Waterbury evening Democrat., 1903-06-01
AT WHITE B U F FALO. By xZOLA l.. FoRRESTER
tcopyright, 1908. by Daily Story Pub. co.l
..O!: .O!:6$

judged by the standard or tne out side world, and the reprieve of Billy Kane was one of them.
 Once there was a railroad which thought some day it might take notion to travel along Buffalo creek. Whereupon, certain .enterprising gen tlemen anticipated it's movements and their own fortunes by laying out the city lots of White Buffalo. They had anticipated as far as one-story hotel, six saloons and & few pine boxes, when the railroad changed it's mind, and went 26 miles south at Syl- vania.
 So White Buffalo failed to prosper, but a few trustful people got strand ed there, and went to live in the pine boxes, and on Saturday nights from fifty to hundred herders and ranch CTS, and half breed Indians used to stroll in and support the six saloons and the hotel. Things kept moving slowly when Tommy Taylor got the mail route from Sylvania. and White Buffalo became a postal station, and once in awhile letter came there,
 After Billy Kane landed at the Crossbar ranch a letter came every week, and as it was clean, well-ed- ucated looking letter, it went long way towards establishing Billy in the estimation of White Buffalo.
 He was an awfully nice boy. Quiet and easy tempered, and used to an- swer these letters regularly. Five Ace Fuller said he looked like the head soprano in the choir. Fuller was minister once somewhere, and never really got over it. He wore black clothes, and never shot at a man when he wasn't looking.
 Billy liked fair play, too. You just couldn't help but like the boy. Slim and blue eyed, and pensive, with brown hair that curled at the edges, and fair skin that even the range sun never burned to brick red as it did the other boys. And he could sing like bird at sunrise; one of those little, brown birds that shoot up out of the tall prairie grass from under your pony's feet, and sing their hearts out to the morning light. .
 Sunday mornings about five o'clock Billy would start for home, full of everything that; White Buffalo keeps in tap for those it loves. But he would sit his pony like a temperance colonel, and as he rode along the trail from town we could hear him singing. Sometimes it was s''Mo1l Kelly" and sometimes it was .'The Holy City" and once in awhile, if he was very full, it was Rock of Ages" And he'd sing until your heart ached and you wished you were good boy like Billy Kane.
 Once Tommy Taylor asked who the letters were from, and Billy laid his nice, new, shiny, lightweight Smith & Weston half yard from Tommys ear, and asked him to please repeat the question. Tommy didn't. There's no sense rushing in places unless you can see footprints of angels ahead of you.
 Then we liked him for the Crossbar sheep killing affair. The sheepmen from Wyoming drove 8 bunch of sheep down on the Crossbar range, and the Crossbar boys left few dead sheep around just as hint to them to clearSout. There were over a hun dred head of good, sound year1ings died the next week on the range from drinking from a poisoned spring, and the Crossbars said they'd have to shoot the first sheepman that showed up. It was fair play. They gave warning, but the sheepmen stayed, so one night Billy led the crowd of cow boys against them. There was one man shot, and he was a herder, and his own left him to die, and the Cross bar boys thought it best not to med dle. But Billy put him on his own horse, and took him home and n,frsed him. And when he went over the state line into Wyoming he told of man who shot him and then saved his life, and the sheep1nen stayed in their own range. But Billy said, as point of sentiment, he could shoot a herder when he was a herder, but when he was only a man with a bullet in him it was another point of sentiment. So we loved him and let him have his way in little things.
 And so he was spoilt somehow. One night he began singing "Mol1 Kelly" and the chorus wasn't strong enough to suit him, so he started through the town after recruits. One or two strangers from Sylvania, who didn't know Billy, objected, and we buried them neatly the next day a quarter of a mile down the creek. We didn't mind it so much, because Billy was sorry about it, and even of- fered to sing at the funeral, but Syl- vania didn't think it.. was neighborly, and they had a sheriff down there.
 We are awfully sorry for the boy. We wouldn't have hurt his feelings for anything, but the sheriff thought the occasion demanded slight dem onstration of justice, as one of the men was barber and the only one in Sylvania. which made it awkward for some.
 The Sylvania stage reached White Buffalo at night, and left at seven the next morning. And the sheriff. finding Billy a polite, well behaved boy, locked him up in a back room of the hotel for the night, and went out