Those were busy days which followed—days all too short for the years of labor that loomed so drearily before the pioneers; but they set to work bravely, plowing, building, and planning, and the manifold cares of their new, strange life left no time for repining over the events of the past, or even to investigate the nature of that strange visitant which had so startled them with its fleeting appearance.
Although a hurried search was made near the Old Corral, no trace of the lost treasure could be discovered; and whenever the subject was mentioned, or the hope expressed of the ultimate recovery of the princely treasure, the colonel would discourage it as delusive and visionary, and would say that the surest way to recover the lost fortune was to extract the gold from the soil through the medium of the plow and an application of good "horse sense" to their farming.
Several masons were employed from the nearest town, forty miles distant, and, after tearing down the walls of the Old Corral, the stone was utilized in building, first, a dwelling for Colonel Warlow in the grove in the river's bend; next, a cottage for Clifford on the site of the old stronghold, which had been entirely obliterated, save that portion which had fallen over Colonel Warlow years ago, and which had so providentially shielded him from death. The entire party had decided that it should remain as a monument of the past, and accordingly the stones which had been hurled down by the drunken fury of the Indians, were replaced carefully; so the wall now appeared as it did a quarter of a century before, on the night of that terrible tragedy.
Squire Moreland and his son Ralph also built, from the same confused stone-heap, comfortable dwellings a mile down the valley, but situated on the opposite side of the river from the Warlows; and, as all of the buildings were located near natural timber, they presented a very home-like appearance when completed.
But during all the while the plows were kept busily turning the fertile valley sod, which was planted in corn and millet, thus providing feed for the stock the ensuing winter.
Yet it must not be supposed by the reader that incessant toil alone occupied the time of the settlers, to the exclusion of all pleasure; for many were the pleasant fishing parties and excursions to the Sand Hills, far off to the north-west, where the delicious sand-plums crimsoned the low shrubs which clothed the hills, relieving, on these occasions, their life of monotony.
An occasional antelope-hunt on the Flats to the south was indulged in by the sporting members of the colony, varied by the excitement of a wolf-chase or the sight of a stray buffalo.
Then the ceaseless tide of travel on the Santa Fe Trail, thronging with settlers bound for the rich prairies to the south, was in itself a link to the past and an endless source of interest to the colonists.
One of the first moves of the Warlow and Moreland families was to organize a school district, a proceeding which is never omitted by the first settler of the western prairies, who, the very day he "files," begins planning more or less secretly, to secure the location of a school-house on his "claim."
So, according to pioneer traditions, the district was organized, consisting of a territory ten miles square, and a meeting was called at the house of Colonel Warlow, at which assemblage of the settlers it was decided "to vote bonds to build a school-house immediately."