her 270,000 square miles, or thereabout, one-third or more is as fer-
tile as any part of the West ; one-third is less fertile, but of great
value for grazing ; the remainder, lying far up the slope, is dotted
with rocky hills and sandy wastes. The Staked Plain, so called
from the stakes with which the Mexicans marked a road across it, is
mostly an irreclaimable desert. As in all the border States, fertility
decreases as one goes towards the heads of the streams, up the slope
and away from the larger bodies of water and timber. Her 100,000
square miles of fertile land now contain at least 1,200,000 inhab-
itants; and there is land abundant for twice as many more. She can
accommodate the surplus population of the Southern and Middle-
Western States for fifty years.

Dallas is the center of a region two hundred miles square, which is
eminently fitted for occupation by Northern men. In the upper sec-
tions corn, wheat and cotton grow side by side; farther down corn
and cotton are the staples. It is high, dry and healthful ; but North-
erners should not settle on the "bottom lands" along the streams.
Even Texans incline to surrender them to the freedmen. Southern
Texas would not suit the majority of Northern born settlers. Not



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430 WESTERN WILDS.

that it 18 so hot, but the heat continues longer, and in winter the
extremes are painful. "Warm, moist weather is generally followed
very suddenly by a " blue norther '^ that pinches one fearfully. The
streams are more sluggish, too, and malaria is to be apprehended.
Some constitutions stand it very well, however. The grazing region
proper is in the south-west and west.

The central portion of Western Texas is regarded as the best sheep
country in the State. It is a broken, high, rolling country, supplied
with an abundance of rocks and clear rippling streams, and excellent
grass. The sheep fatten easily, grow magnificent fleeces; and owing
to the mild climate, the herders are very successful in raising the
lambs, the percentage of loss being very small.

Except in the southern part, most of Western Texas is too dry for
agriculture to be a certain resource without irrigation ; but by reports
of engineers, a considerable portion of the land can be watered by
aceequiaa from the numerous rivers. By far the largest portion will
remain a grazing ground for all time.

In all the central and upper part of the State water-power is
abundant. All kinds of useful minerals can be had in the various
sections: iron in Burnet, Llano, I^ampasas and Mason counties, of
the best qualities ; copper in several places, and salt in abundance.
Gypsum is found in immense beds up in the desert region. Stretching
over ten degrees of latitude, and from the 16° to 30° degree of longitude
west from Washington, it is evident the State can not be described
as a whole, or in any general terms. Every thing said about Texas,
whether good or bad, is true — if applied to the appropriate section.
It reaches to within one-half degree of as far south as does Florida;
while its northern boundary is nearly continuous with the northern
line of Tennessee. But its climate and productions are not determined
by latitude alone. The entire State consists of one great slope— or,
perhaps more properly, a series of narrow plateaus, each breaking
gently to the next lower — from near the foot of the Rocky Mount-
ains to the Gulf of Mexico. On the eastern border the slope is nearly
due south, and on the extreme south nearly due east; but in four-
fifths of the State it is south-east. From the high, bare plains of the
North-west, and from the wind-caves of the Rocky Mountains, the
" blue northers '* sweep down over the Llano Estaoado and treeless
plains of Young and Bexar Districts, and greatly modify the climate
to a much lower latitude. But down the streams the increasing tim-
ber lessens their force. The climate is singularly equable for the width



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TEXAS— CONTINUED. 431

of three or four counties, and then the heat increases rapidly till you
again get within range of the tempering breezes from the gulf.

The thermometer never ranges quite as high as in latitudes a long
way north. In Houston the climate seems nearly perfection. For
twenty years the thermometer has never been above ninety-five
degrees. At one time, in the coldest weather, it sank to ten degrees
above zero, but rarely goes lower than twenty degrees. The average
of the " heated term,'^ one day with another, is there recorded at
eighty-four degrees. There has never been a case of sunstroke at
Houston. Only half a dozen are recorded at Galveston. Necessa-
rily, over such an area as I have outlined, we find every product of
the temperate zone, and many of the torrid. In popular language,
then, Texas is considered in four grand divisions. Eastern Texas
includes the country from the Sabine to the Trinity River; Central
Texas, that from the Trinity to the Colorado; Northern Texas means
the two or three tiers of counties nearest Red River, and all of Young
Territory; and Western Texas the whole region from the Colorado
to the Rio Grande, including the grazing district.
. The old Texans are not very enterprising. With seven million
cattle they import most of their milk and butter; there has been too
much sameness of production ; the climate invites to ease and repose,
and the people are too contented. A man with ten thousand cattle
upon the range, is content to live on corn-bread and boiled beef, sit
on a hickory "shakeup'* chair, sleep on shucks, live in a board or
log "shantie,^' chew "home-made'^ tobacco, and spit through the
cracks.

