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Updated: June 3, 2025
Darley Champers' office stood next to the postoffice, a dingy little shack with much show of maps and real estate information. Behind the office was a large barren yard where one little lilac bush languished above the hard earth. The Wyker hotel and store were across the street.
"This creek divides Wyker's ground from mine. All the rest is measured by links and chains. We agreed to metes and bounds for this because it averages the same, anyhow, and I'd like a stream between Wyker and myself in addition to a barbed wire fence. It gives more space, at least." They had followed the rough way only a short distance when Asher, who was nearest the creek, halted.
Carey has gone West for a vacation and John Jacobs is raising cain over at Wykerton because a hired hand, just a waif of an orphan boy, got drunk in Hans Wyker's joint and fell into Big Wolf and was drowned. Funny thing about it was that Darley Champers came out against Wyker for the first time. It may go hard with the old Dutchman yet.
The best places were filled with noisy talkers and eaters, who stared at her indifferently, and it was not until Gretchen Wyker, tow-haired, pimpled, and short-necked like her father, chose to do so, that she finally pointed out a chair at a shabby side table and waved her empty tin waiter toward it.
There were few differences between the new county seat and Carey's Crossing, except that there were a few more houses, and over by the creek bank the brewery, by which Hans Wyker proposed to save the West.
Unfortunately, the messenger who served Rosie in this emergency was overtaken by Hans and forced to divulge his mission, threatened with dire evils if he said a word to Rosie about Hans having halted him, and urged to go with all haste on his errand, and to be sure of the reward, a ticket to the coming circus and two dishes of ice cream from the Wyker eating house, as per Rosie's promise.
"Well, well, let her rattle, and get to pusiness," Hans Wyker demanded. "Here's Champers says he's here yust for pusiness and he wants to get Aydelot and Carey, too." "Gentlemen!" Champers struck the table with his fist. "Let's play fair now, so's not to spoil each other's games. I'll fix Aydelot if it's in me to do it, just because he's stood in my way once too often.
Wykerton, shut in by the broken country about Big Wolf Creek, was more uncomfortable than the open prairie. And especially was it uncomfortable in the "blind tiger" of the Wyker eating-house. Today the men of the old firm of Champers & Co. were again holding a meeting in this little room that could have told of much lawless plotting if walls could only tell. "It's danged hot in here, Wyker.
She didn't see me, though." "Naw, she see nopotty but young Aydelot sitting mit her. Why you take oop precious time peekin' trough der crack in der kitchen door? I be back in a minute vonce. Smitt haf business mit you," Wyker declared as he turned to the kitchen again. Left together, the two men sat silent a moment. Then Champers said with a frown: "What do you want now?
Grass River and Big Wolf settlements had never before known a tragedy so appalling as the assassination of John Jacobs at the hands of an "unknown" man. Hans Wyker had gone to Kansas City on the day before the event and Wykerton never saw his face again.
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