a pioneer cabin persisting
into a settled community, that was all.

During these years the whole middle border was menaced by bands of
horse-thieves operating under a secret well-organized system. Horses
disappeared night by night and were never recovered, till at last the
farmers, in despair of the local authorities, organized a Horse Thief
Protective Association which undertook to pursue and punish the robbers
and to pay for such animals as were not returned. Our county had an
association of this sort and shortly after we opened our new farm my
father became a member. My first knowledge of this fact came when he
nailed on our barn-door the white cloth poster which proclaimed in bold
black letters a warning and a threat signed by "the Committee."--I was
always a little in doubt as to whether the horse-thieves or ourselves
were to be protected, for the notice was fair warning to them as well as
an assurance to us. Anyhow very few horses were stolen from barns thus
protected.

The campaign against the thieves gave rise to many stirring stories
which lost nothing in my father's telling of them. Jim McCarty was agent
for our association and its effectiveness was largely due to his swift
and fearless action. We all had a pleasant sense of the mystery of the
night riding which went on during this period and no man could pass with
a led horse without being under suspicion of being either a thief or a
deputy. Then, too, the thieves were supposed to have in every community
a spy who gave information as to the best horses, and informed the gang
as to the membership of the Protective Society.

One of our neighbors fell under suspicion at this time and never got
clear of it. I hope we did him no injustice in this for never after
could I bring myself to enter his house, and he was clearly ostracized
by all the neighbors.

* * * * *

As I look back over my life on that Iowa farm the song of the reaper
fills large place in my mind. We were all worshippers of wheat in those
days. The men thought and talked of little else between seeding and
harvest, and you will not wonder at this if you have known and bowed
down before such abundance as we then enjoyed.

Deep as the breast of a man, wide as the sea, heavy-headed,
supple-stocked, many-voiced, full of multitudinous, secret, whispered
colloquies,--a meeting place of winds and of sunlight,--our fields ran
to the world's end.

We trembled when the s