—which of course it didn’t do at
all—I had to scratch gravel frequently, sliding on my back, to keep my
head shielded from the burning desert sun.

The stage-driver let us off at Frank’s mail box, and Myrtle had a hard
time helping me over the hump and down the canyon to the mine. We took
the short cut over the mountain instead of going a mile or more around
on the wagon road; through a saddle-back, and then up the canyon to the
mine, which would have been less arduous. We were carrying provisions
for six meals for the three of us. There was water at the mine. It
had rained a month before, and Frank had scooped up the water out of
a ditch. No fiction in this. Water really “keeps” out there—when in an
underground house, anyway.

We had overlooked the need for candles and coffee—or rather they were
missing from the pack. Acting on Frank’s suggestion, Myrtle went out on
the mountain side, gathered leaves from the lowly sage brush—and we had
our tea. But the absence of candles was a more serious matter. Frank
hunted the underground house, and the tunnels, finally finding a
two-inch piece of candle at the far end of a 500-foot tunnel.

The wife and I slept—no, bunked—the first night in the underground
house. To get into the place we had to hug a wall as we approached the
door to avoid dropping into a 60-foot shaft by the side of the entrance,
where Frank had taken out $65 worth of RICH silver ore—at a cost of $500
for digging the hole.

There were mice, and probably lizards too, running over our bed on the
floor. Little lizards were very active on the outside, in the daytime.
And Frank and I had killed a rattlesnake while strolling about over the
grounds the year before. The crack under the door was big enough to let
in almost anything short of a panther.

Also, a big body of ore protruding from the ceiling directly over our
bed looked as if it might slip from its moorings with the slightest jar,
and there was some jarring force at work all through the night. Grains
of crushed limestone, like sand, sifted down upon us almost continously.
Myrtle spent the night lighting, blowing out, and relighting that little
piece of candle. In this way she made it last until morning.

The next night—Sunday night—we slept, or rather bunked, on an
ore-sorting table out on the tunnel dump, under the stars. Frank had
taken his bedroll a hundred yards down the canyon to find level “ground”
on which to make his spread. I had sent an old trunk filled with bedding
including a couple of pillows the year before. The wife thought Frank
had been a little lax in the matter of laundering same.

image335

After going over the mountain (at left) we — Myrtle and I — came down
the canyon to the mine. The tunnel dump shows between the two arms of the
mountain — about a half mile away. Getting down from the top was tough.
I had to back down much of the way — and have a lot of help. Frank had
said he would meet us at the mailbox — but he was taking lessons in
French off a gramophone and did not show up until we were well along the
way to the mine. Frank’s and Edith’s first tent house — part canvas —
was built was built on this dump.

This, of course, was before Frank had gone East to study political
economy. Also it was before he had brought back to the mine a New
England school teacher called Edith, bearing his name. There was no
laxity after Edith took charge. And, with this touch of “new life” on
the job, the mine, besides yielding rich ore, sparingly, produced two
fine little girls, Ruth and Helen—girls that grew up at the mine. With
their father a graduate of Campbell University, Holton, Kansas, and
their mother holding a teacher’s certificate, the girls didn’t fare
badly, even in semi-isolation. As a matter of fact, district school was
held for a time in their home, with their mother as teacher.

The home at this time was a four-room house on a 5-acre water claim—held
in connection with the mining claims — on the edge of Mesquite Valley,
one mile from the mine. There was a 75-foot dug well, with windmill,
and running water in the house. And there were growing fruit trees,
a vineyard in bearing, and a green—very green alfalfa patch. The two
Williams girls represented two-sevenths of the possible pupils for the
school.

Then a little green school house was erected not more than three hundred
yards from their door—with Miss Leah Lytle as first teacher—where all
seven of the miners’ children studied their lessons, romped and played
among the sage and mesquite. While so doing, Helen Williams was bitten
by a rattlesnake. She was taken to Las Vegas, the nearest big town,
fifty miles away for treatment—and that move spelled the end of the
little green school house in the Mesquite Valley so far as the two girls
were concerned. They finished their schooling in Las Vegas, graduating
from the high school there. Then, when Rex Ewing, Frank William’s
closest mining neighbor, moved to Las Vegas to capture some of the
prevailing high wages, the school blew up. Rex had supplied the other
five pupils. The sequence of events as set down here may be faulty—but
were I able to chronicle them in order, the result would be the same.

This, I believe, is noteworthy. Besides the single claim purchased by
Frank and me from S. C. Root, operator on Bonanza Hill, one mile south
of our holdings, Frank Williams located three more adjoining claims,
taking in practically all the surface ore croppings on this mountain—and
recorded them in one group, which meant that the work done on any one
claim of the group, if extensive enough, would satisfy the $100 annual
assessment for each claim.

There was, however, a small showing of ore apparently like the zinc at
the Hoosier mine just outside those claims, on the west, close to the
wagon road Frank had blasted out, at considerable expense, to get up
to the tunnel he was driving. There were no other operators on that
mountain. Frank was lonesome. He wanted neighbors. Old man Ewing and son
Rex, nomad sojourners in Goodsprings, were invited to come out and try
their luck on that small cropping.

The Ewings struck pay ore almost from the start, and began shipments,
while Frank was still driving his tunnel — with ever increasing high
hope. Frank’s wagon road proved to be a big asset for his new neighbors.
Rex Ewing also mined commercial lead ore back on the high end of his
claims, which was brought down to the wagon road by burro pack. Large
trucks now travel that wagon road right up to Frank’s ore bin, at the
mouth of the tunnel, and take off with five tons to the load.

At this juncture I might say that though Frank has spent fifty-five of
his seventy-six years—as of this date, 1947—in the Nevada mines, he has
met with only two accidents, and neither of them was actually in the
mines. He was working alone at our Crescent claims, and by way of
a little deviation from routine work, undertook to blow open a big
boulder—just curious to see what was inside. It was not in the way—and
it would have told him nothing of advantage had he proved his suspicion
that it contained gold, for gold was showing in the ledge up slope from
which the boulder had been dislodged. What I said to Frank when he told
me he meant to waste a day in blowing open that big rock does not matter
now. Nor did it matter then.

Even before Frank had started to drill the boulder, while clearing away
some loose rock, it rolled half-over, pinning him underneath. I judged
the boulder would weigh two tons, maybe more—but a smaller rock had
prevented it from crushing the life out of Frank. Two miners were
working, in sight, across the canyon about a quarter mile away—and Frank
called and hollered for seven hours without attracting them.

Now, here is something that, from my power of reasoning, is
inexplicable. There are, however, people who would have a ready
explanation for it. Elwood Thomas, Frank’s uncle, had driven his team of
ponies from Goodsprings over to Searchlight, ten miles beyond Crescent,
and was returning late in the afternoon, aiming to go by way of
Crescent, as it was shorter and a better road.

Elwood told me that when he had come to the by-road leading through the
canyon past his nephew’s location, he naturally thought of Frank, and
as he drove on toward Crescent he began to think he should have gone
the other road. He said, “Something told me to turn around—I wouldn’t
pretend to say what it was—but it was so strong, so insistent, that I
did turn around after I had gone a mile.” He found Frank still hollering
for help—but his calls were now very feeble. With the help of the two
miners Frank had been trying to attract, Elwood got him out from under
the boulder, loaded him into the wagon, and drove on down through the
canyon and across the big flat to Nipton, the railroad station. Frank
was put on the train and taken to a hospital in Los Angeles. He was
paralyzed from the waist down. Six weeks in the hospital fixed him up as
good as ever. Frank was on his own then—that is, had no insurance.
The expense was terrific. I think Frank never did get his curiosity
satisfied about the boulder.

As his inactive partner, I cautioned Frank against working alone in
those remote places—but it did no good. He said he was safer working
alone in the mines than I was when riding the trains between Kansas
and Nevada. When I first went into the mining country, I observed that
practically all prospectors had partners. I asked an Irishman (a miner)
why was it so? He said, “And how the divvel would a man pull his-self up
out of a hole widout a partner?” But there was a more important
reason. It was for protection against accidents such as Frank had just
experienced.

Frank’s second accident, more serious than the other one, was at our
Goodsprings mine, while loading out vanadium ore on Government contract,
in more recent years. He was unable to tell how it happened. The trucker
had left with a 5-ton load, and Frank was “waiting around” for him to
come back for a second load. When the truck driver got back from his
ten-mile trip over the mountain, he found Frank wandering around down on
the road below the ore bin, in a dazed condition—really worse than that.
Frank wrote me later that he remembered standing on the ore bin after
the trucker had gone with his load, and thought he must have fallen
off—but remembered nothing more. The ore bin is built against the slope
of the mountain, having a flat top about 16x20 feet, on a level of the
tunnel, with car-track extending to the outer edge, where a drop would
be about 18 feet—and less, (to nothing), at the upper end of the ore
bin. Frank did not say where he was standing in the last moments of
consciousness—but a fall from anywhere near the upper edge would mean a
rough tumble all the way down to the road.

When Frank was taken to the Las Vegas hospital, it was found he had
a broken collarbone, a bad head injury — and a touch of pneumonia. He
remained two months in the hospital, at state expense, plus $90 per
month compensation — with final payment of $1,500, on a basis of
one-fourth incapacitation.

In Nevada now you don’t have to apply for state insurance. If you are a
miner, you’ve got it, with monthly billing—unless you have filed notice
that you do not want it.

The Williams girls are both married and live in Las Vegas. Helen is the
wife of Vaughn Holt, a barber. When I called at her home in 1941 she had
a very sweet little girl not quite a year old. Ruth’s husband, Charles
Thomas, is a linotype operator on Frank Garside’s Daily newspaper. He
is not the Charley Thomas who grew up in Wetmore and spent many years
in Nevada. That Charley was the son of Elwood Thomas and was Frank
William’s cousin. And it so happens that Ruth now takes her grandmother
Williams’ maiden name—Ruth Thomas.

Frank Garside, postmaster at Las Vegas, and publisher of the Daily
Review there, formerly lived in Atchison. His aunt, Frances Garside—well
known to me at that time — made a record writing “Globe Sights” for Ed
Howe’s Daily Globe, back in the “Gay Nineties.”

And now the panther. Maybe it was only a wildcat, but its scream was
enough to put fear in the “sleepers” out on the tunnel dump. The varmint
came yowling down the canyon, fifteen feet away from our bunk, going on
down the trail Frank had taken with his bedroll. Frank said the thing
had been heard several times before, and he was not sure if it was a
panther, or a wildcat. Panthers—called cougars in the west—he said, were
very much in evidence down on the Rim; that is, the high bank of the
Colorado river. And something very like the cougar in habit had killed a
calf in the valley, close by. Myrtle regarded the thing as a threatening
menace, and had it not been for that exposed shaft at the entrance
of the underground house, she doubtless would have made a break for
shelter. And I think that, notwithstanding my black and blue ankle, I
should have followed pronto.

However, Myrtle was compensated for all this by the fact—vouched for by
Frank Williams—that she was the first white woman to set foot on that
mountain. By the same line of reasoning, Edith Willams was, I suppose,
if we can be sure Frank knows his history, the second, and probably the
last, white woman to climb Hunter mountain.

Looking across the canyon, and gesturing toward the mountain-side where
some work had been done, Myrtle laughingly said to Frank and me, “I
suppose you two old grizzled miners think that ‘Thar’s gold in them thar
hills’.”

Myrtle had trod some pretty rocky ground, literally and figuratively,
since coming into camp—besides heating gallons of water from time
to time at the mine to bathe my sprained ankle—and she certainly was
entitled to indulge in a little “fun” at our expense. Myrtle had quoted
correctly, but that “grizzled” reference belonged to quite another class
of miners. And I may say this was the first and only time I had ever
heard that bewhiskered old saying while in the mining country. It was
of course a carryover from another era. And, had she not questioned my
statement about the gun-toters, I should have told her that there are no
such animals in the mining country now.

Myrtle was holding in her hand a gold nugget—real, glittering, yellow
gold — about the size of a walnut, and Frank knew instantly its source.
She had taken it out of my pocket—but I doubt if Frank knew positively,
until this minute, that I had it. He said to me, “You better drop it in
that shaft over there by the underground house. There’s but one place
that it could have come from—and if exhibited around here, it might get
somebody in trouble.” He hastened to say, however, that it would not
be me; that he was sure that I had got it legitimately, though maybe a
little less openly than the $10 nugget I had secured when he and I were
exploring the depths of the famous Quartette mine at Searchlight. That’s
the place where someone had said before the camp was named that it would
take a searchlight to locate pay ore.

I said, “Yeah, drop it in the shaft and have someone in the future find
it, and then spend thousands of dollars trying to locate its source.”

He said, “Any miner who knows his stuff would know that it didn’t
originate in this lime formation. It’s straight out of a porphyry
dike—and was, until you got hold of it, closely guarded under lock and
key.”

I could have told him that I knew all this, but a more brilliant idea
struck me—leastwise just for the moment I thought it was bright. But,
then, on second thought, what if the assay on our big body of material I
had been so sure was just like the Hoosier zinc, should prove me wrong.
Well, anyway, I would “ shoot the works.”

I said, “It strikes me that there are some men around here who count
themselves miners that do not exactly at all times know their stuff.”

Myrtle said, “Now, now—don’t commence on that zinc again.”

“Well,” I said, “I’ll still bet my old hat that it is zinc.”

Frank said, quickly, “If it’s zinc, I’ll eat your old hat — and do it
with relish, too, brother.”

“And in that case, if you win, smart boy, you still stand to lose your
hat,” said Myrtle, to me.

I believe Frank had already begun to see the light, sense a probability,
cherish a hope. Although lead ore running 71 and 72 per cent by the
carload had been shipped, the present lean condition of our lead mine
could well stand bolstering with a big body of zinc. But of course he
would not want to admit, first off, that his “tenderfoot” partner had
stumbled onto something of such vital importance. In school, and at
countryside lyceums back home, Frank was a top negative debater—always
on the “contrary” side. And it was probably the stubborn Welsh in him
that caused him to stick by his guns now”His father had been a miner
back in Wales—in the identical neighborhood’ that afterwards became
known as the locale of the movie, “How Green Was My Valley?”:

I do not know the result of the assay made by Harry Riddell for
Frank—but I do know that Frank wrote me, that fortunately, I was going
to be minus an old hat, someday. But, for the present, would I send him
$500 to start operations on “our lucky zinc find?”

An assay made for me, by C. S. Cowan, whom I met on the train, and who
was assayer at W. A. Clark’s United Verde mine, Jerome, Arizona, showed
fifty-five per cent zinc. Assayer Cowan wrote me that it was a big
surprise to him. He had told me he doubted if the sample would show any
zinc.

In the crude, it shipped out by the carload at forty-three percent. But
at that, it was no bonanza. Western smelters could not handle that class
of ore—and the freight rate to the zinc smelters in the gas fields of
southern Kansas, was $500 a car.

Unlike the dark sulphides of the Joplin (Mo.) and Galena (Kans.)
district, where paying mines were operating on six per cent zinc, ours
was a carbonate ore, running to high values. It was light in color,
with the richer ore comparatively light in weight. Frank said it would
likely, as she goes down, turn to sulphides and be more permanent, with
less values.

But, brother—”she” didn’t go down.

