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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories, by 
-John T. Bristow
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll
-have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using
-this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories
-       Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas
-
-Author: John T. Bristow
-
-Release Date: December 4, 2019 [EBook #60844]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMORY'S STOREHOUSE ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Allan Shumaker
-
-
-
-
-
-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
-
-image2
-
-
-“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
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