For over forty years he has lived on the 66, sometime on one slope of the mountain and sometimes on the other, but always with the wraiths of the 66 emigrants that faded out of the world over a half century ago.

He has his thousands of acres, and his thousand cattle, but sometimes at night, the moonlight calls out images from the rocks -- images of the long ago -- and the shadows flee and flit from shelter to shelter, spectrals fighting a battle in silence, a battle which years ago involved tumult and noise. The "nieht herd is

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

running," and Ed. knows every detail in advance, and he is sure now of what he did not know -- that the color of his hair rendered him immunity from the scalping knife, and spared him for the years of usefulness to come.

(This narrative is given, not as history, although many believe it a true account of the battle, but for what it is worth, and as one of the shadowy affairs of the unwritten long ago. Eugene Ware found the wagons in perfect order, and and where the wheels rested upon the ground, the sand and dust had drifted

over the felloes, and grass was growing in the newly made ground. The harnesses were rotting on the wagon tongues. That Stemler knew of these wagons, that in the solitudes and the isolation he came in touch with People already gone, that in some way he connected up with Them, and Intelligence went through Experiences and in Companionship of possibly ten years before, is an explanation satisfactory to many old plainsmen, who have heard Voices out of the past, when alone in the silence of the prairie.)