.
This French woman was quick-tempered and jealous, and her anger was
something to flee from.

"It is a story of utter baseness. From St. Louis to Springvale Mrs.
O'Meara's escort was more like a lover than a friend and business
director of her affairs. This land was an Osage reservation then.
O'Meara's half-section claim was west of here. The home he built was
that little stone cabin near where the draw breaks through the bluff up
the river, this side of the big cottonwood."

Le Claire paused and sat in silence for a while.

"Much as I have dealt with all sorts of people," he continued, "I never
could understand this Frenchman's nature. Fickle and heartless he was to
the very core. The wild frontier life attracted him, and he, who could
have adorned the court of France or been a power in New York's high
circles, plunged into this wilderness. When they reached the cabin the
cause for his devoted attentions was made plain. O'Meara was not there,
had indeed been gone for weeks. Letters left at Springvale directed to
this Frenchman read:

"'I'm gone for good. A pretty Cheyenne squaw away up on the Platte is
too much for me. Tell Kathleen I'm never coming back. So she is free to
do what she wants to. You may have this ground I have preempted, for
your trouble. Good-bye.'

"This letter, scrawled on a greasy bit of paper, was so unlike anything
Patrick O'Meara had ever said, its spirit was so unlike his genial
true-hearted nature that his wife might have doubted it. But she was
young and inexperienced, alone and penniless with her baby boy in a
harsh wilderness. The message broke her heart. And then this man used
all the force of his power to win her. He showed her how helpless she
was, how the community here would look upon her as his wife, and now
since she was deserted by her husband, the father of her child, her only
refuge lay with him, her true lover.

"The woman's heart was broken, but her fidelity and honor were founded
on a rock. She scorned the villain before her and drove him from her
door. That night she and O'mie were alone in that lonely little cabin.
The cruel dominant nature of the man was aroused now, and he determined
to crush the spirit of the only woman who had ever resisted him. Two
days later a band of Kiowas was passing peaceably across the Plains.
Here the Frenchman saw his chance for revenge by conniving with the
Indians to seize little O'mie playing on the prairie beyond the cabin.

"The wom