By way of explanation, I might say here that on the preceding Friday,
Frank and I paid a visit to the Keystone mine near the summit, north of
the Goodsprings highway. Situated in a porphyry zone, it was the only
gold mine of importance in the district—with an output of more than
a million dollars up to that time. And it might be consoling to my
partner, who at that time (1907) had spent sixteen of his thirty-seven
years working in the Nevada mines, to state here what he already
knows—in fact, he’s the source of my information—that Jonas Taylor,
working a silver deposit on his claim, allowed the Keystone gold ledge
to lay dormant for three years after he had discovered it. But when he
did finally wake up to its possibilities, three days work rewarded
him with a four-foot vein of gold ore running $1,000 to the ton—in
shipments.

Our former Wetmore citizen, Green Campbell, did not get in on this—but
he located, and his estate still owns the Golden Chariot, adjoining. And
one of Green’s associates, William Smith, hurriedly fetched his friend
Samuel Godbe over from Pioche, and after one look at the uncovered
ledge, the latter played a winning hand in a big game without risking
any chips. Mr. Godbe asked for, and received from Mr. Taylor, a thirty
day option on one-half interest for $20,000. Mr. Godbe then rushed to
San Francisco and sold half of a half-interest to Mr. Perry, a banker
acquaintance, for $20,000 cash. A few months later Mr. Perry sold his
quarter interest to Mr. Blake, of Denver, for $40,000. And nobody had
lost any money — yet.

We had driven Sam Yount’s big sorrel mare up Kerby gulch to the Kerby
mine, owned by the Campbell estate. From there, we walked maybe a couple
of miles—a pretty rough climb—to the Keystone, arriving at about 10
o’clock. The camp cook, the only man above ground, thought the
miners were working on the 800-foot level. Frank said he knew his way
around—that we would go down in the mine and contact them. He had worked
in the Keystone a short while before.

Like an addict bucking a slot machine always hoping for the next turn to
crack the jackpot, Frank had put his last dollar into the development of
our own prospect, and consequently had been compelled to work in other
mines to get a stake. And since it was not in the cards for Frank to
distinguish himself, as part owner of the Kansas-Nevada mine — and also,
in later years, as if finding a good mother for his “kids” while on that
political economy excursion into the East was not enough, he cashed in
on that outlay by getting himself elected for the fourth time, to the
legislature — assembly, it is called in Nevada. Then to Reno as Regent
of the University of Nevada. Also, still later, he started a one-man
crusade against gambling. But in Nevada—well, it was slow work.

And, mind you, we ourselves, Frank and I, were at that very time stuck
in a mine gamble which might—and did — keep us feeding the “kitty” for
years before we could know whether or not we would ever be able to pull
out with a winning.

We lighted candles and started down by way of an incline shaft. The
Keystone doubtless had a vertical shaft, I believe back on higher
ground, straight down to the 1,000 foot level, with safety cage,
operated with power. Likely a standard shaft! under state supervision,
similar to the one which Frank and I were eased down to the 1100-foot
level of the Quartette mine at Searchlight—on a day off from our
inspection at Crescent. My cousin, Ella Bristow-Montgom-ery-Walter,
lived in Searchlight, and Joe Walter, her husband, had taken time off
from his barber business to show us around. Frank had seen the manager
of the Quartette, likely through the solicitation of Joe, give me a gold
nugget, worth maybe $10.,

I did not collect these rich specimens for their intrinsic value—but
rather for study and comparison. Our hope for gold at that time lay
at Crescent, between Goodsprings and Searchlight. The specimens
from neighboring camps could be helpful in determining our course of
development.

At the Keystone, we had gone down that incline shaft to the 700-foot
level before the tenderfoot in me began to assert itself. We had walked
down the incline easily enough, then climbed straight down on a ladder
for maybe twenty-five feet—and then repeated by incline and ladder,
gaining distance away from the portal, as well as in depth.

At the 700-foot level, Frank had a sudden notion that we might be
heading for trouble. There were crosscuts going out from the various
levels, and the miners might be working in any one of them. And it was
about time for the shots to be fired. He said we could get out quicker
if we were above the works when the powder smoke began to come out. And
I was positive that I had had enough. The mine was dripping water—and my
nerves were shot.

It gave me a “weak” feeling not unlike I had experienced when Frank took
me about 300 feet back into the tunnel at our lead mine to demonstrate a
drilling, and the firing of a shot. It was late in the afternoon, almost
sundown. Frank said we would have to hurry, as daylight was running out
on us, and we yet had to make our beds out on the dump—that is, find
places where the crushed rock had been trampled down to some semblance
of smoothness. He said he was drilling in soft white lime; that the blue
lime at the contact two hundred feet farther in, for which the tunnel
was projected, and where, it was confidently believed, we would
encounter a big body of lead, was hard as granite. He drilled a hole
sixteen inches deep, then cut a suitable length of fuse, fitted a
dynamite cap to one end, tapped it together lightly with his steel
drill—then shockingly gave that dynamite cap, having a 500-pound
explosive force — which alone has been known to blow a man’s hand off
when hit with a hammer—a final clinch with his teeth. He had a little
tool for clinching the caps, but he didn’t want to waste the time to
fetch it. He “hooted” at my protest of that dangerous performance.
We were about twelve miles from civilization, and I didn’t relish the
prospect of being left alone out there in the night. He slit a stick of
dynamite with his knife—dynamite has been known to explode with rough
handling—but he eased my fears by saying a cow had chewed up a stick
of dynamite without harm. He inserted the capped end of the fuse in the
slit, squeezed it together and dropped it in the hole. He filled the
hole with fine rock drillings, and nonchalantly tamped it with an iron
bar. He lighted the fuse with a match—and said it was time for us to
skedaddle to the portal. No report. Frank said he would go back in the
tunnel and dig it out, and fire the charge. Now, I did protest. I told
him to defer that job until morning. He thought maybe it would be best,
said that a fuse would sometimes hangfire. Dusk was upon us. However,
we found suitable spots for bedding down, and I rolled up in nice clean
blankets I had purchased in Los Angeles the day before—and, using
a “soft” white lime rock for a pillow, slept the sleep of a budding
plutocrat. And, believe it or not, that delayed shot waked me before
dawn. Frank had performed the dangerous task of digging out that
dud, and reloaded the hole. He said, “It was no job for a simpering
tenderfoot to watch. And furthermore, if you will stick around me you’ll
learn something.” And that was no boastful exaggeration.

The Keystone manager took us to the administration building, unlocked a
door, and showed us five tons of very rich gold ore piled in one corner
of the office. A narrow strip of one inch and less—along the hanging
wall of a four-foot vein of $40 ore—shot with particles of pure gold,
averaging $72,000 to the ton, had produced that $360,000 pile of
Keystone wealth.

The manager was very kind to me. He pointed out some extremely rich
specimens, and watched me “eat ‘em up” — figuratively, of course. I knew
that it would have been unethical, if not worse, for him to have offered
to give me a specimen, especially at a time when all that “high-grading”
was going on in Nevada, particularly at the Goldfield Consolidated
Mines.

Satisfied that I had been sufficiently impressed, the manager turned
to Frank—they were old associates, you know—suggesting that he might be
interested in having a look at the work-sheet, blue-print, or something
of other entertaining, on the desk. When Frank was sufficiently
absorbed, with back to me, the manager stepped out the door, “whowhoed”
and gestured—probably held up two fingers — which I afterwards
interpreted to mean he was making known to someone he would have guests
for dinner. And I still think I read the signals aright. Anyway,
my hurriedly selected specimen had only the gold content of one
double-eagle—and that would have been grand larceny in my state.

I do not know if the Keystone maintained a change-room, such as the
management of the Goldfield Consolidated was compelled to install about
this time to cope with its “high-graders,” But the Keystone had had
experience with “high-graders.” Frank said that in earlier days,
off-shift miners would ride the ore-wagons down to the mill in the
Mesquite Valley near the town of Sandy, dropping rich pieces of gold ore
by the roadside for their confederates, following on foot, to gather up.

At the Consolidated Mines in Goldfield every miner on coming off
shift, besides having to shed his work clothes before he could pass
the doorkeeper to get to his street clothes, was compelled to say “Ah!”
Perhaps you can think of some other way a stripped miner might conceal a
bit of gold? The miners did. And the detection of that unique manner of
“high-grading” precipitated a riot that had to be quelled by the state
militia. The Union miners agreed, magnanimously, to submit to the new
order of things—provided that they be permitted to name the doorkeeper
from their own ranks. The Consolidated had broken into some extremely
rich ore, streaks of almost pure gold—and the miners were averse to
overlooking any bets.

Back at the lead-zinc mine, Myrtle told us what she had experienced in
Goodsprings during the week when Frank and I were at Crescent. As
the wife of the partner of Frank Williams—no intent of implying self
importance—she was at once taken into the hearts of the camp people.
Perhaps her own personality was a factor. She had met, at the hotel, Mr
and Mrs. Potter, of the Columbia mine; Mr and Mrs. McCarthy, (he was the
surveyor); and Harry Riddell, the assayer—all late of Boston. And she
had really begun to love the desert, with its ultra-sociable people.
Even Mrs. Yount’s squaw cook—maybe she was only kitchen help—a Paiute
Indian woman from up Pahrump way, Myrtle said, was friendly.

And, best of all, the camp children had supplied her daily—except of
course those two days when Mr. Springer’s Gila Monster had the run
of the camp—with a bouquet of wild flowers gathered from the mountain
slopes. She loved that.

Also, she had enjoyed, particularly when with the children, watching a
reddish-brown dog resembling a cocker spaniel, ride a horse, standing up
behind a man. A prospector working a claim up near the summit, five or
six miles out, rode a bay horse daily out of Goodsprings, to and from
his work—always with the dog standing on the horse’s back. As it was a
daily occurrence, the children had become accustomed to seeing the dog
ride the horse—but they were especially anxious for Myrtle to view the
spectacle, with them. Myrtle had met, and visited with, some of the
children’s mothers. One of the women was from Soldier, Kansas, near our
home. In fact, with faithful Elwood Thomas as escort, Myrtle had been
pretty much all over the camp — except of course saloon row on the north
side—Hobson street I believe it was called. Elwood had told her it was
not the lowest spot in Nevada, but even so, it was no place for a lady.

Myrtle had now really caught the spirit of the West. She was actually
planning on the spending of the yet undelivered profits of the mine, on
a home in Goodsprings. Everyone had told her that we were on the high
road to a big success. Our home would be on the “bench” near Charley
Byram’s place, where we could be sure of getting water. Bachelor
Charley Byram, I believe, had the only private well, with windmill, in
Goodsprings. He was the son of August Byram, former partner of Green
Campbell, in the sensationally rich Horn Silver mine at Frisco, Utah.
Born in Atchison, Kansas, Charley was now — in Nevada and Los Angeles,
where he lived with his mother and sister — -a typical Westerner,
seemingly without the proper appreciation of a native son for his old
home town. He said to me, “The last time I was back in Atchison,
two years ago, I could have fired a shotgun down the full length
of Commercial street without hitting a soul.” To one who knows the
unobstructed and flat straightness of Commercial street, it seemed as if
he should have been able to do better than that. Charley would have to
up his sights and show marksmanship if he were to hit pay ore on his
claims up in the porphyry zone. I believe he missed in this.

Myrtle said she wanted flowers, lots of roses, and green grass—a show
spot, sort of oasis in the desert as it were. Something that everybody
else didn’t have. Well, I too had been caught by the spell. Why not let
her have them? Contingent, however, on one little reservation. Only if,
and when, the lead-zinc mine should give up its treasure. We couldn’t
spend all that money living a prosaic life.

Before leaving Goodsprings for California, Myrtle said to me, “Let’s
come back this way. I’d love it. And since you think you are so good at
discovering zinc overlooked by your partner, maybe YOU could, after all,
find gold in ‘them thar hills’.”

Might say here that eight years later Myrtle had the chance to repay the
old miner, Elwood Thomas, for his kindness by entertaining him in our
home. Elwood — just in from Nevada — came into the Wetmore hotel one
evening about eight o’clock when I happened to be present. Also, Henry
McCreery—sometimes affectionately called “Henry Contrary”—Elwood’s
brother-in-law, was in the hotel office at the time. We had a good visit
together. When Henry was ready to go home he said, “Well, Elwood, I’d
like to ask you to go home with me for the night — but I’m afraid Becky
wouldn’t like it.” Becky Thornton was Henry’s sister and housekeeper—his
wife Patience, Elwood’s sister, having passed on some years earlier.
Elwood said, “Oh, it’s all right. Maybe I ought to go out and see the
Old Man” — meaning his bachelor brother Manning, living a half mile east
of town. Elwood was the oldest and Manning was the youngest in a family
of seven children—but the older one was the younger in appearance. I
said, “Come along with me, Elwood—I know Myrtle will be glad to see
you.” And she was. They had done Goodsprings all over again before
retiring that night. And, sadly, we were to see our very fine old friend
laid to rest in the Wetmore cemetery within the week. He was fatally
injured in a horse-and-buggy accident while visiting his daughter, Mrs.
Maude Ralston, in Holton.

Elwood had told us that he had a message from a miner in Goodsprings to
deliver to a woman in Wetmore, but he could not remember her name. The
wife and I put in a portion of the night trying to figure out who it
might be with a connection out there. The next morning after breakfast,
I went with Elwood down to the Spectator office. Editor Turrentine
gave him a personal, with comment, naming the man in Goodsprings whose
message Elwood would like to deliver, if he could find the woman. It
brought results. Mrs. Nels Rasmus drove over to Holton the day following
publication — and received her message. Mr. Thomas had gone over there
to visit his daughter. Mrs. Rasmus had lived in the home of P. T. Casey,
the Corning banker. I believe she was an adopted child. The Good-springs
miner was connected in some way with one or the other of the two Corning
families.

Two years later—1917—I chanced to meet this man with a stalled Model T
Ford near the summit west of Goodsprings, on a very slippery road, deep
in snow and slush. In the car with me, were Joe Walter, Frank and John
Williams, and the driver. We were coming down the grade, and he had been
going up. Recognizing the name on introduction, I asked him—just to be
sociable—what was wrong with his car? He answered rather smartly, “If I
knew I wouldn’t be here.” It was probably a very correct answer — but
I thought it was no way to dismiss a fellow who had a message from Mrs.
Rasmus for him.

NOTE—Frank Williams died in a hospital in Las Vegas. Nevada, December
19, 1947. This story is printed, without change, just as it was written
prior to his death.

MONEY MUSK Published in Wetmore Spectator—

January 24, 1936.

By John T. Bristow

The deep snows of the past month recall the winters back a half century,
and more. It seems there was always snow on the ground in the winter
months then.

In the early days, besides making boots and shoes, my father, William
Bristow, hunted and trapped a good deal, whenever he could spare the
time from his business. Always one or more of his boys would go with him
on those outings. We all loved the outdoors—and with my father we were
like pals.

Among his catches were mink, raccoons, lynx, bobcats, and sometimes a
catamount. The catamount was an overgrown wildcat between the bobcat and
the cougar in size. The largest one he ever caught weighed sixty-seven
pounds. There are none here now.

My father did not trap for the little fur-bearing, stink-throwing skunk,
but often one would be found in one of his mink traps. Then, from a safe
distance, he would shoot the skunk, carefully remove it, and deodorize
the steel trap by burning before making another set.

