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Show 434 WESTERN WILDS. and was reduced to a graded school. This called for a reorganiza-tion of an adjoining district; local questions entered into the con-test, and party feeling ran high. The men- and women assembled 1 on the day appointed for a school election ; the women got to quarreling, and that, of course, drew in the men. One little man was badly in-sulted, upon which his large and brawny wife rushed in with an em-phatic statement that " her Benny should not be imposed on." It is hinted by local chroniclers that hard names, " cuss words," stove-wood and other missiles flew about with disgusting recklessness. The election was set aside for fraud, and the question at issue went to the courts for settlement. " The ameliorating influence of women at the polls" was not apparent in that township. Thence southward into Neosho County, we found the fertile vales every- where dark green with dense masses of corn. Soon after cross-ing the line it was evident we were in a county where the " herd law" prevailed. No fences were seen around the corn- fields; but neither were there any large herds of cattle feeding on the slopes. The Legislature has cantoned out the law- making power; each county has the right to adopt or reject the " herd law" for itself. Many and hot are the resulting contests. In counties where the cat-tle interest is strongest the law is defeated, and cultivators must fence in their crops; elsewhere the cultivated fields have no fences, but stock are fenced in or herded by the boys. The agriculturists state, with some point, that they are not at all afraid their corn will encroach on the cattle; the latter must be guarded by their owners. Through these counties one often sees the poor calves tied to the fence, while their bovine mammas are driven to distant ridges for the day. And, by the way, it was a calf thus tied, abandoned and dead for want of water, which first showed that the notorious Benders had fled. Our party of four visited the Bender farm while yet the country was ringing with the story of their crimes. Taking an open hack at Cherryvale, Montgomery County, we drove seven miles north- east over as beautiful a prairie as God ever adorned or man defiled. At that distance out we descended by a gentle slope to Murderer's Vale. On the north and east rose those picturesque mounds which so ro-mantically diversify this region; to the south and west the fertile prairie, now dotted with cultivated fields, or brilliant with rank grass and flowers, spread as far as the eye could reach; between was a slight depression of perhaps two square miles, from which a little run put out north- east, and in the center of this happy valley |
