THE OLD LOG HOUSE 66 TIPTON POSEY 106 “PUCKERBRUSH BILL” 120 SWAN PETERSON 122 DICK SHAKES 130 “MUSKRAT” HYATT 136 THE REVEREND DANIEL BUTTERS 148 “BILL” STILES 166 COLONEL JASPER M. PEETS 208 MISS ANASTASIA SIMPSON 218 THE SHERIFF 264 I THE VANISHING RIVER Somewhere in a large swampland, about fifty miles east of the southern end of Lake Michigan, the early French explorers found the beginning of the river. A thread-like current crept through a maze of oozy depressions, quagmires, seeping bogs and little pools, among patches of sodden brush, alders and rank grass. With many intricate windings, the vagrant waters, swollen by numberless springs and rivulets, emerged from the tangled morass, became a living stream, and began its long and tortuous journey toward the southwest, finally to be lost in the immensity of unknown floods beyond. The explorers called the stream the Theakiki. In the changing nomenclature of succeeding years it became the Kankakee. It was the main confluent of the Illinois, and one of the first highways of the white man to the Mississippi. The crude topographic charts of the early voyagers on the river naturally differ much in detail and accuracy, but, in comparing them with our modern maps, we wonder at their keen observation and the painstaking use of their limited facilities. The annals of their journeys are replete with description, legend, romance, disheartening hardship, and unremitting battle at the barriers of nature against her would-be conquerors. The name of LaSalle, that resplendent figure in the exploration of the west, will be forever associated with the Kankakee. There are few pages of historic lore more absorbing and thrilling to the admirer of unflinching fortitude and dauntless heroism than the dramatic story of this knight errant of France, and his intrepid followers. Among the woods and waters, and on the desolate frozen wastes of a strange land, they found paths that led to imperishable renown. They were _avant-coureurs_ of a new force that was to transform a wilderness into an empire, but an empire far different from that of their hopes and dreams.