The time came, though, when my father thought he might just as well save
the skunk pelts. Skunk fur was in demand at a good price, the best skins
bringing around four dollars. My father was not avaricious. But times
were close—and he had many mouths to feed. And four dollars was four
dollars.

My mother, of course, did not like to have her home polluted with skunk
essence—and her boys refused to help with the skinning. So, when my
father would find a well-marked skunk in one of his mink traps he would
say, rather sadly, as he tossed it aside, “That’s four dollars thrown
away.”

Then, one Sunday when William Peters was along—he was called Methuselah,
or Thuse, for short—my father found a big skunk in one of his traps. It
had fine markings. He said, “I’ll skin this one, if Thuse will help
me.” Thuse said he didn’t mind; he had trapped and skinned a lot of them
without getting stunk up.

It was a cold day—ice and snow everywhere. And while they skinned that
skunk my brother Charley and I built a roaring fire with the scaley bark
ripped off standing shell-bark hickory trees, and some fallen dead tree
limbs picked out of the deep snow.

When they had finished skinning the skunk my father walked over to the
fire and threw the carcass into the flames. He and Thuse then went over
to an open spring that came out from under the roots of a big elm tree
on the Theodore Wolfley farm west of town, and washed their hands. They
had returned to the fire and were bending over the blaze drying their
hands, when my father said, “So you boys think you’re too nice to help
your old daddy skin a skunk.” He laughed. Methuselah chuckled. Then,
spreading his hands with a sort of satisfied air, my father said, “It’s
as easy as falling off a log when you know how.” Thuse chuckled again,
and said, “Pshaw—of course it is!” And then, as if giving instructions
for his sons to note, my father went on, “I shot him in the head before
he had time to kick up a stink and of course we were careful not to cut
into the stink-sack.”

Charley said, “Smart guys—you two.” Father gave him a withering look,
but said nothing.

Thus chagrined, Charley and I started away to gather some more fuel.
Then there was a sharp pop—a sort of explosion, as it were—in the fire.
We looked around into an atmosphere suddenly made blue with sickening
fumes and sulphurous words of condemnation. We saw Pop clawing
frantically at his whiskers—he wore a full beard then—and the two
Willies were dancing around the fire like Comanche Indians.

It was all so sudden. That darned skunk carcass, as if in a last noble
effort of defense, had exploded and the contents of that carefully
handled stink-sack was hurled at those two self-assured skinners, with
my father’s whiskers as the central target for some of the solids. Pugh!
It was awful!

Adopting Indian lingo, Charley laughed, “Heap brave skunk-skinners!”

Father said, “I don’t like the way you said that, young man. One more
crack out of you—and I’ll tan your hide.” But he wouldn’t have done
that. Charley was a model of perfection, and no one appreciated that
fact more than did his daddy.

Now, have a look at Thuse. A weazened little wisp of a man in his
twenties—wrinkled, uncouth, slouched in his clothes always much too big
for him, he looked as if he had already lived a goodly portion of the
long span of years accredited to the ancient Methuselah.

On the way home, Methuselah, speaking to my father, said, “They’ll want
to run us out of town, Bill, when we get back to Wetmore.” My father
said he could bury his clothes, but still he was greatly worried about
his whiskers. And, naturally, he was thinking about my mother, too.

Charley said, soothingly, “Oh, just go on home Dad, and play her Money
Musk, and everything will be fine. Money talks, you know. You’ve got
as good as four dollars in your game sack, and God only knows how much
musk, if you want to call it that, you and Thuse have got on your own
hides.”

My father played the fiddle, and while “Over the Ocean Waves” was his
favorite, he played equally well another tune called “Money Musk.” He
would entertain his family in the home of evenings with his old-time
fiddling.

We reached home about dusk, purposely timed. My father and Thuse were
both increasingly worried. Thinking that it might be more satisfactory
to let father face his problem alone, or with only Thuse present—and for
other reasons—Charley and I went out to the woodpile and stalled around
a bit. Old Piute and Queenie came out of the doghouse to greet us.
Father never took the dogs along when running his trap line.

My mother came to the door and called in her gentle, sweet voice—she
was always gentle and sweet with her boys—”Come on in here, you little
stinkers, and get your suppers!”

My father was not at the festive board that Sunday night. He was
nowhere about the house, that we could see — and we ate our supper in
comparative silence.

Occasionally, my mother would sniff at us, but she offered no protest.
Doubtless her two darling boys carried more than a suspicion of the
polecat’s pollution, but, having just had a whiff of those two Willies,
her keen nose was unable to separate the real from the imaginary.

It was almost two hours later when father came home. Methuselah was
with him. They were both appreciably slicked up—but not really so good.
Father was, more or less, shorn of his beard, and looked “funnier” than
his boys had ever before seen him. And, would you believe it, the first
thing he did was to pick up his fiddle and play Money Musk. I looked
at my mother—then turned to Charley, giggled, and whispered, “I don’t
believe it’s going to work.”

Charley giggled, too, and said out loud, “I betcha I could name some
slick skunk-skinners who are maybe going to have to sleep out in the
doghouse tonight.”

Sitting ramrod straight on the edge of her chair, with a hitherto
wordless dead-pan expression, my mother said, “You tell ‘em, kid.” That
did it. Dad snapped, “You don’t smell so darned nice, yourself, young
man!”

William Peters could play the fiddle almost as well as father. They
teamed well in furnishing music for the town dances, in the old days.
They now played as if there was urgent need for prolonging the agony.
Nero blithely fiddled while Rome burned. And likewise those two Willies
fiddled well into the night while my mother stewed.

GONE WITH THE WIND Published in Wetmore Spectator,

January—1943.

By John T. Bristow

I have been asked to “write up” the Kickapoo Indians. This I cannot do
satisfactorily without more data. I do not know the history of the tribe
and, at this late date, I do not choose to waste time in acquainting
myself with the particulars. It takes a lot of research to do a story of
that nature. And, historically written, it would be rather drab. Anyway,
this is a hurry-up assignment I am writing now to help out Carl, The
Spectator Editor, while he is playing a lone hand during his father’s
sickness.

WANTS WRITEUP OP KICKAPOO INDIANS

From Porterville, California, George J. Remsburg, who formerly lived
in Atchison, and years ago had some excellent historical articles
pertaining to Northeast Kansas printed in the Atchison Daily Globe,
writes:

“A while back I received from you a copy of the Spectator containing
your article, Turning Back the Pages. You have given us a splendid story
of the Old Trail days in Northeast Kansas. I read every word of it with
intense interest, and am preserving it for future reference. Also
accept my thanks for copies of the Spectator containing your Memory’s
Storehouse Unlocked. It is a most interesting narrative, and I am glad
to have it for my historical collection.

“Why don’t you write up some recollections of the Kickapoo Indians?

“Mrs. Robert T. Bruner, of your town, is my much beloved cousin—as good
a girl as ever lived.”

Marysville, Kansas, Dec. 18, 1938. Dear Mr. Bristow:

I have just received the Diamond Jubilee number of the Seneca
Courier-Tribune, and among other feature articles read your article on
“Green Campbell.” I want to congratulate you on this product of your
able pen. It presents the theme in a fascinating, interesting manner;
and incidentally garnishes the subject with a lot of worthwhile pioneer
history.

It is too bad that persons with your ability to write—to draw word
pictures — with words from an apt, concise, and well-stocked vocabulary,
should lay down the pen. Those products, tho very interesting now,
with the passing of years become literary gems. So keep on writing, Mr.
Bristow; we love the articles of your able mind and eloquent pen.

I don’t believe you have ever written up the Kickapoo Indians—right at
your door? Why not reconsider—and do it now?

Under separate cover I am mailing you one of my latest books, “The
Jay-hawkers of Death Valley.” I want to give you the opportunity to read
it. You need not buy it.

John G. Ellenbecher.

Mr. Ellenbecher has been writing historic articles for many
years—principally about the old Overland Trail. In company with Abe
Eley, formerly of Wetmore, Mr. Ellenbecker called on me when I was
writing the Green Campbell story. I told them that it would be my last.
But it was not. I reconsidered. Twelve of the stories in this book have
been written since. And I may write still another one.—J. T. B.

However, there are some incidents having Indian connections which might
make fairly readable matter. The Kickapoos were, I judge, just like
other Indians — pushed out of civilization to make room for the whites.
They had come here before the white settlement, of course. Where they
came from I do not know—Michigan, maybe.

The Kickapoos did not war with other tribes. Nor did they molest the
whites. Still, they were Indians, and it was hard for the early settlers
to believe that they would have a lasting record as such—since hostile
Indians roamed the country west of the Blue river. Back in the early
90’s when the Kickapoos took up the Sioux “Ghost Dance, or Messiah
Craze,” as it was called, and held all-night pow-wows for several weeks,
there was some nervousness among the whites.

In the early 70’s the Kickapoos came to Wetmore to do their trading.
They had Government money and were good customers of the two general
stores. Later they did their trading at Netawaka, and still later
at Horton. My father, a shoemaker, came to know some of them rather
intimately. I knew many of them too.

Masquequah was Chief then. Many are the times I have sold him white
sugar and red calico—the Indians would not buy brown sugar if they could
get white sugar. This was when I was a clerk in Than Morris’ store.
Associated with me then were Curt Shuemaker, George Cawood and “Chuck”
Cawood. In the good old days we often piled up a thousand dollar sales
of a Saturday.

I should, perhaps, amplify this assertion about the sugar. We sold at
that time about four times as much brown sugar which came in barrels
marked “C” sugar, as we did white sugar. One day the boss said, “The
town’s full of Indians; sell no white sugar to anyone until after the
Indians leave.” When I told the Chief we had no white sugar, he said,
“Ugh, Indian’s money good as white man’s money—maybe. Indians go
Netawaka buy white sugar.” And that is what they did. Sorry, I can’t
tell you why Morris did not want to sell the Indians white sugar that
day. It could hardly have been because it consumed more time-it was a
busy Saturday—to “tie-up” white sugar. We had no paper sacks then. The
system was to weigh-up the sugar, lay a piece of wrapping paper flat
down on the counter, empty the sugar onto it; then tie it up—if you
could. A green clerk like myself could waste a lot of time trying to
wrap up a dollar’s worth of granulated sugar. Brown sugar would pack
together, and wrap more easily.

The story got out that the Netawaka merchant would sell the Indian a
bill of groceries, put it in a box, and a clerk would obligingly carry
it to the Indian’s wagon—and then, while the Indian was loitering in the
store, the clerk would slip out and rob the box, in the interest of the
merchant. But, if this were true, the Indians seemed to like it. They
followed the Netawaka merchant to Horton when that town got started
in 1886. Also, it was said, a certain white farmer living near the
southwest corner of the reservation, would sometimes ride out from
Netawaka with one of his Indian friends, letting his hired hand follow
up with his own rig. At opportune times, the white man would reach back
and throw out packages for the hired hand to gather up. Methinks Sam
would have had hard luck in fishing out a package of granulated sugar
such as those tied-up by me.

The old, old Indians are, I believe, all dead now. Of the younger
generations, I know little—except that they are the descendants of a
once relatively large tribe, and that their once large domain has
been reduced to thirty sections, and that much of the land within the
boundaries of the reservation is now owned by white people.

H. A. Hogard, Educational Field Agent, and Grover Allen, Indian, were
in Wetmore last Sunday practicing archery with George Grubb and Ollie
Woodman. They told me the Indian population now numbers about 280. There
are about fifty families.

For my first episode I shall tell you about a deer-hunt my father and
I had with the Indians. In a former article I told you about an Indian
with a party of deer-hunters we chanced to meet in the John Wolfley
timber, whom my father named Eagle Eye. His Indian name was far from
that, however.

It was Eagle Eye who had arranged this hunt. He brought along from the
reservation, eight miles northeast of here, two extra ponies—one of
normal size and not too large at that, and a little one for me to ride.
While putting the saddle on the little pony my father asked the Indians
if it were a gentle pony. Eagle Eye said, “Him heap gentle like lazy
squaw.”

It had snowed during the night and was still snowing when the Indians
arrived at day-break. Two deer-runs were to be covered and it would take
a full day to do it. Then, too, our party wanted to, if possible, get
onto the grounds ahead of other hunters. It was not very cold, and my
father was pleased with the snow. Tracking would be good. A natural born
hunter, snow always appealed to him. He had killed a great many deer in
his native Tennessee.

In the old days in Tennessee there was hardly ever enough snow to do a
good job of tracking. However, hunters down there this winter would have
had snow aplenty to track deer—if deer still remain to be tracked. A
foot of snow and thirteen degrees below zero was recorded January 19th
at Nashville—where I was born, the second son of a tanner, at 11:30 p.m.,
December 31, 1861.

Also in our hunting party, riding a small pony, was a little Indian boy
whom they called—shall I say—Nish-a-shin. This might not be correct.
When we got lined out, Eagle Eye rode first, then my father. I was
third in line and Nish-a-shin was fourth. Three Indians followed in
single-file formation with long rifles carried crosswise in front of
them. The Indians all rode bareback, even Nish-a-shin. My father had
secured two saddles for us.

In the gray of that early Sunday morning after the storm abated and the
white prairie lay still, Eagle Eye headed west toward the John Wolfley
timber. We traveled in silence, never out of a walk. From the head of
Spring creek we went across to Elk creek and Soldier creek.

At that time the whole southwest country was practically virgin prairie.
The Dixon 40-acres where Maurice Savage now lives, and the Bill Rudy
land where Joe Pfrang’s home now is, were the only fenced tracts in that
section of the country. Bill Rudy went to California. Years later when
my father went out there they renewed their friendship. And one time
when I was visiting in Fresno my father took me to see Mr. Rudy. He
owned an 80-acre ranch and seemed to be well pleased with the change
he had made. He had much to say about the intense cold weather he had
endured on his homestead here. The winters Mr. Rudy experienced in
Kansas were very much like the one we are now having, only in the old
days real blizzards were the rule.

On October seventeenth, 1898, Jack Hayden lost nineteen head of cattle,
in a pasture north of the Rudy — or Pfrang — place, in an unusually
early and unusually severe blizzard. The cattle drifted with the
blinding snow-storm over a bank and piled up in a ditch. I was in
Chicago at the time. It rained in Chicago, but coming home on the
Burlington, the first snow appeared near the north line of Missouri, got
heavier toward Atchison, and from Atchison west on the Central Branch,
it was really heavy. That snow, and succeeding falls, kept the ground
here covered in a sea of white until spring.

Those Indians called me “paleface papoose.” I was, of course, beyond the
normal age of a papoose, but your old Indian was no fool. They probably
reasoned that whiteman would not understand Indian’s word for youth.
Eagle Eye had started calling me “paleface papoose” when my father was
saddling the pony. Maybe it was because I had to have a saddle. Little
Nish-a-shin you know rode bareback. He did not make much talk.

It was in the wilds of Soldier creek, in the big timber, where we
made camp for dinner. One of the Indians carried a stew-kettle in a
grain-sack and I carried a flour-sack having in it several loaves of
bread baked by my mother, and maybe four or five links of butcher-shop
bologna. Also two tin-cups, two tin-plates, with knives and forks for
two. My mother did not think to put in spoons, but then of course she
could not know the kind of mess we were in for.

