Two graves were dug, and the funeral was over before the sun had dried the dew upon the grass.
There was a girl in Nebraska without a lover, and a widowed mother in Texas without a son.
[VIII.]
PLEASANT HALFACRE’S REVENGE.
I was with a party of cowboys twenty-five miles west of Ogallala, Nebraska, in 1878, when a huge iron box was found in the sands of the Platte River by one of our party, which recalled a tradition of tragedy and revenge, unequaled in the annals of the west.
In one of those great bends of the Ohio River, opposite Three Mile Island and below the town of Newburgh, in Southern Indiana, there lived some forty years ago, a man who furnished cause for which his neighbors with one accord, joined in deporting him.
Pleasant Halfacre occupied a cabin in a small clearing, which opened on the south, facing the bayou which separated the island from the mainland on the Indiana side. On all other sides for a mile or more was a dense forest, where great hickory, pecan and beech trees furnished the winter provender for the grey squirrels, raccoons and opossums. In some places the woodland was low and swampy; there were great ponds where the water lilies grew and in winter the wild duck and brant paused long in their southern flight to feed. The bayou abounded in catfish and silvery perch.
In this little oasis in a desert of toilers, Halfacre had lived for nearly a quarter of a century. His wife, a big buxom woman, was the mother of eight tow-headed children who, when anyone chanced to come, acted like scared squirrels. They would scamper away into the woods and coyly peep at the stranger from behind big trees, while the dogs kept up an incessant barking.