She mounted her pony that night and rode to Carpenter's, and stated her case. Carpenter came to where I was at work, on my own place, the next morning, and informed me what had happened. We soon gathered ten settlers together, mounted and galloped across that six miles of virgin prairie, laughing and joking like a lot of school-boys out for a lark, Mrs. Heaton riding along with us in the lead, her Smith & Wesson hanging to its belt around her waist. In point of real value, for permanent home-making, we, perhaps, had crossed a dozen as good or better claims that could be had for the taking; for they were unoccupied portions of the public domain. But Heaton had selected the particular claim in question and "squatters' rights" was the slogan of the times. The moral law of every frontier settlement is held inviolate and will brook no interference. Besides, custom made propriety. And it was customary for a would-be settler to take any unoccupied piece of the public domain, to the extent of one hundred and sixty acres, that he wanted. Heaton had taken his claim in due form; for the day he located it I was with him. His headquarters were at my house, where he and his wife were camped while he was looking the country over for a home. Heaton and myself were at every corner of the 160 that day. We were both riding horses fully sixteen hands high. The grass was not over eighteen inches high; the ground was fairly level; the tract was not cut up with ravines or draws. We both had excellent eyesight; there was not at that time a wagon-trail on it. Soaper nor anyone else had a vestige of lumber on the place the day he said he had. He simply lied, as his own conscience compelled him to afterward admit, after he had been the means of bringing two communities to the verge of a feud with bloodshed. We all galloped to the tent, dismounted, and carried all the things back onto the claim and piled them up neatly by the tent. Then three of the men fell to and helped Mrs. Heaton get a mid-forenoon meal, while the rest of us rode diagonally across the claim to where Soaper had his lumber. We found thirty-two boards, one inch thick, one foot wide and twelve feet long, of native lumber, from a saw-mill over on the Neosho river, twenty-eight miles away. We wrote out a trespass notice, fastened it to a board, and returned to the tent, where shortly an early dinner was announced. On our way down, in crossing a prong of Cherry creek, a two-year-old spike buck white-tail deer jumped up, not more than thirty steps in front of us. John Oliphant whipped out one of his six-shooters and placed a ball in the back of its head where the neck joined on. It was quick action. He claimed he shot more at random than with deliberation. But it got the deer. We drew the carcass and Milt Adamson carried the deer in front of him to the tent.