With fallen deadwood dug up out of the snow a rousing fire was made—and
the kettle put on. When the Indian dish corresponding to the whiteman’s
mulligan was ready, all hands squatted down around the fire and devoured
the food ravenishly, including my mother’s nice brown loaves of bread
and the store bologna. My father had told me that I would be expected
to eat of the Indian’s food and that I should pass our bread and meat
around, as a token of friendship.

I cannot say now what kind of meat it was those Indians cooked in that
kettle, but it was something which they had brought along. They had not
killed anything on the hunt that day. However, I do not believe it was
dogmeat. Surely Eagle Eye would not have done that to us. But maybe it
was just as well that I didn’t then know anything about the accredited
habits of Indians in general as with respect to their dogs. I can
however truthfully say this much for the Indian’s stew. That dish—dog
or no dog—didn’t gag me nearly so much as the bowl of Chinese noodles my
father and my brother Frank cajoled me into eating with them and other
members of their party — Harry Maxwell, a former Wetmore boy, and Dan
Conner — while seeing Fresno’s Chinatown.

After traveling all day through the woods, following cow-paths and never
deviating once from the single-file formation which characterized the
start on that white morning away back in the 70’s we got back home at
dusk. From sun-up until sun-down we had traveled, and not one deer did
we see. Some tracks in the fresh snow were followed for miles. Only once
did the Indians dismount and hunt a clump of woods hurriedly on foot,
spreading out fanwise. They had glimpsed something moving among the
trees—something which they did not locate. It was then I learned why
they had brought the incommunicative Nish-a-shin along. Quickly he began
gathering up the reins of the deserted ponies. I learned something else
too. Pronto paleface papoose became a second edition of Nish-a-shin.

Starting up near Goff, the Spring creek deer-run came down to within a
half mile of Wetmore, then went southeast across the prairie to Mosquito
creek, thence up Mosquito creek nearly to Bancroft and across the
prairie again to the head of Spring creek.

Three deer were the most ever seen at one time on this run. They came
into a flock of 4,000 sheep I was herding for old Morgan on the Dan
Williams place a mile south of town, where Clyde Ely now lives. The
sheep were frightened and divided themselves into two bunches as the
deer loped gaily through the flock.

If you don’t know, a deer-run is the feeding grounds of those ruminants.
As long as the deer remain in the country they travel the same route
closely. In the winter—in the old days here—they fed largely on
hazel-brush and Other tender twigs.

We observed in our early hunts that the deer when feeding always
traveled the circle in the same way, never reversing. Sometimes however
when routed suddenly they would backtrack. And when pressed they would
usually run with the wind. Probably that was not so much to gain speed
as it was to camouflage the trail of their own scent and to more readily
themselves catch the scent of their pursuers. When hard pressed they
would sometimes take off with the wind and go ten or twelve miles off
the run—in one instance, nearly to Sabetha. Whenever a deer would
turn tail to wind we were ready to go home. I have seen them break out
against the wind and then when off a reasonable distance circle around
and go the other way. At such times my father would say, “Ah damn it,
now he’s gone with the wind!”

Since I am employing a rather broad drag-line brand of technique, there
is one more thing I might amplify here. In the beginning I said it
would entail a lot of research to do a good Indian story, historically
complete. Reliable information is hard to obtain. The old Indians—the
Indians I knew—have all gone to their “happy hunting grounds.” The
present generation does not seem to have a very clear picture of the old
days.

For instance, I made two trips to the reservation about five years
ago and interviewed a number of the older ones — second generation, of
course—in a vain effort to obtain just one Indian word. You may recall
that the tanyard story was, I might say, predicated on the Indian’s
name of sumac. When a small boy, I had understood Eagle Eye to call it
“sequaw.” I wanted to be accurate, as that flaming little bush played an
important part in the story as well as in the tannery. Not one of them
could tell me the Indian name.

I found one Indian, Henry Rhodd, 64 years old at that time, who said
he could not tell me the Indian name for sumac, but he knew what their
fathers used it for. He said they tanned their deer skins with it. That
was the same thing Eagle Eye had so dexterously managed to convey to my
father and me up in the Wolfley timber sixty-odd years earlier. Henry,
whom I would judge carries a mite of French blood in his veins, sniffed
as if he were inhaling the perfume of a fragrant rose, and said, “And oh
it smelled so good.” This, however, did not coincide with my findings as
a tanner’s helper. Still, I have seen my father sniff his newly tanned
calf skins and say the same thing. Our tan-yard was just about the
“stinkenist” place on earth.

In this connection I might mention that some years later I, myself, shot
a deer on lower Mosquito creek. My brother Sam and I had started out
one afternoon, the two of us riding our old roan mare, Pet. We struck
a fresh trail south of town about where the three deer and the four
thousand sheep had mixed. We followed the tracks to the Frank Purcell
timber. There we ran onto John Dixon and “Dore” Thornton. They said they
had been trailing the deer on foot all day.

John Dixon told me to go around to the south side of the timber; that
they would follow the tracks through the woods. The deer came
out running fast, and I shot it. The charge of buckshot from my
muzzle-loading shotgun hit a little too far back to make a clean kill.

We trailed that crippled deer—it was shot through the body as evidenced
by blood on either side of the trail—for a distance of ten miles to the
very spot where it had been started in the morning. At the line between
the John Wolfley place and the Mary Morris place, now owned by R. M.
Emery, the following morning, we lost the trail because of melting
snow and cattle tracks. The deer was found dead a few days later only a
quarter of a mile away.

After it had been shot that deer laid down three times — at the Joe
Boyce place, at the Bill Rudy place, and on the commons where the Ben
Walters place is now. The first time it laid down the warm blood from
the wound bored a hole in the snow. Darkness caught us at the old Dixon
or Savage place. It was then we remembered the old roan mare was still
tied back in the Purcell timber.

What boy is there who would not have been proud of that feat of
marksmanship—plugging his first deer through and through as it ran past
at almost lightning speed in its mad flight for life? Did I glory in the
feat? I did. At first. As a big-game hunter I had, in my own estimation,
scored high. Following in the footsteps of my father, a born hunter
of big game, I had all but arrived. Plugged my first deer! I was the
“toast” of the town! Or at least I could imagine I was. It would still
be interesting to know just what would have happened had I brought home
the venison. But I cannot now begin to tell you how adversely I was
moved when the deer was found dead.

In a flash I saw it all—how I had dropped back into a crook of the old
worm fence on the Roger O’Mera farm and waited for the deer, driven
out of the Purcell timber by the three other hunters, to come within
gunshot; how, as if it had wings, the deer, after being shot, cleared
that high rail fence; and how its life-blood spurting two ways stained
the fresh white snow where the little animal lit on the opposite side of
the rails; how every few miles we saw it jump up from a brief rest and
run on again, leaving more red on the white; and how, as we discovered
the next morning after leaving the trail at dusk, that a wolf had taken
up the chase and had sent the tired deer on and on without more rest
back to the big timber from whence it had come and where, perhaps, in
the throes of great agony, it sought its mate. And how, still pursued
by the wolf, it had cleared in one great leap—its last grand leap—on a
down-hill slope, a thirty foot hazel thicket.

Something indefinable, something unforgettable, made an impression on
me then. And that something put the “kibosh” on my big-game hunting
aspirations. I do not now count it a weakness. Though there were no game
laws then, that crime was made all the worse because it was a doe.

My brother Sam, who rode with me that day, later, really brought home
the venison, eclipsing all my past glory. But it took two trips all the
way to Arkansas in a horse-drawn covered wagon to do it. The first and
unsuccessful time he had for hunting companions Alex McCreery, John E.
Thomas, and my father. Their bag was a few wild turkeys. The second trip
Sam made with Roy Shumaker. This time they killed two deer. Then, for
the first time, the sons whose father was a veteran deer-hunter, were to
know the taste of venison.

Also, I used to chase wolves and jack rabbits with my horse and the
hounds, and enjoy it—until one particular rabbit chase which spoiled
the “sport” for me. It was on a Sunday afternoon in the quarter section
adjoining town on the northeast—the south half of which is now owned
by-Bill Davis. No horses were in this chase. The crowd from town, with
several trucks, were stationed on the ridge near the southwest corner.
The gray hounds started the rabbit over near the east line, and it ran
north down a draw, out of sight. It swung to the left and topped the
ridge north of the crowd, with the dogs in close pursuit. The rabbit
turned south heading straight for the crowd, and jumped up into Frank
Ducker’s truck, right at my feet. One of the men standing in the truck
grabbed it while the dogs were on both sides of the truck. The rabbit
squealed pitifully. The captor said its sides were thumping like
a trip-hammer. Most of the men thought the rabbit had earned its
freedom—but not so with some of the “sports.” Expecting to see another
chase, they dropped the rabbit on the ground about two rods in front of
the dogs, but when the rabbit saw the dogs it began squealing again—and
the grayhounds rushed in and nabbed both rabbit and squeal before it
realized that it must run again for its life. Every time after this when
a rabbit chase was proposed, I could hear that frightened jack rabbit’s
pitiful squeal.

But I never experienced any sickening wolf chases.

We had grayhounds and trail hounds under foot when we lived on the
Hazeltine farm—but not one that I could call my own. I bought a yellow
half-breed grayhound named Tuck from a farm hand on the Zeke Jennings
place for one dollar, that proved to be a wonder. The unknown half of
him was supposed to be bull dog. With Alex McCreery and his pack
of trail hounds, and a half dozen other horseback riders and some
grayhounds, a wolf was started out of an isolated clump of brush on the
south end of the Len Jones farm, two miles west of Wetmore. I happened
to be on the east side of the brush patch with my dog, while the other
riders with the pack were on the west side. The wolf came out about a
rod in front of my position, and Tuck got an almost even start in the
chase. I had a pretty fast horse, but the chase led across a slough, and
I lost some ground in heading this wash—but even so, I was on hand
soon after the kill, one mile from the start, before Alex and the
other riders and the dogs arrived. Alex said, “You and old Tuck was
to-hell-and-gone before we caught sight of you.” Tuck had caught the
wolf—and drowned it in an eighteen-inch pool of water, along the branch.
I found him sitting on his tail at the edge of the pool—looking very
pleased. In those days it was a boy’s greatest ambition to own a fast
horse, and a fast dog. Now I had both. The only flaw was that I was no
longer a boy.

Tuck also caught a deer in the big bottom south of spring creek on
the Mary Morris farm four miles west of Wetmore. In this chase I was
trailing pretty close, on my horse, when the dog grabbed the deer’s hind
leg, causing both to tumble end-over-end. In the midst of this spill,
it seemed to me as if deer and yellow dogs were scattered all over the
ground. The deer got up first, and ran west toward the John Wolfley
timber. My prized hound did not seem to have the heart to follow after
it. I think there were moments now when Tuck did not know east from
west.

Now, a last word about the Indians—and the Ghost Dance or Messiah Craze
as participated in by the Kickapoos. The “craze” was a sort of spiritual
delusion starting with the Sioux Indians, the same blood-thirsty red
devils who got credit for the ghastly Custer massacre in 1876. This,
and other depredations, were still fresh in the minds of the people,
and there was widespread alarm among the citizens whenever the craze
had taken hold. However, the craze was short-lived. I do not think the
Kickapoos repeated after the first year. The dance that time at the
Mission was kept going for three weeks.

I do not recall in what way this dance differed from the Green Corn
Dance held annually by the Kickapoos, or other tribal dances. But
undoubtedly it carried a threat to the whites. Except for brandishing
tomahawks at certain periods of the dance—it looked to the casual
observer like other Indian dances. Old Sitting Bull, of the Sioux, had
made much bad medicine, and the threat was in the air, if not actually
in the dance. Gold had been discovered earlier in the Black Hills
country. The Government had withdrawn a part of the Indian lands for
development by the whites. This the Sioux resented. There was fear among
the Indians in general that their lands might be taken away from them. I
cannot now be sure of this, but I believe the Government took a hand in
suppressing the Ghost Dance.

I can best explain things with a reprint of what I wrote for the
Spectator at the time. Incidentally, I might say that in looking up the
old files I observe now that this story appeared in the first issue
of The Spectator after I became its owner. Also, that the article
was illustrated with a splendid woodcut engraved by my brother Sam.
Illustrations in that day were engraved on cross-grain box-wood blocks.

The following excerpt is copied from the issue of December 12, 1890:
During the past week or ten days, our people have visited the Indian
Mission, eight miles northwest of Wetmore to witness the Indian pow-wow
which has been in progress for several weeks. Although a more civilized
tribe than the Sioux with which the “Ghost Dance” originated, the
Kickapoos have caught the “Messiah Craze” and have made things lively
for a while. The dance has been watched with considerable interest
and no little alarm by many visitors and citizens living near the
reservation. However, the conclusion now is that there will be no
outbreak. The neighbors along the line look upon their actions merely as
a curious freak of superstition.

When asked how long the Indians kept up the dance, an old Indian who was
too feeble to participate in the festivities, in broken English, said,
“Messiah come at sunrise.” It was afterwards learned that the Indians
continued dancing all night with the expectation of seeing Christ, or
the Messiah, at sunrise. This is, in a manner, following the custom
of the ancient Aztec sun-worshipers of Mexico, who years ago builded
mounds, some of them 600 and 800 feet high, where they would assemble at
sunrise and carry on their festivities in the anticipation of the coming
of some great divinity.

Two Sioux Indians got an inspiration from on High—or elsewhere. It was
only a dream, of course—but then why should not the Indian be allowed
to dream as well as the white man? He has proven his capability, and has
gone the present generation of white men one better.

A careful study of ancient recorded stories shows this one to be no more
fantastic than the feat accredited to Moses, who, with an outstretched
hand caused the waters of the Red Sea to part so that the Children of
Israel might walk across on dry land. But, I believe, Moses credited the
Lord — collaborating no doubt—with making the big wind which actually
drove the water out of their path. Our Kickapoos were not much on the
big blow—but it seems that a couple of Sioux, in this instance, made a
heap lot of big wind.

According to a recent writer on the subject, the Messiah craze is the
out-growth of a startling story related by two Sioux Indians, which, in
substance, lays bare the assertion that Jesus had come down upon earth
again and had appeared to the Indians. According to the report He was
discovered by two Indians who had followed a light in the sky for 18
days over a country destitute of water. The most peculiar part of the
story is that at each camping place they were supplied with water from a
little pool that came up out of the ground and furnished just enough for
their needs and no more. At the end of the 18 days journey they came to
a secluded place near a mountain, and there they found a hut, built of
bull-rushes, and on entering they saw Jesus, who told them that He had
come once to save the white men and they had crucified Him—and this time
He had appeared to the Indians and that they should go back and bear the
news to the other Indians. The two Indians were then borne up in a cloud
and in a very short time were set down at their home where they related
what they had seen.

WHITE CHRISTMAS Published in Wetmore Spectator, and

Seneca Courier-Tribune, January—1943

By John T. Bristow

COURIER-TRIBUNE Editor’s Note:—History can be dry or it can be
interesting. When it is colorful, filled with the lives of people, it
will be remembered far longer than if but dry facts are presented. We
think that this true story by John Bristow of Wetmore is one that will
make the English Colony of old Nemaha County days long remembered.

