SUSIE RÉAUME.
The highest points of the divide separating the beautiful valley of the Saline from the Elkhorn, in central Kansas, are two relatively elevated peaks, close together, known all over the region as the Twin Mounds. They can be seen from anywhere within a radius of thirty miles, cutting the deep blue of the sky on clear days as sharply as a summer thunder-cloud. In their contour they are so exactly similar, even to two white patches of limestone on their southwestern slopes, that their name would immediately suggest itself to a stranger, for never were twins born so perfect in resemblance as these dual masses of disrupted rock.
Under their conical shadow runs the trail of the Mormon hegira to far-off Deseret, when that sect was driven out of Illinois; and also that of General John C. Frémont, on his memorable "Exploring Expedition" across the continent in 1843. Until very recently, when it was ruthlessly cut down, there stood in the valley, on the bank of the Elkhorn, immediately below the mounds, a large oak tree, at the foot of which the General caused that mutineer to be shot, the circumstances of which are related in his itinerary of that wonderful march.
But that was nearly a quarter of a century before the occurrence of the events to be related in this story; and they date back nearly the same length of time from the present. Both trails may still be seen in places where the land has not yet been subordinated to the plow; almost obliterated wagon-tracks in the short buffalo-grass covering that portion of the prairie through which the expedition passed, which each recurring season grow dimmer, and in a few more years will have vanished forever.
The valleys of the Elkhorn and the Saline were heavily timbered—are to-day, relatively. They were a favorite haunt of the Indians; and elk, buffalo, bear, and an occasional panther sought the rocky and vine-involved recesses of the primitive forest.
But the savage and the beasts of the plain have passed away. Now the land is full of harvests and green meads. Yet the Indian summer now as then wraps the hills in its mellow tints; the grass grows brown and rusty as each autumn fills its measure, and the days, as in the long-ago, are as grand as the golden sunshine of that incomparable season of the Great Plains ever lighted up; the mirage, as of old, weaves its fantastic forms out of the charming landscape, and under certain atmospheric conditions a man on top of one of the Twin Mounds will appear, as does the specter of the Brocken, like a huge giant in mid-air.
When Fort Harker, on the Smoky Hill, about fifteen miles south of the Twin Mounds, was established as a military post by Gen. Hancock in the fall of 1866, the whole vast area of central Kansas was the hunting-ground of the cruel and bloodthirsty Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Kiowas. Their opposition to the intrusion of the whites manifested itself at every opportunity where it was possible to murder or carry into captivity. The empire of the plow had just then dawned, and the march of the homesteader but fairly begun. The satanic genius of Indian hatred brooded over the beautiful landscape, and the harvest of the unlabored fields was blood.
It is true a few hardy trappers had for years roamed over the prairies and camped temporarily on the banks of the wooded streams, but there was no attempt at permanent settlement except in the immediate vicinity of the several forts; but they were established only from time to time at remote distances from each other, generally on the line of the Oregon and Santa Fé trail, under the protection of which it was alone safe to remain in the country.
About the time the site for the new post of Fort Harker had been determined upon, and troops—the Fifteenth Infantry and Gen. Custer's Seventh Cavalry—were camped on the grassy bottoms of the river and creeks in the vicinity, waiting for their permanent quarters to be erected, a bold and persistent frontiersman named Paul Réaume, who had been a pioneer in the wilds of Wisconsin twenty years before, emigrated from that State to Kansas.