I've never had the least inclination to look over my shoulder since.
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
The Cattle Queen's Ghost.
When darkness overshadows a lone cow ranch, wild and drear,
One's nerves they get a-trembling in a way that seems so queer;
When you feel the spirits round you, 'tis idle then to boast
You don't believe those stories you've heard about the ghosts.
One dark, rainy evening while we were waiting on a sidetrack the boys insisted I should tell them some adventure of mine. So after considerable urging I told them an actual experience I had, that has always convinced me that murdered people's ghosts come back and haunt the place they were murdered in.
Twenty years ago Jerry Wilson was known as the cattle king of the Platte River. His cattle roamed for hundreds of miles up and down the main river and all its tributaries, and, as the cowboys used to say, no one man could count them even if they was strung out, cause he couldn't count high enough.
Jerry had a beautiful wife and two lovely children, a boy and a girl, and for years he and his family had no settled place to live, but went around amongst his different ranches, staying awhile at each one, the children being kept in school in Chicago, except in the summer time when they came West to stay on some cattle ranch with their parents. Finally Jerry Wilson bought a new ranch up in the south part of South Dakota, on Battle Creek, and stocking it up with registered cattle and fine horses, built a fine house, furnished it very expensively and settled on this ranch for their home. He built magnificent barns that were the talk of the whole country, and spent a small fortune in building up and beautifying this ranch. But one day Jerry was riding his horse after a cow on a hard run. The horse stepped in a badger hole and fell on top of him, crushing in his ribs and otherwise injuring him so he only lived long enough to be carried to the house and bid his wife and children good-bye before he died.