This unwritten law "to get the man who gets your friend" is responsible for one ol the graves at the Seven-U. When Powers Brothers were still at the helm, in 1879. two Texans drew their pay and started for their old range, and both had considerable money. The mother of one of them lived there. A week or two later one of them returned and said that he had changed his mind, and came back to work,

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

but that his pard, the one whose mother was in Texas, had "gone on down the trail.*'

Shortly afterwards a cow outfit was coming north, and they found in the brush along the Frenchman, the body of a dead man. There was another young Texan at the Seven-U who heard the story, and made some inquiry which satisfied him that it was the man who had started to go to his mother in Texas. Subsequent correspondence from the mother said that her son had never reached home. The dead man had been shot and robbed.

One day the Texan who had returned, said he guessed he would go to Camp Clarke, and the young man said : "I guess I'll ride along." Some of those about the old ranch said they felt that vibrant tenseness of the old west, that presaged "an event." But it was not the policy of one man to interfere with the "affairs" of another.

The young man came back alone, and they buried the Texan with his boots on near the old ranch. Thus ended another matter where one fellow looked after the fellow who killed his friend. The grief of the mother was perhaps softened by the thought that her dead boy, had a living friend of such purpose, in the far North Platte valley.