Dan Dillon, the bearer of the message that reached the fort, having returned from the south and rejoined his command, was in 1881, given some dispatches at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, for delivery on the other side of the Indian reservation, at Fort Meade, South Dakota. He vanished somewhere in the Cheyenne river country. Nor has he or his remains, .or any of his effects, horse, saddle, or accouterments, ever been found. Possibly the quicksands of the river could tell more of faithful Dan, but they only whisper on and on in voices mysterious and unintelligible to us all.

From a very early date the mines about Hartville, Wyoming, had been prospected. In fact, the time antedates any record, and it was believed that the white people who were separated several hundred years ago, a fragment of which were never heard from, might have been among the early men at Hartville. This is the purest conjecture, however, and only the fragments of old tools give evidence of early pilgrims of superior intelligence.

During the days of the cowmen it again became quite a center of activity, and here was one of the relaxation points of the west. Others were Antelopeville, Cheyenne, Ogallala, Sidney, and Camp Clarke. Alliance, the present headquarters of the Stockmen's association, was not then on the map. The Box Butte table lay in all its virgin glory under the western sun.

The Texas trail was three hundred miles wide, if you take in all its deflections and ramifications. From east of Ogallala to the Laramie plains ran the parallel lines of trvael, sometimes crossing one another, according to the