All this while the little party was halting. The father said the island home would not do, and as he had come two thousand miles to live neighbors, I must give up my claim and take another near theirs, and so, abandoning over a year's hard work, I acted upon his request with the result told elsewhere, of fleeing from our new chosen home, as we supposed, to save our lives, upon the outbreak of the Indian War in two years from the time of the camp mentioned.
One can readily see that these surroundings did not promise that compact, staid settlement of energetic, wide awake pioneers we so coveted, nevertheless, the promise of money returns was good, and that served to allay any discontent that would otherwise arise. I remember the third year we began selling eighteen months' old steers at fifty dollars each, off the range that had never been fed a morsel. Our butter sold for fifty cents a pound, and at times, seventy-five cents, and many other things at like prices. No wonder all hands soon became contented; did not have time to be otherwise.
It came about though, that we were in considerable part a community within ourselves, yet, there were many excellent people in the widely scattered settlements. The conditions to some extent encouraged lawlessness, and within the class already mentioned, a good deal of drunkenness and what one might well designate as loose morals, incident to the surroundings. A case in point:
A true, though one might say a humorous story is told on Doctor Tolmie, or one of his men, of visiting a settler where they knew one of their beeves had been slaughtered and appropriated. To get direct evidence he put himself in the way of an invitation to dinner, where, sure enough, the fresh, fat beef was smoking on the table. The good old pioneer (I knew him well) asked a good, old-fashioned Methodist blessing over the meat, giving thanks for the bountiful supply of the many good things of the world vouchsafed to him and his neighbors, and thereupon in true pioneer hospitality, cut a generous sized piece of the roast for his guest, the real owner of the meat.
This incident occurred just as here related, and although the facts are as stated, yet we must not be too ready to scoff at our religious friend and condemn him without a hearing. To me, it would have been just as direct thieving as any act could have been, and yet, to our sanctified friend I think it was not, and upon which thereby hangs a tale.
Many of the settlers looked upon the company as interlopers, pure and simple, without any rights they were bound to respect. There had been large numbers of cattle and sheep run on the range and had eaten the feed down, which they thought was robbing them of their right of eminent domain for the land they claimed the government had promised to give them.
The cattle became very wild, in great part on account of the settlers' actions, but the curious part was they afterwards justified themselves from the fact that they were wild, and so it happened there came very near being claim of common property of the company's stock, with not a few of the settlers.
One lawless act is almost sure to breed another, and there was no exception to the rule in this strange community, and many is the settler that can remember the disappearance of stock which could be accounted for in but one way—gone with the company's herd. In a few years, though, all this disappeared. The incoming immigrants from across the plains were a sturdy set as a class, and soon frowned down such a loose code of morals.
For the moment let us turn to the little camp on the edge of the prairie, of seven wagons and three tents. There came a time it must be broken up. No more camp fires, with the fragrant coffee morning and evening; no more smoking the pipe together over jests, or serious talk; no more tucks in the dresses of the ladies, compelled first by the exigencies of daily travel and now to be parted with under the inexorable law of custom or fashion; no more lumps of butter at night, churned during the day by the movement of wagon and the can containing the morning's milk. We must hie us off to prepare shelter from the coming storms of winter; to the care of the stock; the preparations for planting; to the beginning of a new life of independence.