The chronicle=news., 1914-07-20

ness who came and went as they nat
urally had to do to slip the Officers.
| The spring roundup of 1866 ar
rived at Beaver basin the night be-
fore the 4th OF July and the forty or
fifty boys agreed to take the next
day off and celebrate by resting. for
this was one of the heaviest gath
crings ever combcd in that country,
consisting as it did of about 800
cattle. Up to this time none of the
annual roundups had ever gotten irtC
the Zcnobia basin to the southeast
of Browns park and as the big out
fits had been losing cattle by the
hundred, the boss of the rodco con-
cludcd to send out scouts to invosti-
gate the unknown country confined
within the almost impcnctrablc walls
of the mysterious basin. The cniy
known trail in was so narrow and
dangerous that horse with pack
would be scrapcd off and lost for
ever in the deep canon below.
Two picked men cmulating Joshua
and Caleb to spy out the compro-
missed land got in over the ticklish
trail and found therein summer
camp with nobody at home except
some women folks. The basin was
full of familiar looking cattle and
there were Il hundred or more head
of calves running around without
mothers. The boys noticed all kihds
of blotched brands that had DcGu
worked over. The two-bar brand of
Ncls Morris had been given Il diag-
onaI stroke to make a u of IL and
there were other alterations so as 20
read Z--K. The G brand of the Mid
dlcscX company had the points of
the capital drawn in so as to make
IL turtle with legs at each corner ard
other sisnos were ductorcd in many
funny ways.
The scouts were seen by the wo-
men and when Lon Fisher, foreman
of the roundup. and Valentine S. Hoy
with n little band of handy lads,
rode into the Zenobia basin two days
later ready to fight it out they were
surprised to notice how spoOky every
thing looked. For mile or more
the smell of burning flesh permea'-
cd the atmosphere of the owly
place. Everybody had hikel out and
Investigation disclosed n terrible bo-
vine tragedy. A bunch of seventy
five or more cattle had been driven
over Il prccipicc and their bodies
were burning under piles of cedar
wood to destroy their identity. Even
horses had been killed in tho same
manner and it was a sickcning s,ght
to witness the havoc and smell the
stencil that arose from the CHAT.
The men calculated that fully
49, 900 worth of stock had been thus
burnt sacrifice to cover NJ the steal
ingg that had been going on. After
that time the gang became more care
ful and did less of n wholesale busi-
ness, but the undcrhandcd traffic
still kept up and so it is today to n
certain degree. The only thing left
to the story is to add that every last
one of the men mentioned came to a
violent death In one way or another
1.-THE most of them shot down by Of
ficcrs. Field and Farm.
A Raid on n Hayficld: The army
contractors who provided the forage
for the quartcrmastcrs had troubles
of their own back in the old Indian
days and many OF the claims for
ldcprcdations have never been paid.
In July 1867 William II. Bush had
the contract at Fort Wallace to put
up the prairie hay at $1i the ton.
lie had n crew of men in Il field on
| mi nnrtb nT
the post working nine moving ma
lclIincs and twenty-five head of mules.
One day n foraging band of Chcy-
cnncs and Arapahocs captaincd by
BiGfoot lcomcd up on the horizon,
swopcd down on Bill Bush's bayfield,
land spoiled the looks of things in a
few minutes.
The men all took II sudden attack
of hay fever. abandoned their ma
chimes and hid behind a corral maao
from bags of sand so that they were
safe enough. The Indians burned
two machines and three stacks of hay
and ran off all the stock of more
than n hundred head belonging to
Bush, Charles Christy and freight
er named j. c. Powers. who by the
way was the heaviest loser of all.
The alarm was sounded ut the post
and Captain Graham with a troop Of
the Tenth cavalry chased the Indians
south for ninety miles until they
crossed the Arkansas below Fort
Dodge. There the chase was given
mp as BigfOot was too speedy for
them and got away with the stock.
Powers was paid for his losses on
this raid but the other fellows got
nothing. This is the same William
II. Bush who afterwards got rich
here In Colorado running hotels and
numerous other things. He was in
| many respects n most remarkable
| man who knew how to take care of
himself but all that is left of him is
Il cheerful rccolicction.-Ficl and
Farm.