ished, looking up into
my face with eyes of inexpressible peace, and murmuring softly,

"Safe in the arms of Jasus."

Old men are prone to ramble in their stories, and I am not old. To prove
that, I must not jiggle with these heads and tails of Time, but I must
begin earlier and follow down these eventful years as if I were a real
novel-writer with consecutive chapters to set down.

Springvale by the Neosho was a favorite point for early settlers. It
nestled under the sheltered bluff on the west. There were never-failing
springs in the rocky outcrop. A magnificent grove of huge oak trees,
most rare in the plains country, lined the river's banks and covered the
fertile lowlands. It made a landmark of the spot, this beautiful natural
forest, and gave it a place on the map as a meeting-ground for the wild
tribes long before the days of civilized occupation. The height above
the valley commands all that wide prairie that ripples in treeless
fertility from as far as even an Indian can see until it breaks off with
that cliff that walls the Neosho bottom lands up and down for many a
mile. To the southwest the open black lowlands along Fingal's Creek
beckoned as temptingly to the settler as did the Neosho Valley itself.
The divide between the two, the river and its tributary, coming down
from the northwest makes a high promontory. Its eastern side is the
rocky ledge of the bluff. On the west it slopes off to the fertile draws
of Fingal's Creek, and the sunset prairies that swell up and away
beyond them.

Just where the little stream joins the bigger one Springvale took root
and flourished amazingly. It was an Indian village site and
trading-point since tradition can remember. The old tepee rings show
still up in the prairie cornfield where even the plough, that great
weapon of civilization and obliteration, has not quite made a dead level
of the landmarks of the past. I've bumped across those rings many a time
in the days when we went from Springvale up to the Red Range schoolhouse
in the broken country where Fingal's Creek has its source. It was the
hollow beyond the tepee ring that caused his pony to stumble that night
when Jean Pahusca, the big Osage, was riding like fury between me and
that blood-red sky.

The early Indians always built on the uplands although the valleys ran
close beneath them. They had only arrows and speed to protect them from
their foes. It was not until they had the white man's firearms that they