It must have been abandoned about 1874, for Lancaster resigned and returned to the eastern part of the state, and went into the drug business.

The house faced the southeast. In addition Mr. Sparks had about two acres, enclosed by a sod wall, three feet thick and five feet high. He also fenced a meadow of about one hundred and sixty acres, and some of the posts are still in use after nearly fifty years. This ranch was sold to W. C. Lane and Thomas Sturgis in 1876. Mr. Sparks moved to Nevada, where he later became governor. While he was here he owned a valuable riding horse which he kept for his wife, for prior to her death she loved to ride the great prairies. After his departure the horse was in charge of Jim Shaw, "Fiddler" Campbell's buddy, and was kept at the Circle Arrow east of Antelopville, now called Kimball, and at the Circle Block at the head of Pumpkin Creek.

Once S. J. Robb, (the father of Mrs. Frank McCreary of Scottsbluff,) who was then foreman at the Circle Block, and who recently died in Arizona, was riding "Old Fox," as the

horse was called, when he came upon a bunch of wild horses. Old Fox so quickly overtook them that Robb did not have time to get his lariat into action. He seized one of them by the tail, and threw her off her step, and so delayed her progress, that another cowman on a slower horse, roped and captured a pretty young mare.