Baronet always called this day, which was Friday,
his black but good Friday.

"Good-afternoon, Mr. Mapleson, have a chair."

"Good-afternoon, Judge. Pretty stiff winter weather for Kansas."

So the two greeted each other.

"You wanted to see me?" my father queried.

"Yes, Judge. We might as well get this matter between us settled here as
over in the court-room, eh?"

My father smiled. "Yes, we can afford to do that," he said. "Now,
Mapleson, you represent a certain client in claiming a piece of property
known as the north half of section 29, range 14. I also represent a
claim on the same property. You want this settled out of court. I have
no reason to refuse settlement in this way. State your claim."

Mapleson adjusted himself in his chair.

"Judge, the half section of land lying upon the Neosho, the one
containing among other appurtenances the big cottonwood tree and the
stone cabin, was set down in the land records as belonging to one
Patrick O'Meara, the man who took up the land. He was a light-headed
Irishman; he ran off with a Cheyenne squaw, and not long afterwards was
killed by the Comanches. This property, however, he gave over to a
friend of his, a Frenchman named Le Claire, connected in a business way
with the big Choteau Fur-trading Company in St. Louis. This Frenchman
brought his wife and child here to live. I knew them, for they traded at
the 'Last Chance' store. That was before your day here, Baronet. Le
Claire didn't live out in that cabin long, for his only child was stolen
by the Kiowas, and his wife, in a frenzy of grief drowned herself in the
Neosho. Then Le Claire plunged off into the Plains somewhere. Later he
was reported killed by the Kiowas. Now I have the evidence, the written
statement signed by this Irishman, of the turning of the property into
Le Claire's hands. Also the evidence that Le Claire was not killed by
the Indians. Instead, he was legally married to a Kiowa squaw, a sister
of Chief Satanta, who is now a prisoner of war with General Custer in
the Indian Territory. By this union there was one child, a son, Jean
Pahusca he is called. To this son this property now belongs. There can
be no question about it. The records show who entered the land. Here is
the letter sworn to in my store by this same man, left by him to be
given to Le Claire when he should come on from St. Louis. The Irishman
was impatient to join these Cheyennes he'd met on a fur-hunting trip way
up on the Plat