The Tupelo journal., 1909-07-23

valley in itself offers to a construc.
zionist no insuperable obstacles; the
difficulty Is presented in the canyon
where the river bursts through the
Elbow mountains. South of this cam
yon, McCloud, m day on a hunting
trip, found himself with two Indians
pocketed in the rough country, and
was planning how to escape passing a
night away from camp when his COM
panions led him past a vertical wall
of rock 1000 feet high, split into q
narrow defle down which they rode.
as 1t ~broadened out, for miles. They
emerged upon an open country that
led without a break into the valley Of
the Crawling Stone below the canyon.
Afterward, when he had become a rail-
road man, McCloud, sitting at a camp
fire with Glover and Morris Blood,
heard them discussing the coveted and
impossible line up the valley. He had
been taken into the circle of construc-
tionists and was told of the earlier re-
ports against the line. He thought he
knew something about the Elbow
mountains, and disputed the findings.
offering in two days ride to take the
men before him to the pass called by
the Indians the Box, and to take them
through it. Glover called it a find, and
a big one, and though more immediate
matters in the strategy of territorial
control then came before him, the pre-
liminary was ordered and McCloud's
a nd;p oc uyaro onprouoJ Maitland him.
self was soon afterward engrossed in
the problems Of operating the noun
tain division; but the dream Of his
life was to build the Crawling Stone
line with a maximum grade of eight
tenths through the Box.
The prettiest stretch Of Crawling
Stone valley lies within 20 miles of
Medicine Bend. There it lies widest,
and has the pick Of water and grass
between Medicine Bend and the Mis-
sion mountains. Cattlemen went into
the Crawling Stone country before the
Indians had wholly left 1t. The first
house in the valley vas the Stone
ranch, built by Richard Dunning, and
it still stands overlooking the town of
Dunning at the junction of the French
man creek and the Crawling Stone.
The Frenchman is fed by unfailing
springs, and when by summer u and
wind every smaller stream in the mid.
die basin has been licked dry, the
Frenchman run cold and swift be-
tween its russell hills. Richard Dun
ming, being on the border of the In
dian country, built for his ranch
house a rambling stone fortress. He
had chosen, it afterward proved, the
choice spot in the valley, and he
stocked it with cattle when yearlings
could be picked up in Medicine Bend
at ten dollars a head. He got together
a great body of valley land when it
could be had for the asking. and be-
came the rich man of the Long Range.
The Cummings were Kentuckians.
Richard was a bridge engineer and
builder, and under Brodie built some
of the first bridges on the mountain
division, notably the great wooden
bridge at Smoky creek. Richard
brought out his nephew, Lance Dun
ming. He taught Lance bridge-build-
ing, and Murray Sinclair. who began
as a cowboy on the Stone ranch,
learned bridge-building from Richard
Dunning. The Cummings both came
west, though at different times, az
young men and unmarried, and as far
as western women were concerned.
might always have remained so. But
a. Kentucky cousin, Betty, n of the
Fairfield Cummings, related to Richard
within the sixth or eighth degree.
came to the mountains for her health.
Betty's mother had brought Richard
up as a boy, and Betty, when he left
Fairfield, was a baby. But Dick-as
they knew him at home-and the
mother wrote back and forth, and he
persuaded her to send Betty out for a
trip, promising he would send her
back in a year a well woman.
(To BE CONTINUED)