“Get out!” the angry voice shouted.
My father was not disturbed. Not then. He even laughed a little. And I fear his voice was charged with rather too much mirth when he called back across the stream, “Why, John, don’t you know me?”
Like a flash of lightning came back the ultimatum, “I don’t care if you are General Grant, you can’t hunt in my timber!” So that was that—a sorry situation for two old friends to impose upon themselves.
My father told me we would leave the Wolfley timber by the shortest route. Leaving the dead squirrel on the ground where it had fallen, he started off at once with the stride of one bent upon urgent enterprise, muttering incoherent but indubitably uncomplimentary things about his late friend. It is such breaches of friendship, as this seemed to be, that cause men to talk to themselves.
Sometimes, however, what we consider a calamity proves to be a blessing in disguise. That was true in this case. And the breach, which loomed so menacingly on the horizon at the moment, instead of impairing a fine friendship was the indirect cause of making it everlasting.
Even as my father hastened away, the Invisible Hand was working in his favor. Had there been no interruption, he would have continued on his course as mapped out, up the creek, and the providential thing which was very soon to take place would have miscarried. Here I want to interpose a paragraph—maybe two, or more—to show how welcome this providential thing that was now about to enter my father ’ s life.
A shoemaker with a family rather too large to support in comfort even in normal times, was my father—a slaving man who, like so many others in those pioneer days, had nearly reached the limit of his endurance. In this new country everyone was directly, or indirectly, dependent upon the products of the soil. Those were the days of Texas long-horn cattle and ten cent corn—when there was corn. Those were the days when snows driven by winter’s howling blasts across the open prairies piled high in the streets and country lanes and cut off all communications with the outside world for weeks at a time. At such times we would burn corn for fuel. Well do I remember the superior warmth of those corn-fed fires. They were life-savers for those who were compelled to live in the open, wind-blown homes of that day.
There was land to be had for the taking, but my father thought he could not afford to take it. Without capital to stock the free grass range, the pioneer farmer could not hope to make more than a bare living. And when crops failed for lack of moisture, as they too often did in the early days before the country became seasonable for the production of grain, all suffered.
That was pioneer Kansas! That was “Droughty Kansas! ” That was “Bleeding Kansas!” It was not the Kansas of today—barring, of course, the year 1934, and maybe with apologies for 1935.
Then, before that providential find was to bear fruit, two outstanding reverses visited appalling hardships upon an already discouraged peoples. The lingering effects of the great money panic of 1873 was the cause of much distress. There was no such thing as Federal aid then, and everyone here was on his own. However, the East did contribute some bacon and a quantity of cast-off clothing, including plug hats and Prince Albert coats—useful in some cases, but generally scorned by the needy people.