It is well known that some of these brutal traffickers were legally hanged in California for murdering the women on whose earnings they were living.
E. A. B.
CHAPTER VI.
THE TRUE STORY OF ESTELLE RAMON OF KENTUCKY.
By Principal D. F. Sutherland, Red Water, Texas.
She is one to be pitied, and not slandered. She was as pure as the air which she breathed in her humble home among the blue hills of the winding Cumberland. "She was light of heart and gay of wing as Eden's garden bird."
John and Amanda Ramon, after they were married, bought a little farm and settled down near the battlefield of Mill Springs. John was one of these great, big, good-looking, honest and hard-working men from the mountains. His wife, Amanda Ramon, was a refined and well educated Kentucky woman and a woman who loved to be with the "society" folks. She loved to wear fine dresses and spent more in this way than her husband could really afford, and this caused him to have to work very hard early and late. He went to clearing and improving his little farm and everybody was talking about what a noble fellow young John Ramon was and how well he seemed to be getting along. His wife did not seem to be satisfied to live in the hills. She wanted John to sell out and move to Somerset.
Two years passed away on the little farm, and Estelle Ramon was born. John promised Amanda when Estelle grew old enough to attend school that he would sell out and move to town. Years passed on and John Ramon continued to work hard, and by hard work and good management he began to prosper. He built a new house and bought Estelle a piano. His wife still wanted to move to town, but John didn't want to go. He told his wife that he had nothing in town and no work there to do, that they were beginning to get along fairly well and the best thing for them to do was to let well enough alone, and that he wanted her to release him from his promise to move to town, which by the entreaties of Estelle she reluctantly did. John was happy in his home life with his wife and little girl, who had now reached the age of fifteen years. She had from the time she could toddle around been constantly with her father. In the fields making the hay, gathering the crops, seeing after the stock, you would find Estelle and her father always together. After supper she would climb upon her father's knee and he would always tell her some little story to please her. She would ride the horse to the pasture and John would carry her back in his big, strong arms. She was essentially a papa's girl, and her father almost idolized his child. When she was old enough she attended the country school close by and was known as the brightest pupil in the school. She learned music from her mother, and it was her chief delight to sing and play in the evenings for her parents. She was loved by everybody in the neighborhood, young and old. At an early age she joined the church, and she could always be found in her place in the church and in the Sunday school, first as a pupil of the Sunday school and later on as a teacher of a class of little boys and girls. It was said that in after years every boy and girl in her class became model Christians.
