The first house at Hackney ranch was burned by the Cheyenne Indians in their great raid of 1864, at which time Miss Laura Roper (daughter of Joe B. Roper) and Mrs. Eubanks were captured by the Indians near Fox Ford in Nuckolls county and kept in captivity until ransomed by Colonel Wyncoop of the U. S. army for $1,000. Si Alexander of Meridian (southeast of the present town of Alexandria), was with the government troops at the time of Miss Roper's release near Denver. Her parents, believing her dead, had meanwhile moved back to New York state. (Laura Roper is still alive, being now Mrs. Laura Vance, at Skiatook, Oklahoma.) At the time of the above-mentioned raid, the Indians at Hackney ranch threw the charred cottonwood logs of the house into the well, to prevent travelers from getting water. Fred Roper was then at Beatrice, having just a few days before sold Hackney ranch to an overland traveler. After the raid the new owner deserted the place, in the fall of 1869, and in a few months Mr. Roper returned from Beatrice and again preÎmpted the same place. In 1876 Mr. and Mrs. Roper moved to Meridian and ran a tavern for about a year, then moved back to Hackney, where they resided until the fall of 1893, when they moved into Hebron to make their permanent home. Mr. Roper was postmaster at Hebron for four years under Cleveland's last administration. THE LURE OF THE PRAIRIES BY LUCY L. CORRELL The memories of the long hot days of August, 1874, are burned into the seared recollection of the pioneers of Nebraska. For weeks the sun had poured its relentless rays upon the hopeful, patient people, until the very atmosphere seemed vibrant with the pulsing heat-waves. One day a young attorney of Hebron was called to Nuckolls county to "try a case" before a justice of the peace, near a postoffice known as Henrietta. Having a light spring wagon and two ponies he invited his wife and little baby to accompany him for the drive of twenty-five miles. Anything was better than the monotony of staying at home, and the boundless freedom of the prairies was always enticing. An hour's drive and the heat of the sun became oppressively intense. The barren distance far ahead was unbroken by tree, or house, or field. There was no sound but the steady patter of the ponies' feet over the prairie grass; no moving object but an occasional flying hawk; no road but a trail through the rich prairie grass, and one seemed lost in a wilderness of unvarying green. The heat-waves seemed to rise from the ground and quiver in the air. Soon a wind, soft at first, came from the southwest, but ere long became a hot blast, and reminded one of the heated air from an opened oven door. Added to other inconveniences came the intense thirst produced from the sun and dry atmosphere--and one might have cried "My kingdom for a drink!"--but there was no "kingdom."