nd the shadows
gather round,
And you tell the old-time story, I can almost hear
the sound
Of the horses' hoofs in the silence, and the voices of
struggling men;
For the night is the same forever, and the time
comes back again_.
--JAMES W. STEELE

FROM the beginning of things in the Walnut Valley, the Kickapoo Corral
had its uses. Nature built it to this end. The river course follows the
pattern of the letter S faced westward instead of eastward. The upper
half of the letter is properly shaped, but the sharpened curve at the
middle leaves only a narrow distance across the lower space. In this
outline runs the Walnut, its upper curve almost surrounding a little
wooded peninsula that slopes gently on its side to the water's edge. But
the farther bank stands up in a straight limestone bluff forming a high
wall of protection about the river-encircled ground. A less severe bluff
crosses the open part of the peninsula, reaching the hither side of
the river below the sharp bend. The space inside, stone-walled and
water-bound, made an ideal shelter for the wild life that should inhabit
it. And Nature saw that it was good and went away and left it, not
forgetting to lock the door upon it. For the enemy who would enter this
protecting shelter must come through the gateway of the river. There
was only one right place to do this. Deceivingly near to the shallow
rock-based ford before the Corral, so near that only the wise ones knew
how to miss it, Nature placed the cruelest whirlpool that ever swung an
even surface up stream, its gentle motion telling nothing of the
fatal suction underneath that level stretch of steady, slow moving,
irresistible water.

What use the primitive tribes made of this spot the river has
never told. But in the day of the Kickapoo supremacy it came to its
christening. Here the tribe found a refuge and harbored its stolen
plunder. From this wooded covert it sent its death-singing arrows
through the heart of its enemy who dared to stand in relief on that
stone bluff. Here it laughed at the drowning cries of those who were
caught in the fatal whirlpool beyond the curve in the river wall, and
here it endured siege and slaughter when foes were valiant enough, and
numerous enough to storm into its stronghold over the dead bodies of
their own vanguard.

Weird and tragical are the legends of the Kickapoo Corral, left for a
stronger race to marvel over. For, wit