The Indians often visited their camps, begging for bread, or for sugar or tobacco. Father said that on his winter trip it made his heart ache to see the pitiable condition of the women and children, chilling around in the loose wigwams during the winter storms. He often saw the women out in the snow gathering up and carrying great loads of wood on their shoulders. But he said the most pitiable sight he ever saw was little half-starved, half-naked children, too small to walk, creeping around under his mule's heels, eagerly eating the grains of corn that they had dropped.
But the Indians were every year growing more restless, and often attacked the trains, to obtain provisions, and cattle and mules. Father often saw them peering around the bluffs, or along the river banks, watching his movements. But he was very careful, never allowing the boys or stock to wander off alone, and keeping guards out at night. Knowing that the Indians were growing dangerous, Bro. Butcher had insisted on lending him a rifle for his later trips. One day they were traveling along the Platte River bottoms, the river half a mile to one side, the bluffs a mile or two back on the other. It seemed impossible for anything to hide in the low grass around them; but father knew that here and there in the grass were wet-weather gullies, deep enough for an Indian to lie in; and his watchful eye detected the grass moving occasionally, here and there. He halted, telling the men there were Indians in the grass. At first they made light of it, saying they knew no Indian could hide in that low grass. But he told them that he had been watching for some time, and thought the Indians were creeping up on them from the river. He took Bro. Butcher's rifle out of the wagon, saying, "I am going down there to see; who will go with me?" But none of them offered to go, except a boy of sixteen, who, seeing the rest would not go, shouldered another gun, saying, "For shame! I wont see the old man go alone!" The two went down through the grass, and when they reached the river, they saw a number of Indians running away under shelter of the bank. The Indians seldom attack determined men, who are on their guard—unless they are on the war-path with a large force—and they saw that father was such a man, and gave him no more trouble. It was on his last trip, in 1864, that the Indian raid occurred, which he mentioned in Chapter XXXI. On their return they found that armed bands of Indians were still riding about the country. One afternoon, when they were within a little over a day's drive of Fort Kearney, they saw a band of Indians prowling about, first in one direction, then in another. The boys were badly frightened, and wanted to run their teams all night, in order to reach the fort. The weather was hot, and the oxen already tired, and father feared that such a forced drive would kill them. So he ordered the boys to camp for the night. They kept out a strong guard, and were not attacked; but reached the fort in safety the next day.
The District Missionary Society of Northeastern Kansas had held two yearly meetings in the tent at Pardee, in August, 1862, and August, 1863, just after father's return each year from his summer trips across the plains. In August, 1864, soon after his return from his last trip, another district meeting was held at Wolf Creek, Doniphan county, which was the home of Bro. Beeler, and of Brethren Jonathan and Nathan Springer. Father had held a number of good meetings there, and built up quite a church. But when the railroads went through there the town of Severance was built up on one side; and Highland, seven or eight miles on the other side, which was already a Presbyterian stronghold, received a new impetus. So the church at Wolf Creek was broken up, and one was organized at Severance, and one has since been built up at Highland, of which Bro. Beeler is the leading member.
Bro. Jonathan Springer—who has moved to Goffs, where he still maintains his old-time zeal—relates an incident which occurred a year or two before that district meeting. Father was holding a protracted meeting, when there came into the neighborhood a young preaching brother from one of the Southern States, running away from the Union soldiers. Upon learning who he was, father invited him to preach, and they continued preaching together for a week, holding an excellent meeting, and father said not a word to him about the questions dividing North and South. Bro. Springer said, "I always thought that Bro. Butler was a peculiar, a wonderful, and a powerful preacher." Speaking of his ability to attract and hold the attention of an audience, Bro. Springer said, "I once heard him begin a sermon with the question, 'Are we dogs, or are we men?'" At the district meeting his sermon was on his favorite theme, "Christian Union;" and it was two hours in length, yet he held the close attention of the audience to the end. Although he often preached on that subject, he always had something fresh to say. He could not crowd all that he had to say about it into one sermon. He was constantly reading of the change of sentiment on Christian union among other denominations, and referring to it in his sermons.
A few years ago he preached a series of discourses on that subject at Pardee, closing as follows: "The Protestant denominations will all become one yet, not by other churches coming to any one church, but their differences will almost imperceptibly disappear, and they will all melt into one, and no one will be able to tell how it was done."
In the spring of 1865 he moved back to the farm, and spent much of the summer in preaching. For the next four years his winters were spent in lumbering, and his summers in preaching, and improving his farm. Even while lumbering he preached somewhere nearly every Sunday; sometimes at home, sometimes in the schoolhouse near his timber, and sometimes he landed a raft at Port William on Saturday, and went across and preached for the church at Pleasant Ridge, Leavenworth county. And other Sundays he preached at various points easy to reach on Saturday evening, and return to his work on Monday morning.
He rafted many of his logs to Port William or Leavenworth, and usually helped to take them down; and there was much joking about where he learned the rafting business. It was dangerous, however, for rafts sometimes struck snags, or became unmanageable in the swift current, and went to pieces.
When the Central Branch Railroad was built, the company took corn of settlers in payment for lands, cribbing it by the road. Instead of shipping off the corn, they shipped Texas cattle to the cribs, to eat it up. They soon came to father in great perplexity. Their cattle broke every fence they could build, and they did not know what to do with them. So he told them how to build a fence the cattle could not break, and he had a quantity of extra strong lumber sawed for that purpose. When he called at the railroad office to receive pay for his lumber, the clerk paid him in rolls of bills sealed up in paper, with the value marked on the outside. After leaving the office he counted his money, and found that one of the rolls that was marked $100, really contained $1,000. Returning, he told the clerk he had made a mistake. "We correct no mistakes," was the gruff reply. "Young man, you are not doing business for yourself, but for the railroad company; come here and help me count the money." The label had been misplaced.
The greater part of father's lumber was sawed at Winthrop, now called East Atchison, and he did much hauling across the river on the ice. His teams were usually the first to cross when the river froze up, and the last to quit crossing in the spring; but as he was a good judge of the condition of the ice, he never lost a team. I have heard my brother George say that four or five times, when father or himself had, by careful driving, crossed in safety with large double teams and heavy loads, others, trying to cross behind them with light wagons, had broken through, and either lost their teams or been saved with difficulty. One spring the ice was thawing rapidly, and had become quite rotten; but father wanted to take one more heavy load across, and he drove it himself. It was drawn by several yoke of oxen, and their weight sunk the ice so that the water spouted through the air-holes and frightened them. He knew that the beaten track, where the teams had trodden the ice solid, and the accumulated mud had shaded it, had not thawed as fast as the surrounding ice, and that to allow his wagon to swerve a foot, one way or the other, was to risk breaking in. He ran along by the lead yoke, watching them so closely that he did not notice where he was walking, and several times he stepped off, knee-deep in little air-holes; but he took his load safely over. As he went up the bank some half-drunken Germans in a sleigh dashed down on the ice and broke through, but were so near the shore that they easily got out. But one of father's wagons ever broke through, and it was driven by a careless hired man. Father was ahead with another team. He called back to the man to unhitch quickly and hitch on to the end of the tongue, for fear the team would break through, too, and running back, he put lumber under the wheels, and they pulled the wagon out.
Father gave away a great deal of wood over there. In those days coal was scarce and high, and, consequently, wood was high also. Many families were so glad to receive the wood as a gift, that they were willing to haul it twelve or fourteen miles. And, winter after winter, he also kept two or three poor families supplied with wood from his timber at home, allowing them to come and help themselves.