"Good-afternoon, Judge. Pretty stiff winter weather for Kansas."
So the two greeted each other.
"You wanted to see me?" my father queried.
"Yes, Judge. We might as well get this matter between us settled here as over in the court-room, eh?"
My father smiled. "Yes, we can afford to do that," he said. "Now, Mapleson, you represent a certain client in claiming a piece of property known as the north half of section 29, range 14. I also represent a claim on the same property. You want this settled out of court. I have no reason to refuse settlement in this way. State your claim."
Mapleson adjusted himself in his chair.
"Judge, the half section of land lying upon the Neosho, the one containing among other appurtenances the big cottonwood tree and the stone cabin, was set down in the land records as belonging to one Patrick O'Meara, the man who took up the land. He was a light-headed Irishman; he ran off with a Cheyenne squaw, and not long afterwards was killed by the Comanches. This property, however, he gave over to a friend of his, a Frenchman named Le Claire, connected in a business way with the big Choteau Fur-trading Company in St. Louis. This Frenchman brought his wife and child here to live. I knew them, for they traded at the 'Last Chance' store. That was before your day here, Baronet. Le Claire didn't live out in that cabin long, for his only child was stolen by the Kiowas, and his wife, in a frenzy of grief drowned herself in the Neosho. Then Le Claire plunged off into the Plains somewhere. Later he was reported killed by the Kiowas. Now I have the evidence, the written statement signed by this Irishman, of the turning of the property into Le Claire's hands. Also the evidence that Le Claire was not killed by the Indians. Instead, he was legally married to a Kiowa squaw, a sister of Chief Satanta, who is now a prisoner of war with General Custer in the Indian Territory. By this union there was one child, a son, Jean Pahusca he is called. To this son this property now belongs. There can be no question about it. The records show who entered the land. Here is the letter sworn to in my store by this same man, left by him to be given to Le Claire when he should come on from St. Louis. The Irishman was impatient to join these Cheyennes he'd met on a fur-hunting trip way up on the Platte, and with his affidavit before old Judge Fingal (he also was here before you) he left this piece of land to the Frenchman."
Mapleson handed my father a torn greasy bit of paper, duly setting forth what he had claimed.
"Now, to go on," he resumed. "This Kiowa marriage was a legal one, for the Frenchman had a good Catholic conscience. This marriage was all right. I have also here the affidavit of the Rev. J. J. Dodd, former pastor of the Methodist Church South in Springvale. At the time of this marriage Dodd, who was then stationed out near Santa Fé, New Mexico, was on his way east with a wagon train. Near Pawnee Rock Le Claire with a pretty squaw came to the train legally equipped and was legally married by Dodd. As a wedding fee he gave this letter of land grant to Dodd. 'Take it,' he said, 'I'll never use it. Keep it, or give it away.' Dodd kept it."
"Until when?" my father asked.