rom the Ohio
home and none of his family knew of his whereabouts. He had been to
South America and to California, joining a band of trappers on the
Columbia River and coming with them back across the Plains.

When I showed him my pony he offered to help break him for me. With
very little trouble he rode the peppery little creature this way and
that, and at last when he circled back to camp I found the animal had
been mastered.

In the days that followed Horace gave me many useful lessons as a
horseman. He was the prettiest rider I had ever seen. There had been a
stampede of horses from the Fort, and a reward of ten dollars a head
had been offered for all animals brought in. That was easy money for
Horace. I would gallop along at his side as he chased the fugitive
horses. He had a long, plaited lariat which settled surely over the
neck of the brute he was after. Then, putting a "della walt" on the
pommel of his saddle, he would check his own mount and bring his
captive to a sudden standstill. He caught and brought in five horses
the first day, and must have captured twenty-five within the next few
days, earning a sum of money which was almost a small fortune in that
time.

Meanwhile the Territory had been opened for settlement. Our claim, over
which the Great Salt Lake trail for California passed, had been taken
up, and as soon as father and I, assisted by men he hired, could get
our log cabin up, the family came on from Weston. The cabin was a
primitive affair. There was no floor at first. But gradually we built a
floor and partitions, and made it habitable. I spent all my spare time
picking up the Kickapoo tongue from the Indian children in the
neighborhood, and listening with both ears to the tales of the wide
plains beyond.

The great freighting firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell was then sending
its twenty-five wagon trains out from the Plains to carry supplies to
the soldiers at the frontier forts. Leavenworth was the firm's
headquarters. Russell stayed on the books, and Majors was the operating
man on the Plains. The trains were wonderful to me, each wagon with its
six yoke of oxen, wagon-masters, extra hands, assistants, bull-whackers
and cavayard driver following with herds of extra oxen. I began at
once making the acquaintance of the men, and by the end of 1854 I knew
them all.

Up to this time, while bad blood existed between the Free-soilers and
the pro-slavery men, it had not become a killing game. The