He weighed about one hundred and sixty pounds, and his wife was good looking and was about the same size, age and complexion, and often interfered in his business, and was generally a trouble maker.

Virginia Dale, one of the stage stations west of here, was named for her.

Much is said of the noted characters like Jules and Slade, but not as much of their wives.

A short time ago there lived in Nebraska City, an elderly lady of French descent, by the name of Ellen Bcckstead. Possibly she yet lives there. She was once one of the woman characters of the western Nebraska.

Along about 1858, when only thirteen years of age, she and her husband Jules Beni arrived at his ranch at Cottonwood, near the forks of the Platte, and being young, and full of the French fire of adventure, the wild life of "Jules," appealed to her fancy. But her

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

story of the death of Jules is entirely different from that of the record of history.

She says that Slade shot Jules while the latter was kneeling at the "Cold Spring" near the old Jack Morrow ranch, a little west of the present site of North Platte. Jules was getting a drink, when the treacherous Slade shot him. Aiter wounding him he tied him to a post and shot off his ears.

All stories of history, and of one of Slade's old drivers, H. M. Inghram, now living at Scottsbluff, indicate that Jules' demise was at Bordeaux, (near Cold Springs) fifteen miles east of Fort Laramie. It would seem when Jules was killed that his friends did not correctly relate to the widow all the details of the tragedy; they probably thought to temper the grief and colored the story, or possibly, in the years that have followed, she has lost track of it, and her memory is not good.