Although at the outset you will likely be thinking of a current and very
popular song hit, you must read far into this contribution before you
can put your finger on the line from which the above caption stems.
Also, for a clear picture of it all, you must go back with me three
score and five years to a favorite hunting grounds in the upper reaches
of Spring creek.

My father had bought a coon-dog from a traveler. This night—Christmas
Eve—was to have been the try-out but the way it turned out, Dad could
not know then how badly he had been “skinned.” That came later. Old
Drum had a wonderful voice, and though he “lied” a few times on later
occasions, he never did tree a coon.

In the party were Roland Van Amburg, Bill (Thuse) Peters, Jim Scanlan,
Bob Graham, my father and myself. Incidentally, Van Amburg was the last
man to take up a homestead in these parts. He homesteaded the 80 acres
now owned by Ambrose McConwell, almost adjoining town, in the middle
70’s. He was a happy-go-lucky, clownish sort of man.

Well, Van was not exactly the last one to file on a homestead here, but
he was the last one to do it in the regular way. Lawyer F. M. Jefferies,
while publishing the Spectator in Wetmore in the 80’s filed on a
quarter a few miles northwest of town—but it developed that the land
was improved and occupied by Eli Swerdfeger, who had by mistake filed
on another number. When Eli’s neighbor threatened to do mayhem to Lawyer
Jefferies, he relinquished — and Swerdfeger’s correct filing was even
later than Van’s. They called it “claim jumping”—though it was hardly
that, in the true sense of the term. There had, however, been some claim
jumping earlier, where settlers were negligent in fulfilling the lawful
requirements. A claim jumper in the old days was held in about the
same degree of contempt as is now the “scab” workman in a unionized
community.

With team and wagon and dog, we reached the timber about dusk, barely
ahead of a blizzard. Owing to the storm, the projected coon-hunt did not
take place. The whole night was spent around a bonfire out there in
the deep wood. The men talked about going home, but the intervening six
miles of unbroken prairie would have been hard to negotiate with a team
on a night like that.

Fortunately for us, it was not very cold. Disagreeably cold, to be sure,
but in severity—low temperature—it did not compare with the blizzard
which blew in upon us last Monday (Jan. 18, 1943) with a temperature of
10 degrees below zero, to be followed the next morning with 22 degrees
below.

The campfire, built in a sheltered spot, was near a tree which had some
holes cut in a big limb, old choppings which were assumed the work of
Indians. Those holes started Thuse Peters to talking. In telling of an
occurrence alleged to have taken place on the Kickapoo reservation,
in which he himself had figured rather conspicuously, Thuse graciously
endowed the mate of the squaw in his story with a fine growth of
whiskers—which whiskers, however, the Redskin did not have. Or did he?
Thuse was a little wild of the mark in some of his statements, probably
all of them. Bob Graham called him for that one about the Indian’s
whiskers. “I’m surprised,” said Bob, “you living here against the Indian
reservation all your life. You should know Indians do not have beards.”

“Well,” inquired Thuse, glancing toward one of the party having heavenly
hirsute adornment, “does an Irishman have whiskers?”

“What a silly question,” broke in Roland Van Amburg. “Just take a look
at Jim Scanlan over there by the tree-trunk. I’d say an Irishman has
whiskers.” Jim Scanlan was section foreman here. There could be no
mistaking his nationality.

Said Thuse, “I just wanted to be sure of that.” He went about
replenishing the waning fire. This done, he said, “That Indian was half
Irish.”

One story led to another, and finally my father told of hunting panthers
in Tennessee. He said it was claimed by old woodsmen that the panther
made a noise like the cry of a woman, but he had never heard a panther
scream, and he didn’t believe it.

“Do you suppose, Bill that there ever was a panther seen in this
country?” This inquiry was made by Mr. Scanlan.

“Maybe,” said Dad, “I once tracked a varmint that might have been a
panther through these very woods.”

Van chimed in, “Did they ever learn what killed the farmer’s stock over
on Elk creek? That was believed to have been the work of a panther. And
what about that varmint on the Rudy place?” Van was, as I knew stating
facts.

It was generally known here that a prowler of some kind had killed a
calf on the Bill Rudy farm, and had dragged it several hundred yards to
a hazel thicket—and after eating its fill, buried the remaining carcass
under leaves, after the habits of the panther. Bill Rudy owned the land
where Joe Pfrang now lives.

The storm grew in intensity. It had filled the woods with voices. If you
turned your imagination loose you could hear a cry, a laugh—anything you
chose. Then suddenly, astonishingly, there it was. A woman’s scream. Or
was it?

Thuse said, “It’s Bill’s panther.” Bill was my Dad. Old Drum raised his
voice. He made sound enough, in the tree-walled confines of that hunters’
paradise, to raise the dead.

Bob Graham said, “I feel spooky. Think I need a bracer.” He uncorked his
bottle and took a good one.

Well, whatever it might have been, that thing had the men baffled.
Albeit the storm raged fiercely in the tree-tops and upon the hillside
from whence the sound came, a deadly calm settled around the bonfire.
The men looked at one another in complete silence for a tense moment. I
believe everyone was wondering if maybe Thuse had not named it.

By this time everyone was, shall I say, panther-conscious. I would not
want to say that the men actually were waiting in expectancy for the
appearance of that killer. You know how it is. After a menacing thing
has been discussed in your presence for hours, without realizing it, you
just don’t forget.

Then suddenly, miraculously, there it was again—something very like a
woman’s voice coming in swells above the howl of the storm. Van, who had
repeatedly urged the men to break up camp and make a try for home, said,
“It’s the voice of an angel—an angel come to tell us to get the hell out
of here while the going is still possible.” Dad scoffed, “An angel out
here in the woods on a night like this—man, you must be crazy!”

Jim Scanlan said, “Well, anybody who don’t believe in ghosts is maybe
going to pretty soon.”

We had along a sharp axe and several good woodchoppers. At first
fuel for the fire was gleaned from old dead tree tops lying on the
ground—tops of blackoaks my father had cut some years before for the
tanbark to be used in his tannery. But as the snow became deeper, and
the puzzling voices in the woods persisted, the men—including yours
truly — somehow did not seem to want to venture beyond the circle of
light. They fetched fuel from a close-in rick of cordwood—four-foot
lengths. Without leave, we burned Anna Buzan’s wood, a full cord, that
night. It was wood my brother and I had cut on shares. Adjustment could
be—and was—made later.

Back there on the ridge high above us, in the thick of that blizzard, a
woman was singing, as it were, for her life.

Let me explain. Three people—a woman and two men enroute to the old
English colony, from somewhere farther south, had bogged down in the
storm two miles from home, and were desperately in need of help.

The old road in those days, coming in from the prairie lands on the
south, followed the ridge approximately on the line between the John
Wolfley timber on the east and the Anna Buzan timber on the west, to
a crossing on Spring creek. The road was first used in bringing out
cross-ties for use in building the railroad which now skirts the woods
on the north side of the creek. Back on the ridge several old wagon
trails led into the forest. The team those Colonists were driving, to
a ramshackle old spring wagon, had wandered off the road and had
floundered in one of those side leads, upsetting the wagon. This had
been the cause of that first scream.

Having broken harness which they could not repair in the dark, they had
started on foot to where, in passing, they had seen the light of our
bonfire, hoping it would lead them to the home of a settler. But when
close enough to see it was only a bonfire, misgivings began to
assail them. What if it should prove to be an Indian camp, or maybe
horse-thieves in hiding? These facts were made known to us after they
had reached our fire.

When Van’s “Angel” had come in the flesh—her long skirt, held up in
front, trailing atop the snow as she moved in—we could see that she was
not garbed in the traditional folds of flowing gauze-like fabric, as
becomes an angel. It would have been all out of place on a night like
that. As it was, I thought she was dressed rather too thinly.

Bob Graham said, “If you wouldn’t be offended, young lady, I’d offer you
a swig of my whisky.”

“Liquor,” she said, “I can take it,” Bob passed the bottle to her.
“O-oo, so little,” she complained. “I ‘opes it will ‘elp.”

Their names were Bill and Teddy and Minerva. Bill led off as spokesman.
He said, “When we sawer men walking around the fire we knew there would
be no ‘ouse ‘ere. And I asked Teddy wot shall we do now?”

“Ted ‘e said,” continued Bill, “Blast me ‘ide if I know wot would
be best. Wot you think, Minerva? Want to chawncit?” Teddy spoke for
Minerva. He said, “Minerva ‘ere,” pointing to the girl, “said to us—Now
you just ‘old your ‘orses, men I got it. I’ll sing ‘em a song.”

Let me remind you here that it was their ability and their willingness
to sing on any and all occasions that made those Colonists extremely
popular at the country school-house lyceum of that age.

Bill talked again. He said, “Then I said Hindians or ‘orse-theives,
whichever they are, would know that ‘appy, singing folks bode nobody
‘arm.” For the purpose intended, Bill’s idea was not bad—but Minerva
challenged it promptly. She said, “You can just drop that ‘appy part of
it, Mr. Bill.”

Their reasoning was logical. And their manner in coping with the
situation was unique. For them to have burst in upon a band of
horse-thieves in those days would, most likely, have been suicidal.
But with Indians of the times, it is my belief, they would have had no
trouble at all.

When they had thawed out, after Minerva had obliged us with more
songs—and believe me, that girl could sing — Teddy said he would fetch
his concertina from the wrecked wagon. It maybe was a good thing he
didn’t know anything about all that panther discussion.

However, after Ted had returned, Van, who, as a boy, had lived in
a panther country back east, told the newcomers about the Elk creek
incident and other periodical panther scares elaborating on the dangers
of same. He told those people they could count themselves lucky in
finding our fire. “Wild animals,” he said, “won’t go near a fire.” I
knew that this was not news to any of our party. And I knew, too, we
would keep our visitors for the duration.

Van started it. When he had guessed the hour of midnight had arrived,
he yelled so that all could hear above the roar of the storm—”Merry
Christmas!” Our English visitors returned the greeting—though, enveloped
in swirling snow, they didn’t seem to put much heart in it.

Looking up toward the high heavens in readiness to speak, Dad was caught
full in the face with a gob of dislodged snow from the treetops. He
said, clawing the snow out of his whiskers at the same time, “It didn’t
look like this could happen when we started out yesterday afternoon — it
was so warm, almost like spring. But then maybe this snow is a godsend.”
He clawed again at his whiskers, saying “Dammit!” He probably would have
quoted the old saying, “A green Christmas presages a fat graveyard”
— but old Drum raised his voice again, bringing everyone to rigid
attention. The dog ran out a few paces, turned around and came back. He
had not gone beyond the circle of light.

Together, or rather alternately, Minerva and Teddy made music against
the howl of the storm until morning. They could not team together.
This nightingale who had come to us out of the storm, was from another
colony—perhaps English Ridge, south of Havensville. Bill sang some, in
a comical way. Our improvised shelter, hardly worth mentioning, and our
fire had kept them from freezing. They were grateful.

They were of the old English Colony folk—Bill and Ted. This is not to
say they were scions of the favored six families who occupied Llewellyn
Castle on section 25, in Harrison township. They might have been from
any one—or two — of the dugouts scattered about over the prairies
outside the Colony-owned section. But they were decidedly English, and
none the less Colonists.

When at last morning had come, and we had seen our visitors off, we
drove out onto a vast prairie covered with snow, homeward bound. We
would be doing well if we reached home in time for dinner. Deep drifts
lay ahead of us and there was a sea of white on all sides as far as one
could look.

Incidentally, I might say here that the streets in Wetmore were
completely blocked by that storm. The main street in the business
section was drifted so deeply in snow that to facilitate traffic a cut
was made down the center of the street, and one standing up in a wagon
had to look up to see the top of the cut.

Van stroked old Drum’s head. He said, “Too bad, old boy, you didn’t get
a chance to show Bill how good you are. Skunked this time, but maybe
better luck next time. Wish you could tell us what kind of a varmint you
saw, heard, or scented, when you made all that commotion back there. You
wouldn’t lie to a fellow, old longears, and you are not afraid of the
dark—are you?”

Dad said, in a tone that indicated his great disappointment over the
bogged down coon-hunt, with maybe, also apologies to his guests,
“Well, damn it, men—it wasn’t a complete waterhaul. We’ve got a white
Christmas.”

UNCLE NICK’S BOOMERANG Published in Wetmore Spectator

March 5, 1943

By John T. Bristow

The hunt was staged in Uncle Nick Bristow’s timber — way back in the
70’s. It was on the home place over on the Rose branch, the farm now
owned by Bill Mast. The trail of the hunters would range down stream,
overlapping into the Jim Hyde and Bill Rose woods, and on down to
the junction with Wolfley creek. Ostensibly, it was to have been a
coon-hunt, but it soon developed into something bigger and better. ‘

There was a good moon—but to attract the hunters, a big bonfire was
built in the woods, and the men flocked in from all directions. The
interesting part of it was that three of them were from the old English
Colony, two miles west of my uncle’s farm — ”Green Englishmen,” the
Wolfley creekers said they were. Couldn’t name them now—and be sure. One
of them was a stocky little man, very talkative, very agreeable.

Then there were the Porters, the Pickets, the Piatts, the Snows, the
Mayers, the Barnes boys, and others—not aiming to overlook my Uncle Nick
and his son, Burrel. The elder Mayers, Gus and Noah, were Pennsylvania
Dutch, with Holland ancestry. Gus liked his fun while Noah liked to stay
at home and mind his own business. But some of Noah’s boys were in the
gathering, as was also Peter Metzdorf, who had a while back married Gus
Mayer’s daughter, Anna. Peter was German—the real thing. He lived in
Wetmore.

Of the five Porter brothers, Ambrose was the only one that I can now
positively say was present. But John and Tom and their brothers-in-law,
Bill Evans and Ben Summers, were probably around somewhere. Bill Porter
had just married my Aunt Nancy, late of Tennessee, and he couldn’t come.
And Ben Porter—well, they said he was too contrary to appreciate a good
thing like this. Ambrose wore his red hair—it was really red—at shoulder
length. He wore gold earrings, too, and three gutta-percha rings on one
finger, rings he himself had made from old coat buttons.

It was good to have Roland Van Amburg with us. Roland was a grand old
sport. Moreover, Roland Van Amburg had much in common with my Uncle Nick
Bristow. They had both suffered, or were due to suffer, heavy losses in
large herds of Texas cattle they had bought from Dr. W. L. Challis,
of Atchison. It is barely possible that those cattle might have been
milling about on the western part of Uncle Nick’s farm that night.

The bonfire was built on the edge of a small clearing, with a large tree
backed up by a clump of small growth on the right. In the distance—not
too distant—was a big log lying on the edge of a ravine, with a 10-foot
bank at this point. A small tree with good height stood at the top end
of the log on the left side of the clearing. One approaching from the
north would see the log only after advancing so far, and even then only
if not otherwise attracted. Had it been a plant for a modern movie
scene it could not have been a more perfect setting for the thing that
actually happened.

While yet around the bonfire the talk turned to panthers. One had
reportedly been seen, or heard, in the woods a couple of miles away—up
in the Rube Wolfley neighborhood. The men would be careful not to hunt
that timber because they didn’t want their dogs to be torn to pieces.
Uncle Nick owned a timber lot over in the panther country.