**An undeveloped empire,^^ hackneyed comparison for the West, is
literal truth applied to Texas. In 1850 the population was only
212,592; in 1860 it was 604,215; and in 1870 it was returned at
888,579. It must have increased since then at least sixty per cent. And
even now an area nearly three times as large as Ohio, with an equal
average of fertility, and climate suitable for corn, cotton, tobacco, and
a dozen kinds of fruit, is literally begging for inhabitants.



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CHAPTER XXVIIL

KANSAS BEVISITED.

In August^ 1873, T took a flying tour through the new counties in
Southern Kansas. It was the year of Grangers, land leaguers and
war on the railroads. Kansas had been, in the expressive language
of the border, "railroaded to death.^* More lines had been con-
structed than the business of the country would demand for ten or
twenty years to come. Except perhaps the one through line, none
of the roads were paying more than running expenses. The mana-
gers made out to pay their own salaries by the sale of lands granted
the roads by State or Nation. The capital invested in the roads was
a dead loss, as fer as present dividends were concerned. But stock-
holders insisted on some returns, and the managers attempted to
squeeze out a few dollars by cutting down their employes on one
side and raising freights on the other. It took three bushels of
corn to send one to the sea-board ; hence grain worth sixty cents in
New York, sold for fifteen cents in Kansas. The premonitory
symptoms of the approaching panic were every-where manifest; but
the Grangers, feeling that something was wrong, struck at the nearest
object — ^the railroads.

It was a vain struggle. Where the roads were making nothing,
it was obviously impossible for them to divide profits with the pro-
ducers. On the fertile plains of South-eastern Kansas, one man with
a "walking cultivator" could attend to forty acres of corn, which
yielded in an average season from forty to eighty bushels per acre.
One man, between the middle of April and the middle of August,
could produce from fifteen hundred to forty-five hundred bushels of
corn ; but in the midst of abundance they were poor in all save the
bare necessaries of life. "Droughty Kansas" was a standing joke.
On the eastern border of that area which the old geographers called
the "American Desert," corn was a drug; and flaming agricultural
reports were headed with sarcastic pictures of mammoth pumpkins,
fat cattle, and forests of corn-stalks to which the farmer ascended by
step-ladders to secure his crop. But the seven years of plenty ended
with 1873. Eighteen months aft;er, corn in the same localities was



(482)



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KANSAS REVISITED. 433

worth a dollar a bushel. The dry year of 1874 brought with it
grasshoppers^ cut- worms and chintz-bugs; and in the period between
that and the plentiful crop of 1875, the settlers suffered, as they
thought, enough for seven years of want. Is this to be the future of
Kansas? Must she have every fifth or seventh year a season of
drought and barren-
ness? Well, yes; and
no! On the one hand
I am convinced that
all the States which
border on the dry
plains will have occa-
sional seasons of ex-
treme drought; on the
other, I am sure settle-
ment will be followed
by a modification of
the climate, and that
as the country grows
older the citizens will
learn how to guard -dbouqhtt KA^iAa."

against &mine years. Their true remedy is not a war on the rail-
roads,' but diversification of crops, the establishment of home manu-
&ctures, and, above all, improved methods of stock-breeding. Kan-
sas is emphatically a "stock country.'* I am afraid to say how
much margin there is for skillful men; but I personally know stock-
growers who have made from thirty to sixty per cent yearly on their
capital for many years in succession. Cattle fatten upon the open
prairie for seven months in the year, and sheep a month longer.
First rate prairie hay, on which stock will keep fat all winter, can
be put up for two dollars per ton. The climate is dry in winter,
very suitable for cattle and especially so for sheep; and there have
never been grasshoppers enough to spoil the pasture. What matters
it, then, if the grain crop does fail every fifth year, when the other
years are so productive ? What is needed is improved stock, and a
little care to guard against the occasional winter storms.

Kansas has woman-suffrage on a small scale. Women can vote at
all school meetings; and at Geneva, in Allen County, I found the
community wrestling with school politics in a new phase. The am-
bitious little " city ** had started off with an academy, which was in
due time to grow into a college; but, instead, it grew the other way,
28



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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 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 wer^ 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 itselt
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 <^lves 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



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ZjiNSAS REVISITED. 435

was the Bender fiurm. If the spirit of murder was there, it was cer-
tainly the loveliest form in which that dread spirit ever stood re-
vealed. No black and blasted heath, no dark wood or lonely gorge,
such as romance makes the mute accessories of horrid crime; but the
billowy prairie, rising swell on swell, as if the undulating ocean,
changed to firm set earth, stood fixed and motionless forever. The
house had stood in the center of this vale, two miles from the nearest
neighbor, and commanding a view of all approaches for that distance.
But a few weeks had passed since the murders were discovered, and yet
scarcely a vestige of house or stable was left. Visitors had carried
them away by splinters I Rven the young trees in the orchard had
been dug up and removed.

