Reminiscences of a Wayfarer ■■■■■■■■■MHHHKtHnrMnBi iTwruRwaBrcnKinn/. ■ wttwswnMtfaMMniiiviMi Some of the Important Events of the Pioneer Days of Richardson County and Southeast Nebraska, as remembered by the writer, who has spent fifty one years here ANOTMKU MU 'Ml M IT Ull»i: In my last I gave my expert ence of a night ride to Brown ville to visit the United States land office, and told how our driver became bewildered and allowed his team to watn'c.' from the trail, and in the dark ness of a nioonle.-s night, In come lost, I now propose to relate a similar experience at a later date, hut in the same sum mer, when a party of young fel lows, myself among the mini In-r, undertook a night journey to St. Stephen, a town on the Missouri, of which I have be fore made mention.. That trip was not made in the night from choice, but rather in haste, and to prev ent a tragedy if possible. Word had come to town late in the afternoon, that an alleged horse thief bail been captured flag mute delicto, and that there was great danger that the infur iated citizens on both sides ot the river, would hang him un les-. prompt .mil effective inter ference was made to prevent it accompanied with an urgent request of the better disposed people over there, that Falls City would assist tln-in in main tabling' order. A party was soon lormed to go to the scene of tin* difficulty, and to do the best we could to prevent mob violence. It was dark when we started, a n <1 though the sky was clear there was a bank of cloud low down on the western horizon, along i llicit, fitful Hashes of summer lightning could occasionally he seen, but there were no positive indications ol stormy weather during the night, and we felt no apprehension on that ac count. St. Stephen was seventeen miles, or thereabouts, to the northeast, and our way led through Archer, hut from there on, there was no particularly well defined road, no bridge ov er any of the numerous small streams we were obliged t i cross before we reached ourdes tination, and no human habita tiou by the wavside. The first trouble we encoiin tered was at Half ltreed creek The driver had missed the cross ing and we were delayed an hour or more in finding it, or at least a place to cross the team and wagon over, and about the same experience attended our efforts in crossing the two ot three other small water courses that ran over our route or trail It was about as dreary and mo n donous a ride a> suddenly in that lonely waste, and in the silence of the night, putting out those twinkling points of light hung high in the heavens, mak ing the darkness more intense and dreary, and moving toward us with swift and thunderous strides, it was at once a scene of awful grandure and indescrib able beauty. We expected a sound drench ing if nothing worse, but to our great relief, t h e surchanged cloud, obeying some change in the attnospheric conditions, veered to the northeast and passed u> without discharging I much of its superabundance of i rain on our party. With the coming of the dawn we were able to determine or those acquainted with the coun i try were our exact wherea | bouts, and the right course to i pursue to reach our point of des I filiation. <>ur wanderings must have been irregular as to direc tion, and zig-zag as to our mode of following it. as when we came to the Winnebago branch, the last before we entered the ! timber surrounding the high hill I overlooking1 the Missouri river, | on which the town was built, i we found we had strayed far north of tin* true course, but we soon reached the right trail there was no road and shortly before sunrise, found our wav into town. It was mostly built what there was of it. on a ridge that sloped slightly to the north while the side oi tin* hill next the river descended abruptly and so steep that a wagon road had been dug' along the side for convenient passage for wagons and the vehicles to and from Ihe terry on the river. About hall way down, a saloon build iny had been erected, on piles driven into the hit Iside, a nd blocked up one way and anoth er, so as to prevent it from slid ing into the river. A little above the ferry landing' and on more level yround by the river, was another saloon. There was a store on the crest of the ridge, but the chief points of interest Were the two saloons overlook iny the swift Howiny river be low. Early as was the hour the little hamlet was full of excited and drunken men, and had been alI night. Scores of o t li e r s w e re stretched on the ground in the oblivious sodden sleep of intox ication. In after days it h.is fallen to my lot to be in many strange hard places, where the moral lights burned dimly, or had gone out altogether, but never in all iny life have l ever seen anything to compare with wluit 1 saw in that frontier town, on that peaceful summer morning. M e n with d r i n k crazed brains, .1 n d murder stained hands for thev had hung their victim in the dark ness of the night before, in the woods west of town were rax - ing like mad, demanding more drink, and stupidly exulting in the work of death they had late ly performed, and wishing they had another to hang with the dead man, to keep him compa ny. 1 felt that the world had stepped back into the middle ages, and 1 was witnessing one oft s ... t i ons told by chroniclers, of the dead ly fuedes between Norman and Saxon races, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, on the blood stained soil of old Eng land. u was too muon tor me. and l told the others of our party that 1 would not stay in that town a single hour, for the whole of it. They agreed with me, and we turned about and drove some half a mile out to the house of Mr. Stephen Storv. the sole proprietor of the town, and after waking the people asked to feed our horses, and it" : the accommodation could b e 1 furnished, we would like some breakfast for ourselves. The | requests were conveyed to Mr. Story, who coming out to our | conveyance in the road, in a generous and hospitable man ner invited u> in, and gave di rections for the care of our horses, and in due time a sub stantial breakfast was put be fore us, to which we did the us ual and hearty justice common to hungry boys. From that day to the end of hi- life, I knew Stephen Story intimately and well, and I have t! - t<> say of him, that in* w i> ,l aw respect ing citizen, a generous open handed friend and neighbor, but misplaced in St, Stephen. He denounced the lawless conduct of the people down town, and had done all he could to pre i vent it. failing which, lie had | left and gone out to his home, ! before the murder was commit I ted. As well attempt to control j the mad waves of the sea when ! the winds are at war with them, a- to attempt to talk sense, or reason or justice into the heads of a drunken mob, deaf to every appeal of our common humani ty, and fatally bent on mischief. Reared in a peaceful, law abiding, Christian community, I had no idea of the real simon pure devil that lurked in the ignorant unrestrained denizens of our western frontier, nor how thin the crust of civi lization was that incased some at least, when the strong arm of the law was no longer available in the interest of civil and orderly conduct. Those in furiated men, like the tiger, had tasted human blood, and the spirit of murder ran riot every where. One man. the king of the place, and the worst of the lot, struck another on the head with a “sling shot", an instru ment made of a mass of lead and covered with leather with a handle to wield it, from the effect of which the man assault ed, died sometime afterwards. Fights andquarrels continued all night among those not placed hors du com hat by whiskey that mighty force, which yet rules in the wet towns and cities of Ne braska, and wherever else in the country, the guzzlers of that liquid hell-tire are in the major ity. St. Stephen was not an ex ' o ntion. but rather tin* rule that ! is as old as the human race. I ha\>* often wondered whv God made man at all. His lot is a hard • one or we think it is from start to finish; and no ag i* i c y conceivable in nature, .I mid work more assiduously than he does, constantly and | forever, to make it harder. And n o w after nineteen hundred var.s of the highest and most advanced civilization known in 'all history, there does nut walk the world today, one perfectly contented human being in all its wide expanse. As germain to the inflections j just indulged in, let us see how I man's creation was accounted for, as well as the reason for it, i in a vanished and dateless age. I have seen in an old book, old er than the Bible, it was known ;is tile traditions of the Klders among the strange people who produced it, but in the litera tare of the world, is now known as the “Talmud ", a fanciful ac count of man's creation. It is very pretty in the reading, but for want ot space I quote but little. T li i s substantially: When God was about to create man, He called the three minis tering Angles tliai wait con stantly upon the throne,Justice. Truth and Mercy, as a kind of advisory board, and asked: “Shall we make man?” Justice and Truth answered: “Hear us. Almighty King, create no more. The glorious harmony of the heavens which Thou lias sent to earth will be disturbed, destroyed: lie will desecrate Thy sanctuaries, and profane T h i n e altars. Thy peace will be disturbed, the How ot blood will follow sure his coining. OGod, create him not, for with m a 11 Thou sendest falsehood to earth, confusion, horror, war will blot the earth" Ac. Then it is written, silence fell upon the contesting hosts as the Angel of Mercy appear ! ed before that awful presence, and on 1 -ml -d a■■ ■> swi't was the voice which said entreating I lv: “Oh, lather, create '1’liou j man: make him Thine own noble image. With heavenly p i t y will I till is heart, with .■sympa thy towards every living tiling impress his being, and I will watch over him forever." Then out of the quietness that fell upon a!i in Heaven, came the Divine words: “We will make man. and he shall be , a child of Mercv." This, as a picture of poet ic fancy, is a gem in itself, but like other gems, not of the1 imagination, has been made the j subject of larceny, now and again, and thereby hangs a tale. About the middle of the last century, a cruel and cowardly murder was committed in one of the rural districts of Ken tucky. A northern man, and in those days that meant an abo 1 itionist, was teaching a school I down there. His name was Butler, and j among his pupils was one from a wealthy family of the name of j Ward. The boy had been eh as tised for some infraction of tile rule,whereupon an older brother went to the school house, called the teactier to the door and shot him to death like a d