It is one of the many branches of the Cheyenne river, not much more than a creek or canyon, occasionally widening to small hay valleys. In the early days it bore the Indian name "Big Beard." the same obtaining from the character of the grass that grew along the bank of the stream. But for the last generation it has held the name of "Crazy Woman," because of incidents and adventures I have heretofore written in a crude story of verse under the title of "The Sod Cabin."

The beginning of the adventure was in Lake Canyon, about thirty or forty miles south of

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

North Platte. Here a family of easterners, from the Buckeye state, had settled down and left for a time their happy, yet unhappy, surroundings for the primitive life and restfulness of the semi-mountain home.

But their persecutor, "Scar Face Ben," had followed and in the disguise of an Indian with a party of Indians, the home was invaded, and an attempt made to kidnap a young lady. Her mother, who had seen an Indian raise his tomahawk as she thought, to strike her daughter, had interposed, the blow fell upon her head and left a long ugly cut, with the temporary loss of consciousness.

This unexpected denouement, for there had been no intention of murder, for a moment disconcerted the outlaw, and in the moment the father and the girl escaped, but were separated in the night. The story tells of their wandering up through the valley of the Nortn Platte, and to the Horse creek caves. Then on through the Rocky Gap, where their persecutor chased the "Prairie Rose," as the heroine was called, until she fell over a cliff and made a footprint in the soft clay, that "after hardened into stone and left distinct the footprint there."