After the burial, a strong board was set up at the head of the grave, and to properly identify it as the burial place of one of the western bunch, it was shot full of holes.
Some of these boards marked the graves of departed ones for years, and no doubt some of them are still to be found. Occasionally, to let their sleeping comrades know that those "still on top of the turf," were keeping alive the spirit of the west and its traditions, a party of passing cow-punchers would re-decorate these crude wooden markers with a battery of fresh bullet holes.
Recently I rambled through the somewhat
neglected Boot Hill graveyard at Sidney. The soldiers who were buried there have been taken to Cottonwood or Fort McPherson national cemetery, but many of the old wooden markers are- still at the graves. Generally all signs of identification are gone, except the substantial evidence of "six-guns." The story of only occasionally one of the one hundred and fifty or two hundred that were buried there is here related. In fact, the stories of the others are generally unknown. In the rush of fifteen hundred a day that passed through Sidney, if one fell by the wayside, even though suddenly and violently, it left no lasting impression.
Only the passing of someone who was identified with the community, as townsmen or herdsmen, occasioned any extensive remark. Men like Loomis, or Tate, or the Pinkstons, or perhaps those who went at the hands of vigilantes.