The natives saw in this hunt a chance to have some fun at the expense
of the Englishmen. Also, they wanted to impress those Colonists in a way
that might be the means of keeping them on their own reservation, so to
speak. A lot of timber-stealing had been going on and the Colonists
were suspicioned. As a matter of fact, timber-stealing in those days was
widespread. But in that business the Colonists were no worse than the
natives, but the Colonists were always sure to get the blame.

While people generally scoffed at the idea of panthers roaming the
woods, there were some who said it was not altogether improbable—that
one might have escaped from a menagerie. You must understand that
practically all the older men here at that time had come from panther
states back East—and, I might say, the rising generation had more or
less been steeped in panther talk.

It is written in the family records, and was generally known here
then, that the grandmother of Bill and Ben Porter was killed and
partly devoured by a panther back in Indiana. She would have been the
great-grandmother of Jim and Bill Porter, and Zada Shumaker and Harry
Porter.

Also, there is one man now living in Wetmore—G. C. Swecker—who would
tell you how one of those ferocious beasts hopped upon the roof of his
father’s hunting lodge, while occupied, back in Virginia and ripped the
clapboards off. He also declares that panthers do scream like a woman.
And, as one old fellow around the fire had said, they do sometimes
migrate. I myself recall that during a severe winter in the Rocky
mountains nearly a half century ago, that those killers actually came
right down into Colorado Springs.

At that time panthers were quite numerous in the Missouri hills across
the river from Atchison—and with the Missouri river frozen in the severe
winters of the old days, it would have been an easy matter for them to
cross on the ice to this side; and then only a distance of forty miles
to get out here. And supposing—just supposing—that, perchance,
they might have come over in pairs, and carried on in the usual cat
tradition, there was the bare possibility of our coon-hunters even
running into a “family” of them. The panther’s young stay with the
mother until grown.

Let’s say, then, that there was just enough to it to keep timid people
on edge. I doubt if there ever was a night coon-hunt in those days when
some of the hunters didn’t give some thought to that killer. The thought
seemed to hit one the moment he was in the deep woods. And on moonlight
nights that thought was simply unshakeable. A shadow in the wood—a
shadow that was somehow alive—could be highly disquieting.

Uncle Nick and the men, with the dogs on leash, took a turn about the
woods while waiting for my father and the inevitable Thuse Peters to
arrive. They would be coming out from town. I had gone out earlier that
evening with my cousin, Burrel.

Uncle Nick bade me remain at the fire so as to direct Dad and Thuse
when, and if, they should come while the hunters were away. Ambrose
Porter said, “Nick, you’re not going to leave that boy all alone out
here. I’ll- stay with him.” Uncle Nick said, quietly, “Oh no, you
won’t.” Uncle knew that Ambrose never liked to exert himself needlessly.

If not inclined to discount my statements — and you really should
not—you are now maybe thinking what I thought that night—that it was a
darned shame to leave a boy all alone out there in the woods like that.

The hunters were now coming in from the north. Uncle Nick and the
Englishmen well in front. Uncle Nick called out, “Johnny my boy, where
are you?”

I had climbed the small tree at the end of the log—as far up as I
could go. I called back, “Up here in this tree, Uncle Nick. Look on the
log—quick!”

The hunters had now advanced a couple of steps, bringing the log into
view. I glanced back in time to see them shift their gaze from my
tree-perch to the log—and I took one more look at the log myself, just
as Uncle Nick fired his rifle. In that split second I could see two eyes
shining brightly in the glare of the bonfire—and I saw the yellowish
form of the ugly thing fall off the log.

Uncle Nick was a sure shot with a rifle. And quick too. As told in one
of my former articles, he had killed a mountain lion in the Rockies
while placer mining in Colorado in 1858. The great beast was shot in the
nick of time—in midair, after that 200 pounds of destruction had made
the spring for my uncle from an overhanging limb of a great pine.

Addressing Uncle Nick, the little Englishman said, “I say, my good man,
let’s ‘ave another one soon. Over in the big woods. Beard the lion in
‘is den, so to speak.” In high good humor, he shook a pudgy fist at
my uncle, saying, “Hand mind you, if I am h ignored I shall be
disappointed.”

The one mistake of the whole evening—if one can be sure there was a
mistake—was when the hunters, after they had “impressed” the Englishmen
with the danger of the panther to their dogs, turned the dogs loose on
the trail of the pet coon they had brought into the woods at the right
movement to make a “hot trail.”

It had taken four yoke of oxen to plant the log—and my Aunt Hulda gave
the men a spirited tongue-lashing for making use of one of her hens to
bloody the trail.

Now, imagine if you can, my uncle’s surprise when the next time he went
over to his cherished timber lot he discovered that someone had robbed
him of valuable post and rail trees. Not being present at the time, I
have no way of knowing what his immediate reactions were. But had it
been my Dad instead of my uncle, who never swore, I’m darned sure I
could name more’n half of the irreverent words he would have employed in
taking the epidermis off that stocky little Englishman.

SHORT CHANGED Not Hitherto Published — 1950

By John T. Bristow

You can never tell by the caption of one of my stories what all is going
to be in it—the caption might well have been something else—but the line
that inspired the heading is sure to be apparent to the careful reader;
if he, or she, will look for it.

The oil strike on the Oreon Strahm land one mile south of the Sabetha
hospital, in August, 1950, and the two producers previously brought
in on the Mamie Strahm land three and one-half miles to the southwest,
refreshes my memory of an earlier try for oil in Nemaha County—and
some of my own experiences in this greatest of all “get-rich-quick”
opportunities.

In 1904 Dr. Joseph Haigh and Dr. A. P. Lapham secured a block of oil
leases around Wetmore, and contracted with a driller, W. H. Hardenburg,
of Oklahoma, to drill a well to the depth of 2,000 feet—or to the
Mississippi lime—for $5,000. The site was on land owned by Dr. J. W.
Graham in the west part of town; later owned by Mr. Mathews.

The drillers struck a little gas at 1700 feet, which spurted water over
the 80-foot derrick. This caused a great deal of excitement—but after
“pulling” the fire in the coal-burning power plant and quickly taking
other precautionary measures, the drillers said “there was nothing to
it.”

Gas had previously been encountered in two water wells in the north part
of town—on the Cyrus Clinkenbeard property west of the school grounds,
now owned by the Thorn-burrow girls; and on the J. W. Luce property near
the cemetery, now owned by Gene Cromwell. The flow in the Luce well was
the stronger, agitating the water in a way to produce a bubbling sound.
It created a lot of excitement. But the State Geologist said it was
helium gas, which, rather than burn, would extinguish fire.

In the oil test on the Graham lot, at about 1800 feet, a hard formation
was encountered, which the drillers pronounced the Mississippi lime—but
State Geologist Haworth said it was not. Then the drillers completed the
contract at 2,000 feet. Mr. Hardenburg had a drilling contract coming up
in Oklahoma, but he remained on the job here about a week longer, at $40
a day—and the hole was put down to 2225 feet. It was planned to have Mr.
Hardenburg come back and drill the test deeper, but he got rich in his
“share-the-profits” contract in the Tulsa oil field—and retired to a
home on “easy street” (Morningside Drive) in Kansas City.

When Hart Eyman was getting up a block of oil leases here in 1934, I
called up Mr. Hardenburg, while in Kansas City, and told him of the
activity out here. He asked me to let him know when the first test was
to be spudded in here, saying he would drive out. He said he still had
faith in this section and that he would have been glad to have finished
our test. I believe our people failed to raise the necessary funds. The
money for the original test was raised by selling stock. And it was a
clean promotion—but that is more than I can say for some of the outside
oil promotions in which our Wetmore group dipped.

In view of the recent strikes in the Strahm field, with a 30-barrel
producer in the Hunton lime at around 2800 feet; and the Mamie Strahm
number 2, rated at 1440 barrels in the Viola lime at approximately 3600
feet; and the Oreon Strahm test, with even greater potential production
in the Hunton and Viola and still another producing sand topping the
granite at around 3900 feet, it looks as though we Wetmore “investors”
might better have kept our speculative eggs all in one basket, so to
speak, contrary to high-powered promotion advice—and completed the
Haigh-Lapham oil test. And I still believe we overlooked our best bet
right here at home.

But then we had no data to enlighten us. The nearest and only drilling
at that time was ten miles south of us. It was not deep enough to prove
or disprove anything. In the heyday of his great financial flight—in the
1880’s—Green Campbell drilled a test to the depth of 1,000 feet on the
east edge of Circleville. I believe the incentive was a reported seepage
of oil in the creek south of the town.

Then, some twenty years after the Wetmore try, a couple of promoters
came out of Kansas City, with a plan to rejuvenate interests in the
Haigh-Lapham test—and “feather their own nests.” Joe Searles’ drugstore
in the east room of what is now the First National Bank building,
was the unofficial headquarters for oil hungry “investors”—local and
transient. With Joe and the two promoters, I went over to the Matthews
lot, now owned by Bert Gilbert. Mr. Hardenburg had left the top 100 feet
of casing in the well to prevent cave-ins against the time when he might
return to finish the well. Measurements to the exhaustion of the string
available showed the well open for fifteen hundred feet—and likely all
the way down to the bottom.

Excitement began to mount again.

Dr. A. P. Lapham presided over a packed gathering in the opera house—and
appointed a committee of five to confer with the promoters. The
committee met in the Thorn-burrow bank. The promoters came up with
a contract whereby they would undertake to raise the funds for the
completion of the well, against numerous and assorted requirements by
“the people” of Wetmore.

I was offered the trusteeship—but I declined to accept it. I think
the reason the committee offered it to me was because I had been the
trustee—with no part in the promotion—of a block of eight hundred acres
of oil leases in Elk and Chautauqua Counties, purchased from Charley
Cortner, salesman, of Iola, and Dr. C. E. Shaffer, vendor, of Moline, by
our Wetmore group, at $10 an acre, with further obligation of $1.00 per
acre yearly rentals, for five years, which had been carried through to a
successful termination, with no gain to the “investors” and a loss to me
of only $85—aside from my $250 first come-in and my part of the rentals,
$25 a year, through payments of rentals in general, as trustee, in
excess of collections. I had to collect four hundred dollars twice a
year from fifty-three people—and I didn’t quite make it. I therefore
regarded the trusteeship now offered me as not a desirable recognition.

To keep the record straight, I shall now give with a little more
enlightenment. I actually had a little velvet in the Shaffer oil
deal—leastwise it looked like velvet at the time. Not for promotional
influence—but for services rendered, and to be rendered.

I went with Charley Cortner, the salesman, and three other Wetmore men
to the Moline oil field—paid my own expenses, even to transportation
equal to railroad fare, and therefore was beholden to no one. The Moline
acreage adjoined a block of leases on which the discovery well, a
small producer, had recently been brought in. There was, however, big
production—and growing bigger every day—at Eldorado, where we stopped
on the way down to get our appetites (for oil speculation) whetted. I
wanted to go in with them, of course.

You know, should you pass up an opportunity to go in with the home folks
on something that was to pan out big, you would always feel that God had
given you less sense than He had given your more fortunate neighbors.
And, should you strive to live down the mistake, there would always be
lucky ones to remind you of your dumbness. The hope of oil-money was in
my system. Had been hankering to get in with the home folks on something
good for a long time.

When reminiscing for entertainment, as well as for record of historic
fact, with no particular theme to exploit, you will, doubtless, agree
that it is permissible—nay, oft-times necessary, to break all the rules
laid down by learned teachers; such as to never let one incident call up
another. And, if you don’t agree—you are going to get it now, anyway.

Aside from the matter in hand, I may say that only a short time before
this, I had been denied the chance to go with a Wetmore group on an
inspection trip to another oil field in southern Kansas—because I had
not as yet signed up, as they had, for an interest in the lease. Well,
the energetic young salesman, after securing pledges enough here to put
him in the clear, went ahead of the boys to the headquarters and bought
the lease, at a discount, on partial payment, using his own money,
which, had all gone well, should have netted him more than the promised
commission. He intended, of course, to deliver the lease to the group up
here at the contract price, or rather the pledged commitments, with
only a few amounts yet to be peddled, or held in his own name, at his
discretion. But the Wetmore group—the boys who had said that to let me
go with them on the inspection trip without first making a commitment,
would be unfair to those who had signed up—turned down the deal, cold.
Then, after returning home, the group heard rumors of lawsuits—and
counter suits. The lease vendor was demanding payment in full, and the
poor boy-salesman could not raise the money.

Charley Cortner, the salesman earlier mentioned in this writing, had
been here for five or six months selling life insurance. He was a
whole-souled, persuasive, sort of man who had made many friends here.
Cortner and Dr. J. R. Purdum, in whose car the trip to Moline had been
made, went out among the people and in almost no time secured pledges
for nearly enough money to take over the Shaffer leases. They were
selling interests in $125 “units.” But, at the finish, to accommodate
all the eager applicants, some subscriptions were taken for as little as
$50 and $25—sub-divisions of a unit.

When they came to me—at the corn-house, where I had been sorting out
seed corn—I surprised them (and maybe shocked them, too) by declining
to subscribe. Not that I didn’t want to get in on the big prospect—but
because, as I believe, it was an improper if not a dangerous way to form
a syndicate. Somewhere I had acquired the notion that if fifty people
chipped in and bought a thing that it would take fifty people to sell
it. But I didn’t tell them this until after they had “flared up” and had
their say. They started to quit me, in disgust—but the Doctor, who was
regarded among my best friends, thinking to erase some of the unkind
comment, said, “Well, John, when you get through sorting your sour corn,
come and see us—we’ll save some units for you.” My corn was not “sour”
corn. It was well matured, and making an average of eighty bushels, with
some acres on grubbed ground making 125 bushels.

Now, for a little laughable reaction within a none too laughable story.
The Farmers Union elevator manager, a farmer not so long out of the
corn rows, refused to buy my culled corn, said it would be unfair to his
company to permit me to take out the best ears. After I had sent several
loads to the Netawaka elevator, as it accumulated in the house, after
taking out only about ten per cent, the Farmers Union manager came over
to the corn house, looked at the culled corn we were loading out at the
moment, saying he guessed maybe he had made a mistake in refusing to buy
the culled corn. The culled corn was far better than the general run
of corn brought to market that year. It was an improved strain of Boone
County White, which would shell out equal to Reid’s Yellow Dent.

While still at the corn-house that day of the Purdum-Cortner call,
Charley had an inspiration. He said, “Why couldn’t you write something
for us like you think we ought to have?” I said, “I can try—but it will
have to be approved by an attorney before you can use it. I don’t want
to cook up something that might get our people in trouble.”

But did I—or did I not?

Charley said, “Can you get at it right away?” So the “sour” corn sorting
was postponed until another day—and I went to my home at 11:15. My
typewriter and writing desk were in an alcove up stairs. I had hardly
gotten the corn-dust and the insult to my purebred seed corn, which had
been engendered within the hour at the seed house out of my system when
my wife came to the stair door and said dinner was ready. I had no time
for dinner. The necessary words had not come to me readily. Charley
came at 12:30, sat close to me, in a more pleasant mood with occasional
verbal expression indicating the reason for the improvement. But he
was careful to hold back the main reason. His presence didn’t help in
furthering the writing. However, we got away at the appointed time—one
o’clock. No dinner.