The excavation beneath the house, in which the murderers had al-
lowed their victims to bleed before burial, still bore the horrid signs.
The scant rains of summer had not washed away the blood from its
margin ; it was half full of purple water. In the garden the graves
remained just as left when the bodies were removed. Eight bodies
were found there, including that of a girl eight years old, who was
murdered and buried with her father. They had been buried in all
sortd of positions. One man, in a round hole, lay with his head di-
rectly between his feet. A Mr. Longcor, one of the victims, lay with
his little daughter between his limbs. Besides these eight, three
other missing men were traced to the neighborhood, bringing the
whole number of victims up to eleven. Other murders have excited
the community, but none with such circumstances of barbarity as
these. It appeared, from an examination of the house (the Benders
kept a sort of hotel), that the victim, when seated at the table, had
his back against a loose curtain which separated the room in two
apartments. Behind this curtain stood the murderer, and, at a con-»
venient moment, dealt the unsuspecting guest a deadly blow in the
back of the head with a huge hammer. He fell back, the trap-door
was raised, his throat was cut, and he was tumbled into the pit to lie
till the last drop of gore had ebbed away. Thence he was taken at
night^ and buried in the garden. And these fiends incarnate, afler
this fearful violation of the rites of hospitality and the laws of God
and man, went on with their daily life — ate and drank and slept, and
perhaps rejoiced and made merry, with that dreadful pool, fast filling
with the blood of their victims, just beneath their feet.

The nearest neighbor was a German, named Brockman, who was
roughly treated and narrowly escaped hanging by the mob when the
murders were first discovered. His account of die family is curious



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436 WESTERN WILDS.

in the extreme^ though many of the details are unfit for publication.
The Benders, consisting of John Bender, Sr., his son John and daugh-
ter Kate, and their mother, were from the Franco-German portion of
Alsace, and spoke both languages fluently, as also the English. They
had formerly lived in Illinois, but came to Kansas in 1870, and
boarded some time with Brockman ; then made entry on this piece of
land. They were fanatical spiritualists, and Kate Bender advertised
as a clairvoyant and healing medium. The young man, her brother,
who distributed her hand-bills around the country, was generally re-
garded as a simpleton ; his mother also seemed very dull, and rarely
spoke. But Kate was the genius of the family. She stated, in her
moments of "exaltation," that she was a "savior come again, but in
female form ;" that she could raise the dead, but it would be wrong
to do so. She had a "familiar spirit'' which directed all the move-
ments of the family ; and several persons visited and consulted her,
either from curiosity or other motive. Before burial they mutilated
the victims in an obscene and disgusting manner. So thoroughly was
this done that when the body of Longcor was raised it was at first
supposed to be that of a woman. The excised portions of none of the
bodies were ever found, though the ground was thoroughly searched;
and among the few neighbors who knew any thing of the family's blas-
phemous incantations, there are dark and horrible hints as to the dis-
position made of these pieces. Should we accept the half that is told
by the neighbors, we must conclude that this was a family in whom
every natural impulse had been imbruted ; that they believed them-
selves in league with powers to whom they offered infc^rnal sacrifices,
and murdered for mere lust of blood. It is known that, with one ex-
ception, the victims had very little money, and that their spoils did
not altogether exceed $2,500. One man was known to have had
but twenty-five cents.

The escape of the Benders was long a great mystery. That a fam-
ily of four persons could drive to the nearest railroad station, abandon
their team there, take the train and escape all the officers and detecfc-
ives set upon their track, was incredible. Nevertheless, that was the
report of the local officials, and the State of Kansas, apparently, made
great exertions to recapture the fugitives. "Old Man Bender" became
a standing joke ; every old vagabond in the country was suspected,
numbers were arrested, and the Utah authorities actually sent a harmless
old lunatic, captured in the mountains, back to Kansas for identifica-
tion. But it was noticed that Kansas officials were rather indifferent
on the subject, and in due time some of the fiatcts leaked out. There



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KANSAS REVISITED, 437

have been sensational stories about the posse overtaking the fugitives
in the groves west of the Verdigris River, where a desperate fight took
place, in which both the women were " accidentally killed/' Without
going into particulars, it is safe to say that the Bender family " ceased
to breathe " soon after their flight, and that their carcasses rotted be-
neath the soil of the State so scandalized by their crimes.

