CHAPTER I
TAKING UP A "CLAIM" IN KANSAS--THE TRAIL FROM LEAVENWORTH--ANIMALS SEEN EN ROUTE--PRAIRIE CHICKENS--BUILDING THE CABIN--THE COSY SITTING-ROOM--ANIMALS FOUND IN THE TIMBER AND ON THE PRAIRIE--WHY THE CREEK WAS NAMED "OXHIDE"
IN 1865-66, immigrants began to rush into the new state of Kansas whichhad just been admitted into the Union. A large majority of the earlysettlers were old soldiers who had served faithfully during the war forthe preservation of their country. To these veterans the Government, byAct of Congress, made certain concessions, whereby they could take up"claims" of a hundred and sixty acres of the public land under easierregulations than other citizens who had not helped their country in thehour of her extreme danger.
Many of them, however, were forced to go out on the extreme frontier, asthe eastern portion of the state was already well settled. On the remoteborder several tribes of Indians, notably the Cheyennes, Kiowas,Comanches, and Arapahoes, still held almost undisputed possession, andthey were violently opposed to the white man's encroachment upon theirancestral hunting-grounds, from which he drove away the big game uponwhich they depended for the subsistence of themselves and theirfamilies. Consequently, these savages became very hostile as theywitnessed, day after day, the arrival of hundreds of white settlers whosquatted on the best land, felled the trees on the margin of the streamsto build their log-cabins, and ploughed up the ground to plant crops.
Late in the fall of 1866, Robert Thompson, a veteran of one of theVermont regiments, having read in his village newspaper such glowingaccounts of the advantages offered by Kansas to the immigrant, decidedto leave his ancestral homestead among the barren hills of the GreenMountain State, and take up a claim in the far West. The family,consisting of father, mother, Joseph, Robert, Gertrude, and Kate, aftera journey by railroad and steamboat without incident worth recording,arrived at Leavenworth on the Missouri River, the general rendezvous inthose early days for all who intended to cross the great plains, throughwhich a railroad was then an idle dream. In that rough, but busy town,Mr. Thompson purchased two six-mule teams, two white-covered wagonscalled "prairie schooners," together with sufficient provisions to lasta month, by which time he thought he should find a suitable location onthe vast plains whither he was going.
A few cooking-utensils of the simplest character, together with adouble-barrelled shot-gun and a Spencer rifle, constituted the entireoutfit necessary for their lonely trip of perhaps three hundred miles,before they could hope to find unoccupied land on which to settle.
One Monday morning, bright and early, the teams pulled out of the town,Mr. Thompson driving in the lead, and Joe, who was the elder of theboys, in the other. Gertrude rode with her father and mother, and Kateand Rob with their brother Joe. Their course ran over the broad trailto the Rocky Mountains, on which were then hauled by governmentcaravans, all the supplies for the military posts in the Indian country.
Their route for the first two weeks passed through deep forestsextending for a long distance from the bank of the great river. Thewhole family were charmed with the new and strange scenes they passed asthey rode slowly on day after day, scenes so different in their detailsfrom those to which they had been used in the staid old region they hadleft so far behind them. The boys and girls, particularly, were in aconstant state of excitement. They marvelled at the immense trees asthey passed through groups of great elms and giant cottonwoods. Thegnarled trunks were vine-covered clear to their topmost branches by themagnificent Virginia creeper, or woodbine, as it is called, the mostbeautiful of the American ivies, and which grows in its greatestluxuriance west of the Missouri River. On the ends of the huge limbs ofthe lofty trees as they branched over the trail, the red squirrels sat,peeping saucily at the travellers as they drove under them, and theblue jay, the noisiest of birds, screeched as he darted like lightningthrough the dark foliage. The blue jay is the shark of the air; hekills, without any discrimination, all the young fledglings he can findin their nests while their parents are absent. Although his plumage ismagnificent in its cerulean hue as the sun glints upon it, and he has avery sweet note when sitting quietly on the limbs of the oak, which heloves, yet his awful screaming as he flies--and he is ever on thewing--is far from pleasant to ears not trained to listen to his harshvoice.
Occasionally a gaunt, hungry wolf--they are always hungry--would skulkout of the timber and then run across the trail, with his tail wrappedclosely between his legs. He would just show a mouth full of great whiteteeth for a moment, as he sneaked cowardly off, the rattle of the wagonshaving, perhaps, disturbed his slumbers on some ledge of rock near theroad.
Prairie chickens, or pinnated grouse, were seen in large flocks as soonas the open country was reached. They were far from wild in those days;you could approach near enough always to get a good shot at them, forcivilization was to them almost as strange an experience as it was tothose beasts and birds on Robinson Crusoe's island. Joe was alreadyquite proficient with the shot-gun, and he often handed the lines toRob, and stopping the team, got out and walked ahead of the wagons tostalk a flock of the beautiful game, which had been frightened away fromtheir feeding-ground by the rattle of the teams. For a long time grousewas a part of every meal until the party became really tired of them.Mrs. Thompson was a famous cook, and they were served up in a variety ofways, but the favorite style of all the family was to have them broiledbefore the camp-fire on peeled willow twigs. Rob always regarded it aspart of his duty to procure these twigs, as he was the handiest with ajack-knife or hatchet.
The weeks passed pleasantly for the children, but the old folks werebecoming very anxious to settle somewhere, for the winter, as theythought, would soon be coming on. They did not know then that thatseason in Kansas is usually short, and that the three or four monthspreceding it is the most delightful time of the whole year. So aftertravelling nearly two months on the broad trail to the mountains,examining a piece of land here and another there, they camped early oneafternoon on the bank of Oxhide Creek, in what is now Ellsworth County,and so delighted were they all with the charming spot, that they made uptheir minds to seek no further.