Fred Woodburn, the corporation-wise member of Wood-burn & Woodburn,
lawyers, Holton, Kansas, approved my draft, as written, with one
exception. I had made provision for transfer of units. Fred said it
would break the partnership. And, may I say, before I forget it, that
I was censured for being so careless as to omit making provision for
transfers—and this, too, by an individual who, as you will hereinafter
see recorded, found fault with my correct line of reasoning in another
instance—correct as in reference to the one incident, understand.

I’m not trying to “hand” myself a bouquet. The agreement cooked up by me
was neither “air tight” nor “fool proof.” The Trustee had not a chance.
The error was that I did not require the subscribers to include in their
checks a sufficiency to take care of their rentals for the full life
of the leases. True, there was the chance that rental payments might be
legitimately discontinued before the expiration of the lease, as in case
of production terminating the payments, or disposition of the lease. But
it would have been a lot simpler and safer too for the Trustee to return
the unearned portion of the lease money.

Charley Cortner paid the Woodburns for writing a new draft of the
agreement—and asked me, on the road home, for my charge. I told him, “No
charge.” He thanked me kindly. He felt good of course—but I could see he
had not yet got all he needed to allay a worry, the thing that had hit
them so hard at the corn-house.

Unauthorized, and unknown to me, in soliciting subscriptions, it seems,
they had carried the impression, if not the promise, that I would be
the Trustee—possibly demanded by some of the prospects. After miles of
silence on the road, Charley said, “You know, I feel so good about this
that I’m going to give you one unit; you can have it in cash, or in
stock in the syndicate.” From the ultra pleased expression on his face
when I said I would take it in stock, I’m sure he had been holding his
breath awaiting my decision.

True, I had not as yet agreed to accept the Trusteeship—in fact, I knew
nothing about their plans—but I was now as good as in, and they could,
at least, make a plausible showing at the called meeting in the City
Hall the following night, when the vendor would appear in person to
deliver the leases. Charley’s gift to me was acceptable grapes—equal to
$4.50 a line, or 45 cents a word for the writing. I really wanted to
get in, and would have subscribed for an interest, anyway—now that
apparently a safe and workable organization would be formed.

Well, Doctor Shaffer spent much of his time here in my home. He was
agreeably pleased over Charley Cortner’s work, with my assistance in
preparing the agreement—and said so in no unmistakable terms. He had a
pleasant word for my wife, too.

In an aside, I will say, that while in Moline on that inspection trip, I
was troubled with a slight attack of appendicitis—which had been chronic
with me for twenty years, and still is—and had gotten temporary relief
from the Doctor. Dr. Shaffer now said that should I ever decide to have
an operation, for me to come down to Moline, and bring my wife along,
that she could stay in the hospital—all free of charge. This was by far
the best offer I had ever had.

First, I might say Dr. Sam Murbock, our old reliable, had said he could
not tell me what his charge would be until he got into me. I told him
that he would never get into me, or my pocket, without first naming his
price.

Also, when a guest at the Stratford hotel in Kansas City, Dr. Pickerel,
of the Stratford, went with me to the University Hospital early one
morning. He said he would sit awhile in the lobby and he would spot
the surgeons as they came in. I passed three of them, trying to get my
nerves settled.

The fourth one was more in general appearance to my idea of what a good
surgeon should look like. He was called—and we went up stairs to a room.
On examination, Dr. Jabes Jackson, Kansas City’s top-notch surgeon,
said I was just right for the operation. I asked him what would be his
charge? He said, “One thousand dollars!” I told him that I would have
to be a lot sicker before I would think of giving up a thousand dollars.
Then, Dr. Pickerel said, “He doesn’t come under that class, doctor.” Dr.
Jabes then said, “Three hundred—that’s the lowest.”

Again, while at the Byram hotel in Atchison I had a severe attack in
the night—and believed that the time had come when I should have the old
appendix taken out. I called for Atchison’s foremost surgeon. He was in
Kansas City, but would be back at one o’clock. I went up to the Atchison
hospital in the forenoon, asked for a little “home” treatment. In bed,
the nurse felt my “tummy,” shook her head, and said, “You will have to
wait for your doctor.” The doctor said I could have the caster oil
and an enema—but he told the nurse I was to have no breakfast. In the
morning, I was feeling pretty good and was about out of the notion of
having the operation. However, I asked the doctor what would be his
charge? He said, “You are most too weak to stand it now. Come back in a
week—we’ll talk it over then.” One week later, the doctor said, “Owing
to your long residence in the state, and your standing in the community,
I’ll do it for five hundred dollars.” I recalled that our old Nemaha
County reliable had done the job for one of my friends for a very
reasonable fee, and also remembered that he had charged others less
reasonable. I said, “If and when the time comes, I’ll just give you
$150.” He said, “I’ll do it—but if you ever tell anybody, I’ll kick your
butt all over town.” You may know that we were on quite intimate terms,
having on earlier occasions met at Atchison’s friendly club—or he
wouldn’t have dared to talk to me like that.

Back in my home again, after enthusiastically discussing the likely
prospect of the new oil field. Doctor Shaffer went out on the street to
mingle with his boys, and the prospects who were now coming in from
as far away as Holton, Circleville, Soldier, Corning, Goff, Netawaka,
Whiting, Sabetha, and intervening farms—including my long-time friend
Tommy Evans, whose farm north of Capioma had the reputation of being the
best kept and most productive in the neighborhood—saying he (the doctor)
would be back soon. My wife said, “It looked like your promoter friends
have all ready unintentionally cut you in on the big melon should you
be mindful to follow up the lead—and wish to be bothered with the
Trusteeship.” She laughed, “If you don’t make that Doctor Shaffer cut
you in for a generous slice you are not as smart as I think you are.”

Well, maybe I needed this tip—and maybe I didn’t.

Doctor Shaffer came back, and without more preliminaries, proposed to
cut me in for two units ($250) if I would prepare him two copies in
blank, of the agreement I had cooked up for the home syndicate, and,
incidentally, permit Cortner and Purdum to make good on their promise to
the subscribers that I would be the Trustee. He said they were expecting
it, and desired to have my acceptance before going into the meeting.
Thus, I wouldn’t rightly know to whom I was indebted for the generous
slice of the melon.

Or was it a melon?

I suspect it was as Myrtle had said, unintentionally cooked up by the
two solicitors—and that, in its final phase, it was a joint settlement,
with the solicitors having to kick back a portion of their rake-off.
Anyway, it was more unsolicited grapes for me—twice over the $4.50 a
line, or 45 cents a word for the original draft. I used a carbon and
made the two new copies at once, while Doctor Shaffer waited. He had
another sale on with a Missouri group.

Fifty-three subscribers crowded into the City Hall, and all signed the
agreement, and each set down the amount of his subscription opposite
his name—and all wrote checks. At the finish I had fifty-three checks
totaling $8,000—my own check for $250, and Doctor Shaffer’s check for
$1,000, included. Doctor Shaffer would reimburse me for this $250 and
also pay me the $125 promised by Charley Cortner. I was instructed to
send payment for the lease in two $4,000 bank drafts. I had no intention
of paying out $8,000 until those checks had time to be cleared. In the
meantime our attorney had called for complete abstracts to the acreage
instead of the certificates of title supplied by the vendor—delaying
settlement for several weeks.

But the eight thousand dollar payment was made, and I received the $375
velvet from Doctor Shaffer—I guess. For reasons of his own, unknown to
me, Dr. Shaffer had a Wichita man mail me his personal check for $375,
nothing more. I suspect one of those $4,000 drafts had been deposited in
a Wichita bank. The transaction was legitimate. I had nothing to
cover up. This payment to me had come off the salesman and the vendor,
negotiated subsequent to the pledges made by syndicate members—leaving
their full “investment” intact to work out its own salvation.

This is the God’s truth—and mine, too.

Now, kindly figure out for me, if you can, where anyone had been worsted
through my part in the transaction. Two “bright” young clerks in the
bank here—whom I shall not name—caught it at once. That mysterious $375
check had alerted them. They put their own erroneous construction on
it—and passed the word along. Then I caught “hail Columbia” from the
younguns’ superior (in point of banking tenure) who had “invested $125
in his wife’s name—the idea being that a banker himself ought to have
more sense than to dabble in such matters. His “boys,” as he called
them, meant well, of course—and it didn’t take me too long to convince
the banker that I had taken no part in the promotion. But, what if I
had? It would not have been a crime. I want to say, however, that the
banker did me the favor of trying to correct the false impressions he
had helped set afloat. Once in a blue moon even the worst of us will
meet such a manful man.

In this story I only aim to hit the high spots—not, at any time,
deviating from the truth. It was not all easy sailing for the Trustee.
In a case of this kind, the conscientious person representing his
friends, does not wish to let them down because of failure to collect
rentals in full. With syndicate members widely scattered, the Trustee
must make his own decisions—and quick. He can put up the delinquent
amount himself, or he can forfeit the lease—if he does not wish to raise
the ire of his friends who have paid.

Our syndicate was in reality an unfinanced holding partnership—barred
from creating indebtedness, euphoniously christened “The Elkmore Oil and
Gas Syndicate.” Here, I must give the wife credit—if, in the long run
it really merited credit—for suggesting this expressive name, which
embraces, in split infinitives, the location of the lease holdings
(Elk County) and the home (Wetmore) of the “investors.” It pleased Dr.
Shaffer—no end. I think it got Myrtle included in that proposed free
entertainment at his hospital in Moline.

Like Doctor Purdum’s good natured crack at my purebred seed corn, those
altruistically donated helpings of “grapes” showered on me by Cortner
and Shaffer, had begun to “sour”—and, I may say, that they deteriorated
until less than nothing was left of the windfall. It posed a perplexing
dilemma.

As there was little chance of getting action before the expiration of
the leases, aggravated by draggy collections of rentals, a feeler
was mailed to all subscribers, in ample time before the fifth year’s
payments were due. More than half of them favored dropping the leases,
and sent me their written authorization. Nearly half of the interests
remained expressionless. The four leases were canceled. The majority
of the interests wished it so. But, it was the delinquents who hollered
most, even censured me for giving up the lease—when some of the acreage
came into production several years later. It seemed not to have occurred
to them that wo would have lost out, anyway.

But, in the Moline field we got some experience which should have taught
us a lesson, that a bird in hand is worth a whole flock in the bush—but
it didn’t. We could have sold our leases at a nice profit.

An oil gusher was brought in on a large tract of pasture land one mile
away from our holdings. Dr. Shaffer wired me to come down at once. He
drove me out to the well. There was a terrific jam—at the well, on the
road, in Moline. Crowds of people were at the well ahead of us that
morning—Art Hough, a former Wetmore boy, and his oil-rich partner,
from Independence, among them. Excitement was running high. One man was
killed in his overturned car while rushing out from town. And I, myself,
spent the night in a Moline hospital. This fact, however, does not
necessarily pertain to the gusher—except to show that there was genuine
good-feeling all round. I was the guest of Dr. Shaffer and his wife,
who were the only other occupants of his new hospital, not yet ready for
public patronage. Dr. Shaffer owned a one-eighth interest in our leases.

If you have never seen an oil-gusher, you don’t know what a thrilling
sight it is—especially, if you own nearby leases. Oil spurted in gusts
at regular intervals high into the air, spread out in all directions and
arched down over the four case-setters, stripped to the waist, encasing
them in a film of oil so heavy as to exclude them from view, at times.
Art Hough and his partner, who owned some producing wells in the shallow
field near Independence, wanted to buy our leases—but who would want to
sell in the midst of all that excitement? And, anyway, I was not in
a position to deal with them on the spot, as there were fifty-three
signers in the group to an agreement which provided for fifty-one per
cent of the interests to say when to sell. We did, however, later,
arrange to sell part of the leases—carrying a provision for drilling—and
the papers were sent to the Moline bank; but the prospective buyer was
unable to come through with the money.

The gusher was on land owned, or controlled, by a Moline banker, and
another man. I heard one of the partners say, not once but many times,
always the same sing-song word for word, “I just told the Lord that
since He had been so good to me, I shall never desecrate His holy name.”
If I may express myself, unbiasedly, I would say the Lord played no
favorites in the Moline field; that I think He had nothing to do with
the man’s good luck, except, possibly, in a general way of being the
creator of all things—else why would He have destroyed the gusher
with salt-water, and got the owners the threat of a robust lawsuit to
boot—for polluting a God-given stream of fresh water?

In the matter of a fresh try to reopen the Wetmore oil test, I protested
the contract offered by the two Kansas City promoters, maintaining that
we had no valid authority to sign anything in the name of “the people”
and that liability would fall on the individual signers. One of the
committeemen who had been in various lines of business in Wetmore,
and had finally settled himself in a real estate office, said, “Why,
John—there haint a day but what I make contracts like that.” Questioning
the man’s competency in such matters, I said, “I wouldn’t doubt it in
the least—but it will take still more plausible argument to induce me to
sign this one.”

The other members of the committee had caught the spirit of the meeting
in the opera house, and were anxious to see further development of
our oil prospect. They conferred the “favor” of the trusteeship on
committeeman Sam Thornburrow, cashier of the State Bank—and they all
signed the contract. Then the promoters went back to Kansas City to
await the hatching of the egg they had laid here. And in due time, Sam
got notice from a lawyer in Kansas City that he was about to be sued
for breach of contract. Then one morning as I was passing the bank Sam
hailed me. He said, “You know, those Kansas City fellows have sued
me for $1,000—what would you do about it?” Remembering how they had
“ribbed” me for refusing to sign with them, I said, “I’d pay it.” After
he had turned this over in his troubled mind a few times, I told him
to pay no attention to it—that the promoters were most likely trying
to frighten him into a settlement; that they would have to start their
action in Kansas—and that I doubted very much if they would risk doing
this, as the contract would show them up for the grafters they were.”
The Kansas City promoters did not follow through with their claim for
damages.

It took only one more throw at the get-rich-quick oil game to convince
me that it just could not be accomplished by throwing in with the other
fellow on his home grounds, after he had carried the project to a point
where any day’s drilling might bring riches. But I’m still strong on the
home-test—for that would be furthering something for the good of all the
home folks.

Our Wetmore group, with “investors” at Goff and Bancroft, contributed
a sum said to be $14,350 toward the completion of a well in a producing
field east of Enid, Oklahoma, on land owned by a Bancroft man. The
headquarters of the Company was in a fair sized city in southern Kansas,
with a department store owner as president, a physician and surgeon as
secretary—and a banker deeply interested in a covered-up sort of way.
The president and the land owner had departed with our money, supposedly
to complete the well—and then we would all most likely be “sitting
pretty.” But in about a week we got notice of a called meeting to vote
$30,000 increase in capital stock. Also, we were advised of the bringing
in of a gas well of ten million feet potential on the lease adjoining
the company ground on the south, still farther away from the known
production area on the north, proving that we were still “sitting
pretty.” Had this been reported before we joined-up with our Southern
Kansas financiers, I, for one, would have kept my money. Sane people do
not let the public in on a speculative enterprise after its success is
practically assured.

Our Wetmore “investors”, gave me proxies, and sent me down to
investigate. I first went with the land-owner to the Oklahoma field. We
found no activity at the well on his land, but the rig was still up.
And the drillers were working on the reported gas strike just across the
road. They told me that they had struck a small flow of gas—that it was
not strong enough to blow your hat off the casing.

