Phillipsburg herald. [volume] (Phillipsburg, Kan.) 1882-1905, 1892-08-11

had broken down in this wild but wooded
defile of the Sierras, and he had been
forced to a winter encampment with
only rude log-cabin for shelter, on the
very verge of the promised. land. IN
able to enter it himself, he was never
thelesS able to assist the better equipped
teams that followed him with wood and
water, and a coarse forage gathered
from a sheltered slope of wild oats
This was the beginning of a rude sup
ply station, which afterward became so
profitable that when spring came and
Hays team were sufficiently recruited
to follow the flood of immigrating gold
seekers to the placers and valleys, there
seemed no occasion for it. His fortune
had been already found in the belt of
arabic slope behind the wooded defile,
and in the miraculously located coigne
of vantage on what was now the great
highway Of travel and the only oasis
and first relief of the weary journey.
The breaking down of his own train at
that spot had not only been the saliva
ton OF those who found at Hays the
means of prosecuting the last part Of
their pilgrimage. but later provided the
equipment of returning teams.
The first two years of this experience
had not been without hardship and dan
ger. He had been raided by Indians,
and besieged for three days in his stock
aided cabin; he had been invested by
Wintry drifts of twenty feet of snow,
cut OFF equally from incoming teams from
the pass and the valley below. Dur
ing the second year his wife had joined
him with four children, but whether the
enforced separation had dulled her con-
iugal affection, or whether she was
tempted by a natural feminine longing
for the land of promise beyond, she
sought it one morning with a fascinat-
ing teamster, leaving her two sons and
her two daughters behind her; two years
later the elder of the daughters followed
the mothers previous example, with
such maidenly discretion, however, as
to forbear compromising herself by any
previous matrimonial formality what
ever. From that day Hays had no fur
Their personal intercourse with the valley
below. He put up hotel a mile away
from the farmhouse that he might not
have to dispense hospitality to his Gus
toners, nor accept their near compan-
iOnship. Always a severe Presbyterian
and an uncompromising deacon Of a
far-scattered and scanty community
who occasionally held their serv-
ice in one of his barns, he
grew more rigid, seetarian and narrow
day by day. He was feared, and, al
though neither respected nor loved, his
domination and endurance were ac-
cepted. A grim landlord, hard creditor,
clOse-fisted patron and a smileless
neighbor, who neither gambled nor
drank, -Old Hays, as he was called,
while yet scarce fifty, had few &C
quaintanees and fewer friends. There
were those who believed that his domes-
tic infelicities were the result of his
unsympathetic nature; it never oc-
CURED to any one (but himself, prob
ably that they might have been the
cause. In those Sierran attitudes, as
elsewhere, the belief in original sin
popularity known as pure cussedness'
dominated and overbore any eonsid-
Grafton of passive, impelling circum-
stances or temptation, unless they had
been actively demonstrated with a re-
golver. The passive expression o.
harshness, suspicion, distrust, anC
moroseness was looked upon as inner
emit wickedness.
The storm ragged violently as Hay
emerged from the last of a long rang,
of outbuildings and sheds, and crossed
the open space between him and tn
farmhouse. Before he had reached thu
porch with its scant shelter, he ha'
fiOundered through a snOwdrift and face
the full fury of the storm. But the snow
seemed to have glanced from his hard