And "with heart and fiddle still in tune," Campbell and his fine family reside happy in their rugged, comfortable bungalow, and surrounded by the broad fertile acres of alfalfa, which, like a carpet of green stretches away towards the hills and to the river.

Runey Campbell, is a distant relative of Robert Campbell, who erected the first rude stockade on Jacques Laramie's Fork, which was destined to become the historic Fort Laramie. He, himself, came into western Nebraska country before the famous Bay State Land & Cattle Company began their extensive operations in the west.

At that time, the territory embraced in, Scotts Bluff county contained not a permanent settler, and no white woman had ever trod the turf, or gathered wild flowers here, except the transient" pilgrims of the tragic Overland Trail.

Kimball, then called Antelopeville, was a small station on the Union Pacific, consisting of a little box depot, a section house, and two stockade dwellings, made of railroad ties on end, with dirt for roof and floor.

Jim Kinney, the veteran ranchman and attorney of Kimball county, lived in one, and in the other dwelt Will Gaws, the hunter and trapper, surrounded by his simple wants -- his traps, his guns, his few handy untensils, and the skins of animals slain.

Campbell secured employment with the Circle-Arrow ranch, then operated by Mead, Evans & Company. Jim Shaw was foreman.

Shaw and Campbell became intimate friends, and when Shaw was arrested for the murder of Collins, the bartender of the sod saloon at the north end of Camp Clarke bridge, Campbell firmly believed and maintained that he was wrongfully accused.