I got back to the Kansas headquarters on Saturday about noon, and went
at once to the department store owned by the president. He introduced
his wife, who worked in the store, and his father-in-law, whom I shall
call Mr. Shapp—though this is not his real name. The president insisted
that I take dinner with him at his home. I sensed something was
wrong—but I couldn’t place it just yet. I learned later that Dr. Lapham
had got wise to something pertaining to the call for an increase of
capital stock, and had written him a critical letter. Dr. Lapham told me
later that it was a “scorcher”—and I can well believe it was. They were
all rather upset. Of course the president, and the secretary, and the
banker, knew some things which I didn’t know—yet. My dinner host was a
bit “jumpy” because of that “scorcher” letter of Dr. Lap-ham’s, and my
appearance two days in advance of the called meeting. But had he known
what I had just learned at the dinner table, he could have trusted me
implicitly.

Some years prior to this I had sold, through advertisement in the Topeka
Capital, 500 shares of our mining stock to the fictitious Monroe P.
Shapp, of that address, and through him 200 shares in the name of his
daughter, Ella J. Shapp. Now, when the merchant called his wife “Ella” I
put two and two together—then I knew that I was among old friends. And I
couldn’t find it in my heart to get rough with them.

Not that I had any apologies to make for our mine promotion. We had used
their money, as promised, in the development of the mine, and at this
time were still putting our own money into it—and we had no intention
of going out and selling a block of stock to rub out the deficit. That
would have been illegal in Nevada. But the fact remained that we had not
as yet been able to make any returns to stockholders.

When I called on the secretary of the oil company, he said he could not
give me any time that afternoon, that he had to perform an operation
at the hospital at 4 o’clock. I said to him, in the presence of the
president, “You fellows seem to be scared about something—but you need
not be. I give you my word that I am not here to make trouble. All I
want to know is what chance you have to make good, and if it will be
to our interests for me to vote my proxies for the increase of capital
stock at the meeting Monday.” The secretary looked at the president, and
the president looked at the secretary—then they both looked at me. The
president nodded—and the secretary said, “Come along with me.”

It seems the directors had carried on with the drilling after company
funds were exhausted, incurring personal obligations, and stopped the
drill when approximating the required depth for a strike, with a large
deficit—which, with our contribution, was now reduced to something like
$9,000. While in the office of the physician-surgeon-secretary going
over the books, the banker—of German extraction, if not the whole
thing—came in, and nodding toward a back room, said as if in great
distress, “Dokther—I’ve got a stick in the eye.”

I decided that I ought not vote for the increase of stock—and, without
leave, came home on Sunday. One of our group, an ex-businessman,
attended the meeting on his own hook to get first hand knowledge of
the situation. He wired Joe Searles Monday afternoon, saying, “Bristow
absent; could I vote the proxies?” I told Joe to wire him, “Yes—if
you have them.” I had just turned them in to Joe. In a couple of days
Searles got a long letter from him—written by a stenographer in
Kansas City—berating me for running out on them, and boasting of the
business-like interest he himself had taken in the meeting, saying, “I
stayed with them until we got in proxies enough the next day to get
the money—and I bought $250 worth more of the stock.” He did not
say—probably didn’t know—if his purchase was of the newly voted stock,
or from the old issue. I had a strong suspicion that we had all ready
bought and paid for a generous take of the newly voted stock—and got
short changed as well.

I had called on that “stick-in-the-eye” banker a short while before,
and obtained from him the log of a producing well recently brought in by
Frank Letson and associates in the Enid field—and this, I think, might
have been what had alerted the banker; or, maybe, the president had sent
his partner scurrying in to forestall an admission of their questionable
finagling. I wanted that log to compare with the log of “our” drilling,
which I had obtained from “our” president. Then, too, Frank Letson was
a younger brother of Ed and Ella Letson who were my schoolmates in
Wetmore, when their father, Bill Letson, owned a general store here;
before going to Netawaka to engage in like business. I had called at the
Fleming and Letson bank in Enid two days before, but did not get to see
either of my old acquaintances.

The Fleming bank, now an imposing brick structure having tall columns,
on the east side of the square, was started on the south side, opposite
the land office, in a small frame building in the new town after the
opening of the Cherokee strip, in 1893. I also had occasion to call
at the old bank about six months after the opening, to get a paper
notarized.

Attorney Elwin Campfield, in the law office of John Curran, formerly of
Seneca, on the west side of the Enid square, filled out relinquishing
papers for me, without charge—we had been neighbors in the Bleisener
building in Wetmore—and suggested that I wait in the Curran office a few
minutes when he would have one of the office force notarize it for me,
presumedly also without charge—a small matter hardly worth waiting for.
Up here the fee for such service was then, and still is, twenty-five
cents. I told Elwin I would go over to the Fleming bank and get it
notarized, that I wanted to pay my respects to Ollie, anyway. 01 had
grabbed off, at Netawaka, a red headed girl (Ella Letson) whom I had
thought pretty nice when we were care-free kids running wild on the
streets of Wetmore in the early days.

Well, 01 was sure glad to see me—and he would gladly remember me to
Ella. When he had returned the notarized paper to me, I said, “How
much, 01?” He said, “Five dollars!” I shot him a wordless blank look. He
laughed, and said, “Oh, give me two-and-a-half.” There had been a
time in that frontier town when one could get most anything asked for
services, but that time was now over and passed—half-over, anyway.

That officious Wetmore man was in Dr. Lapham’s office when I reported my
findings. I told the group that I had spoken only for myself when I gave
those finaglers my word that I was not there to make trouble—that I had
to do this to get them to open up. I told the group that I had no desire
to pursue the matter further, but that they themselves were not barred;
that any one of them who might wish to, could notify the Blue Sky Board
in Topeka—and the Board would do the rest.

The man who had taken matters in his own hands and helped put over the
vote for the increase of capital stock without the formality of first
finding out what it was all about, popped up and said, “You had no right
to tell them that.” He insisted that I should make the complaint. And
the surprising thing is, he had some supporters. There were some hard
losers in the group. I had not made the investigation with the intention
of filing a complaint—wouldn’t have accepted the assignment had it
carried any such provision. I don’t like fussing.

Then, too, the president and the land owner had not solicited me to buy
stock, nor made promise to me that the fund would be used to complete
the well. Their contact had been with Dr. Lapham and other members of
the group. I went in with them solely because my neighbors had invited
me to join them, and because I didn’t want to stand idly by—and watch
them make a “killing.” However, on invitation, I went up to Dr. Lapham’s
office at the virtual close of a “pep” meeting, after the check-writing
had begun. I asked for information as to how the company was
organized—particularly as to whether or not the stock was
non-assessable? The president and the land-owner really didn’t know.
But they went to Topeka the next day and secured a transcript of the
incorporation papers, which were acceptable. And I was invited to
go before the adjourned meeting the following evening, and voice my
approval. Then the check writing was resumed.

Also, my conscience told me, in a flash, that it would be a rather
poor spirited person who should wish to send his neighbor “up” for the
mistake of keeping bad company. It looked as if our old farmer-neighbor
had been caught in between two fires, and didn’t know which way to
“jump”—or worse still, that there was now no open way out. Thus, it may
be said, that our old Bancroft farmer-friend, in his most uncomfortable
position, was comparable to the banker held as hostage by a bold gang of
robbers who had just looted his bank. I know. I spent two days with the
dispirited old man in the oil field.

The Blue Sky Board was fostered to check on promotions whose stocks
were strongly, if not wholly, tinctured with the azure blue. Along about
1905-06-07 questionable promotions—mostly mining—sprang up all over the
country. Kansas City had several going full blast at one time. I had
occasion to call on one of them; had arranged the meeting through
correspondence. I entered a very large room where perhaps thirty or
forty girl-typists were busily preparing literature to be sent out by
mail to inquirers secured through newspaper advertisements. The
printed portion of the literature had been prepared by “experts”
copy-writers—and it is surprising how those fellows could make an
inferior proposition appeal to the gullible.

The Fiscal Agent’s secretary, or outside girl, stationed near his
private office—he had a better looking secretary in his office—said
she believed the “boss” was not in. I gave her my name and stated my
business. She went into the private office, and returned saying, Mr.
so-and-so would see me. However, had I been a questionable caller, the
outside girl would have told me upon returning that he was not in, and
that she had learned from his inside secretary that he had gone out of
town and would not be back that day. This was the system. The “boss” did
not want to see any of his subscribers—nor an officer of the law.

One of those Kansas City promotion companies was selling stock in what
was called a Ten Million Dollar Development—that is, ten million shares,
par-value one dollar, sold at two cents a share, the idea being to offer
the purchaser a lot for little money, out in our mining district
in Nevada. It was highly advertised as the “Extension of the Great
(Searchlight) Quartette Vein.” The outfit was actually sinking a shaft
about a half-mile out in the valley west of the mountain-situated
Quartette mine—a rich gold producer—without reasonable chance of picking
up anything in the way of values. Too many promotions like this were
victimizing the people. The Blue Sky Board’s function was to keep them
out of Kansas.

In our own mine promotion, I did some newspaper advertising in
Topeka—but, first, I had to get a clearance from the Blue Sky Board (in
Bank Commissioner Dolley’s office) showing that our company was on the
square; that the stock was a fair risk; that purchasers were fully and
truthfully informed; and most important of all, that the purchasers
would get a run for their money—meaning that the money so collected must
not be used in paying for a “dead horse.”

On full-page advertising in a number of papers, I received on the
average one inquiry for each 3,000 circulation—but I sold practically
all of them. This was only about one-hundredth part of the returns
the Kansas City fellows were getting. And I had strong copy, too. The
newspaper boys said it was unusually strong. But I made the mistake—from
the promoter’s view point—of telling the readers the truth, that we
had not carried the proposition to a point where we were about ready to
begin handing out dividends, which was the Kansas City boy’s big drawing
card. This was costing too much—and I discontinued selling the stock,
hoping that we might yet find an Agent who would have better luck. We
used up the funds on hand; then went at it individually again. And the
six miners continued on the job, taking their full wages in our treasury
stock.

Let it be understood that the mining stock I sold was far from being in
the blue sky class—and that the job of selling it was “wished” on me.
While in the process of incorporating, our president, Frank Williams,
had made tentative arrangements with Los Angeles “Fiscal Agents”—that’s
what they called themselves then—to sell our treasury stock, but failed
to conclude a satisfactory contract with them. He had encountered the
same questionable line of approach out there that caused me to turn down
the Kansas City “Fiscal Agents.”

Might say that in the first place, on his recommendation, I had joined
Frank Williams in the purchase of the initial lead-zinc-vanadium
claim—only lead discovered then—on which our corporation was mainly
based. Included in the corporation also were three (gold) claims in the
Crescent district, owned by Frank and his brother Tommy Williams, A. M.
Harter, and Jonah Jones. These Crescent claims were taken in on a basis
of one-sixth of the combined value. Our lead claim had the further
approval of that veteran millionaire miner, Green Campbell—indeed, had
he not died suddenly of pneumonia, Green, instead of I, would have
been Frank’s partner. Frank had been with Green Campbell, and his uncle
Elwood Thomas—all three of the men former Wetmore citizens, in the
Goodsprings district for twelve years, at that time.

Then, too, those Crescent gold claims held appeal. What think you that
your heart would have done to you, had you been able to go out on your
own holdings and scrape up dirt—disintegrated rock, assaying $544 gold
to the ton—at a time when the fabulous production of the not too
distant Comstock mines in Nevada, with less glowing beginning, was being
proclaimed all over the land as having saved the credit of the Nation
during Civil War days.


And, by the way, isn’t it about time for us to dig again?

Please—somebody, anybody, everybody—pray with me for a redeeming
Comstock as of yore, only let it be such stepped up magnitude as to
save, beyond the possibility of a slip, the credit of our Uncle Sam,
even in his magnanimous undertaking to tide, piggyback, all those
unstable old country states over the troubled waters of world unrest—in
an effort to convince a certain belligerent-minded Old World character
that war is, a la Sherman, indeed “hell.”

But remember, mines are made—not found.

Before incorporating, we (Frank and I), worked the lead claim for nearly
two years—or rather, Frank did the work and I paid him one-half of the
prevailing miner’s wage. We were trying our best to make a paying mine
of it—and may I say that, encouraged by occasional shipments, there were
times when we believed we were right at the door of accomplishment.

The point I’m trying to stress here is, that we did not acquire the
mining claims for the purpose of launching a stock-selling enterprise,
as was so of ter done about that time. But we learned that more often
than not even promising mining prospects require the expenditure of
more money than we, as individuals, could devote to it—hence the
incorporation.

Thus it is that, in the fullness of Time, I have tried mining—to the
tune of Six Thousand Dollars, plus; out of pocket—and I’ve tried oil,
not once but three times; and I’ve even tried real estate speculation
in the boom days of Port Arthur, Texas—all avenues leading up to the
coveted get-rich-quick-field—and so help me, I have never taken down a
dollar.

I promised my companion of the day that I wouldn’t tell about our
“investments” in Port Arthur town lots. But that was a long time ago,
between the time he was elected Governor of Kansas, from Nemaha County,
and the time he served as Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas
City, Missouri. So I opine that it doesn’t matter now, since he is
safely beyond the pale of political patronage. In the new boom town of
Port Arthur that warm January day about the turn of the century, the
“boomers” showed us the location, with rock foundation all ready in
place, for a bank building, with brick enough piled on the site to build
an edifice big enough to house all the money in the world. But the
most revealing report I ever got from my friend, the Governor, on our
investments, was that the restless bank foundation and its companion
brick pile had gone on the prowl, virtually slipped from one end of the
plotted business section to the other end, taking now and then a rest
period.

The old regulars in our group of “investors” are about all dead now—or
have dropped the Big Idea. Joe Searles, at present prescription clerk in
a Sabetha drugstore, never in too deeply with the old group, is in line
to get his now. He has taken on both leases and royalties in the Strahm
field. The development so far has been done by the Carter Oil Company,
holding most of the leases. But private interests are trafficking in
royalties in a big way. Should Joe make good—that is, break into the big
money where the Internal Revenue take would warrant him in throwing
away a portion of his winnings in “wildcatting,” I suggest that he come
home—and finish the Haigh-Lapham oil test. This—and other betterments
for the old home town—is what I planned on doing, had I become burdened
with mine-made money.

Also, let it be understood that I took no part in the organization
of our group of “investors,” or the promotion of any of our oil
speculations.

And now a last word.

Since it appeared that our Southern Kansas co-partners had risked their
own money, or more likely their credit, in completing the drilling,
incurring disappointment—and, crowded by an unseen hand, (which I
believe I could have put my finger on), had taken the wrong way out of
the dilemma, and if I were not mistaken they yet had a long, long way
to go to get out of the woods; so then, let us be lenient. Why say an
unkind word about your neighbor—when it gets you nothing? Don’t know
if they ever sold any more of the newly voted stock, or if they did any
more drilling. Never heard from them again.

In tolerance of human frailty, let me say that our old Bancroft
farmer-friend, allied with keener personalities, had always been
a reputable man—that the doctor-secretary, and the merchant-prince
apparently stood high among their fellowmen—and then there was Ella J.,
holder of some mining stock. But, even so, had I not lost interest in
the investigation, considered it hopeless, I believe I could have found
“sticks” in more than one eye.







End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True
Stories, by John T. Bristow

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 60844 ***