husca. His
broad hat was pushed back from his square dark forehead; and the hair,
soft and jetty, had the same line about the face. But not one feature
there bespoke an ignoble spirit. I did not understand him, but I was
drawn toward him, as I was repelled by the Indian from the moment I
first saw his head above the bluff on the rainy October evening long
ago.

How little the Kansas boys and girls to-day can understand what that
morning meant to us, when we saw our fathers riding down the Santa Fe
Trail to the east, and waving good-bye to us at the far side of the
ford! How the fire of patriotism burned in our hearts, and how the
sudden loss of all our strongest and best men left us helpless among
secret cruel enemies! And then that spirit of manhood leaped up within
us, the sudden sense of responsibility come to "all the able-bodied
boys" to stand up as a wall of defence about the homes of Springvale.
Too well we knew the dangers. Had we not lived on this Kansas border in
all those plastic years when the mind takes deepest impressions? The
ruffianism of Leavenworth and Lawrence and Osawatomie had been repeated
in the unprotected surroundings of Springvale. The Red Range schoolhouse
had been burned, and the teacher, a Massachusetts man, had been drowned
in a shallow pool near the source of Fingal's Creek, his body fastened
face downward so that a few inches of water were enough for the fiendish
purpose. Eastward the settlers had fled to our town, time and again, to
escape the border raiders, whose coming meant death to the free-spirited
father, and a widow and orphans left destitute beside the smoking embers
of what had been a home. Those were busy days in Kansas, and the memory
of them can yet stir the heart of a man of sixty years.

That morning Dr. Hemingway offered prayer, the prayer of a godly man,
for the souls of men about to be baptized with a baptism of blood that
other men might be free, and a peaceful generation might walk with ease
where their feet trod red-hot ploughshares; a prayer for the strong arm
of God Almighty, to uphold every soldier's hands until the cause of
right should triumph; a prayer for the heavenly Father's protection
about the homes left fatherless for the sake of His children.

And then he prayed for us, "for Philip Baronet, the strong and manly son
of his noble father, John Baronet; for David and William Mead, for John
and Clayton and August Anderson." He prayed for Tell Mapleson, too