Their "claim," as the possession of the public land is called, includeda beautiful bend of the little stream which flowed through the onehundred and sixty acres to which they were entitled by being the firstto settle on it. They discovered in the very centre of a group of elmsand cottonwoods a large spring of deliciously cool water, and the treeswhich hid it from view were more than a century old. The magnificentpool for untold ages had evidently been a favorite resort of theantelope and buffalo, if one could so judge from the quantity of thebones of those animals that were constantly ploughed up near by when theground was cultivated. No doubt that the big prairie wolf and thecowardly little coyote hidden in the long grass and underbrushsurrounding the spring got many a kid and calf whose incautious mothershad strayed from the protection of the herd to quench their thirst.
The beautiful creek flowed at the base of a range of low, rocky hills,while two miles northward ran a magnificent stretch of level prairie,beyond which ran the Smoky Hill River.
To their ranche, as all homes in the far West are called, the Thompsonsgave the name of Errolstrath. It had no special significance; it was socalled merely because "Strath" in Scotch means a valley through which astream meanders. It comported perfectly with the situation of the place,and "Errol" was added as a prefix for euphony's sake. In thispicturesque little valley Mr. Thompson, with the assistance of his boys,began at once the construction of a rude but comfortable cabin,fashioned partly out of logs and partly of stone. The house outside gaveno hint of the excellence of its interior, or the cosy rooms which arefined taste and culture had felt to be as necessary on the remotefrontier as in the thickly settled East. The largest division of thehouse was an apartment which served as the family sitting-room. In onecorner of this, they built diagonally across it, after the Mexicanstyle, an old-fashioned fireplace, patterned like one in the ancestralhomestead in Vermont. Up its caverno
us throat you could see the sky,and in the summer, when the full moon was at the zenith, a flood ofbright light would pour down on the broad hearth. In the winter eveningsthe family gathered around the great blazing logs, whose yellow flamesroared like a tornado as they shot up the chimney. The mother sewed, thegirls were engaged with their studies, and the boys either listened totheir father as he told of some experience in his own youthful days,played chess, or were busied with some other intellectual amusement.
This large room was also furnished with a small but well-selectedlibrary. It was a source of much pleasure to the family, as the countrywas not settled up very rapidly, and the members were thrown entirelyupon their own resources for amusements. The following spring and summermany newcomers arrived and took up the choicest lands in the vicinity,until there were several families within varying distances ofErrolstrath. Some were only three miles away, others twelve, but in thatregion then, all were considered neighbors, no matter how far away.
The children had lots of fun, for the rare sport differed entirely fromthat which their former home in the old East had furnished. The densetimber which grew by the water of the Oxhide like a fringe, was the homeof the lynx, erroneously called the wild cat, squirrels, badgers, andcoons. The wolf and the little coyote had their dens in the great ledgesof rock that were piled up on the hilly sides of the valley. The greatprairie was often black with vast herds of buffalo, or bison, whichroamed over its velvety area at certain seasons. The timid antelope,too, graceful as a flower, and gifted with a wonderful curiosity, couldbe seen for many years after the Thompsons had settled on the creek.They moved in great flocks, frequently numbering a thousand or more, butnow, like their immense shaggy congener, the buffalo, through thewantonness of man, they have been almost annihilated.
Joe Thompson, the eldest child, about fourteen, was a rare boy, stronglybuilt, and possessed of a mind that was equal to his well-developedbody. He was a born leader, and became one of the most prominent men onthe frontier when the troublous times came with the savages, some yearsafter the family had settled on Oxhide Creek. Robert, the second son,was a bright, active, muscular fellow, two years younger than Joe, buthe lacked that self-reliance, energy, and coolness in the presence ofdanger which so strikingly characterized Joe. Gertrude and Kate wererespectively ten and seven years old, and were carefully instructed bytheir estimable mother in all that should be known by a woman whose lifewas destined, perhaps, to the isolation and hardships of the frontier.They were both taught to cook a dinner, ride horseback, handle a pistolif necessary, or entertain gracefully in the parlor. To employ ametaphor, theirs was a versatility which "could pick up a needle or rivean oak!" In some of her characteristics Gertrude resembled her brotherJoe; she was braver and cooler under trying circumstances than Kate, whowas more like Rob. Both were rare specimens of noble girlhood, and theirlife on the ranche, as will be seen, was full of adventure and thrillingexperiences.
It may seem strange that a stream should be called Oxhide, but, like thenomenclature of the Indians, the name of every locality out on thegreat plains is based upon some incident connected with the scene or theindividual. As this is a true story, it will not be amiss to tell herewhy the odd-sounding name was given to the creek on which the Thompsonshad settled. Some years before the country was sought after byemigrants, the only travellers through it were the old-time trappers,who caught the various fur-bearing animals on the margins of its waters,and the miner destined for far-off Pike's Peak or California. A partycamping there one day, on their way to the Pacific coast, discovered ayoke of oxen, or rather their desiccated hides and skeletons, fastenedby their chains to a tree, where they had literally starved to death. Itwas supposed that they had belonged to some travellers like themselves,on their way to the mines, who had been surprised and murdered by theIndians. The savages must have run off the moment they had finishedtheir bloody work, without ever looking for or finding the poor animals.Thus it was that the stream was given the name of Oxhide, which it bearsto this day.