A few miles southward bring us to Cofleyville, terminus of the
Leavenworth, Lawrence & Galveston Railroad, which was to have
continued on to the gulf, had not the Cherokees objected. By the
"Treaty of 1866,'' which settled the present status of these tribes, they
consented that two railroads might traverse the Indian Territory, and
Congress enacted that those roads which first reached the border
should have that right. A race ensued, and the privilege was won by
the Atlantic & Pacific Road, which enters from the east, and the Mis-
souri, Kansas & Texas from the north. Cofleyville is the great cattle
depot of this section. For the five months of cold weather the laws
of Kansas allow Texas cattle to be driven through the State ; there-
after they must stop at the border, or be shipped through by rail.
None are sent either way in midsummer, and thus it results that Cof-
feyville and its neighbor, Parker, have one busy season in the spring
and another in the fall. The rest of the year they are dull, for border
towns; and, in the language of one of our party, "lie fourteen miles
outside of the knowledge of God."

A half-hour's ride from Cofleyville brought us to the border, and
thence into a rolling plain dotted as far as the eye could see with vast
herds of cattle — herds numbering from a hundred to ten thousand
each. It was a grand sight. Some were stretched in long lines,
feeding in one direction, or grouped in the shape of a crescent; others
had collected in a dense mass, their reddish brown coats harmonizing
finely with the hue of the prairie, and" their immense horns looking
not unlike a thicket of dead underbrush. The cattle men have here
rented from the Cherokees a strip fifteen miles wide, and collect their
stock there, waiting for the shipping season. These cattle, having
run wild upon the plains of western Texas, are collected by a grand
"round-up ;" from the mass each o\vner selects those bearing his own
mark, and thence they set out on the long drive northward through
the Indian Territory, along the famous cattle trails. Utterly unac-
customed to being herded or penned, they are almost as wild as the
buffalo ; it requires both skill and daring to herd and drive them, and
the Texan tacquero is necessarily a daring horseman. The same treat-
ment which breaks the wild spirit of the cattle not unfrequently en-



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438 WESTERN WILDS.

genders disease; the tramp of from three to eight handred miles to
the border causes ^' heating of the hoof/', and the poisonous matter ex-
uding therefrom is left upon the grass. Hence, say the Elansians, the
" Texas cattle fever/' The Texan animals themselves do not suffer
from it; native cattle alone, who feed after them, are infected by it.
In the early days the Kansas Legislature set apart the width of one
township, a strip six miles wide, along which Texans might be driven
to the Pacific Railroad. But in a little while settlements reached this
strip, and another was located, terminating at Ellsworth, which be-
came for awhile the great cattle depot. Again the wave of settlement
reached and overflowed this strip, and a third was located, with d^x>t
at Wichita, on the Atchison, Topeka <& Santa Fe Boad. And here is
noted a marvel indeed. As the border line of settlements steadily moves
westward, as domestic stock overrun the country, as fields are plowed
and orchards planted, the settlers say the border line between the soft
grass of the Missouri Valley and the bufialo grass of the plains, moves
westward at the rate of five miles per year ! It is common testimony
there that, as the country is settled, the climate grows more moist;
that timothy and blue-grass can now be grown where twenty years
ago only the hardy bunch-grass found a footing, and wheat on the
high plains which were once thought utterly barren. From Cherry-
vale a branch railway runs out to Independence, the bustling capital
of Montgomery County, which claims three thousand inhabitants, and
has at least two-thirds as many. Five years before, a mowing ma-
chine was run over the ground to clear away the rank grass, and after
it came the surveyors, mapping out the experimental town ; in two
years thereafter it had a thousand inhabitants, and was ^^the future
metropolis of the South-west." I found it just entering on the dull
times which have ruined so many bright hopes. The second day of
my stay the Republicans had a grand mass meeting, '^ to devise means
of relief from the prevailing depression and the difficulties under
which Kansas labored." A foreign visitor would have thought him-
self in a community of natural orators. The speakers were lawyers,
doctors, farmers, cattle-breeders, men of all trades and men of none;
all spoke with ability, and no two suggested the same plan. It was a
meeting of pleasant diversity— one of the most enjoyable I ever at*
tended. One speaker was red hot for free trade — " all our troubles
resulted from our wretched tariflFl" Another protested against any
further contraction of the currency, and still another damned the rail-
roads and Eastern monopolists. The Congressman representing the
district was present, and suggested two measures of relief: jetties at



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KANSAS REVISITED. 439

the mouth of the Mississippi; so that grain could be shipped that way
direct to Europe^ and opening the Indian Territory so the railroad