United States or South Africa ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"See here, Sandy," said his uncle, "how would you like to go to Kansas with your father, Oscar, Charlie, and myself?" "To Kansas? shooting buffaloes, deer, Indians, and all that? To Kansas? Oh, come, now, Uncle Charles, you don't mean it." "But I do mean it, my laddie," said the elder man, affectionately patting the freckled cheek of the lad.
The black waters closed over the dead; the last swimmer vanished into the silence. The spasmodic barking of the dog, the groaning of men lying on the decks and the shouts exchanged between Courtenay and Gray for the guidance of the boats, were the only remaining symbols of the fiercest crisis which had yet befallen the Kansas.
The unclouded sun of a burning August day had driven bird and beast to shelter wherever a bit of shade could be found. The Kansas prairie afforded little refuge from sun or wind. The long stretches of low rolling hills were mostly covered with short grass, now dry from a protracted season of drought.
Money was raised for the Iowa campaign. There had been several attempts to organize a "militant" suffrage society in Kansas under the name of the Congressional Union and a number of men and women had been innocently led into it. A "question box" conducted by Mrs.
The commissary was stocked, three extra men were picked up, and the herd started northward over the new Ogalalla trail. A week later it crossed the Kansas Pacific Railroad, when Joel left the herd, returning to their local station. A haying outfit was engaged, placed under the direction of Manly, and after spending a few days at headquarters, the young cowman returned to the railroad.
There were no whites settled in what is now the State of Kansas. Weston, in Missouri, was the great town, and speculation in town-lots there and thereabout burnt the fingers of some of the army-officers, who wanted to plant their scanty dollars in a fruitful soil. I rode on horseback over to Gordon's farm, saw the cattle, concluded the bargain, and returned by way of Independence, Missouri.
Fremont and his party, after traveling something over three hundred miles from the mouth of the Kansas reached the Platte river, where they encamped in a charming place near Grand Island. The country was most beautiful, though they suffered somewhat from the violent storms which frequently broke over them.
"Death is the most joyfullest thing in life," said Thomas Carlyle to Milburn, the blind preacher, "when it transfers responsibility to those big enough to shoulder it, for that's the only way you can make a man." I once saw a boy of fourteen on the prairies of Kansas transformed into a man, between the rising of the sun and its setting.
So when he reached his brother in Kansas without molestation, he exercised caution enough to leave the herd of horses in the territory. The courts of this neutral strip were Federal, and located at points in adjoining States, but there was no appeal to them in civil cases. United States marshals looked after the violators of law against the government.
It was a cruel bit of Western warfare, yet it held back from Kansas a diabolical outrage, whose suffering and horror only those who know the Southwest tribes can picture. And strangely enough, the power that stayed the evil lay with a handful of faithful Indian scouts. The story of the massacre soon reached the Mission.
Word Of The Day