The lonely homesteads were the
prey of savage bands, and the old Santa Fe Trail, always a way of
danger, became doubly perilous now to the men who drove the vans of
commerce along its broad, defenseless miles. The frontier forts
increased: Hays and Harker, Larned and Zarah, and Lyon and Dodge became
outposts of power in the wilderness, whose half-forgotten sites to-day
lie buried under broad pasture-lands and fields of waving grain.
One June day, as the train rolled through the Missouri woodlands along
rugged river bluffs, Beverly Clarenden and I looked eagerly out of the
car window, watching for signs of home. It was two years after the close
of the Civil War. We had just finished six years of Federal service and
were coming back to Kansas City. We were young men still, with all the
unsettled spirit that follows the laying aside of active military life
for the wholesome but uneventful life of peace.
The time of our arrival had been uncertain, and the Clarenden household
had been taken by surprise at our coming.
"I wonder how it will seem to settle down in a store, Bev, after toting
shooting-irons for six years," I said to my cousin, as the train neared
Kansas City.
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