brain, and brave hearts. They were determined to better their condition, asked for no favors and wrought without fear. The Old Settlers' Association in this county numbers all these classes in its membership, and does no more honor to the first than to the last.
In all frontier countries there is another class that may not be ignored. Its members are those who belong to the frontier, and are never satisfied elsewhere. They follow the advice of the philosopher of the white hat and drab overcoat to the extent of going west, but they never remain to grow up with the country. Story County had its share of these. Many of the restless fellows are remembered kindly. There was no harm in them, but they could not stand crowding. When others settled near them it was taken as an order to move on. It is a pleasure to know that some of them have been good to themselves in other places, and are under the tongue of good report in homes found elsewhere. Others, however, can only be thought of with sorrow, as it is remembered that even the west has a boundary, and that the shores of the great Pacific must end their journey.
The events already recorded bring this veracious history to the summer of 1853. A birds-eye view of Story County at that time would show the physical features still in the condition in which the Indian had seen them through all the ages in which it had been his hunting-ground. The smoke curled above a cabin here and there, but these were mostly sheltered and partly concealed by the forests which still stood with hardly a noticeable mark of the woodman's ax. The luxuriant grass hid the few cattle of the settler from view, even when the anxious owner might be within a few yards of them, and the searcher would stop and listen for the tinkle of the bell, which the wily old ox was careful not to sound, for thus by his cunning he for a time escaped the wearisome yoke. The head of the solitary horseman would barely peer above the tall grass as he skirted ponds or crossed the wide sloughs and low ground, and his centaur form was only made plain as he crossed the divides or climbed the prairie knolls to take note of his bearings. If he were miles distant from the grove, without a trail, and the day were dull, or the morning in fog, he might as well have been in mid-ocean without a compass, so far as the points of direction could be told. If a man under such conditions, were on foot and alone, he might wander indefinitely, and if night were coming on his situation was one for grave solicitude, and not without danger.
Wild game was never as abundant here as on the great plains of the far west, or among the mountains and great forests. There were sonic deer, elk, wild turkeys and grouse. Geese, ducks and cranes were abundant. Squirrels frisked in the tree-tops and the song birds filled the groves. The great timber wolf skulked along the streams, and made raids upon the barnyards and poultry, while the melancholy howl of the coyote or smaller wolf, made mournful music far into the night. Amid such surroundings the wife and children looked anxiously at nightfall for the coming of the absent husband and father, their anxiety being about equally divided between his welfare and their own. Many prairie wolves were destroyed in the early years of settlement, principally by poison. It is related that a timber wolf attacked Caleb Walters, on the creek near Nevada, and that Isaac Smith killed a black bear near his place in Howard Township, in memory of which act of prowess the creek and grove were named for the bear.
From these digressions we turn with pleasure to the interesting details of individual experiences in the newly selected homes. In