I went up into my old neighborhood where I had been one of the first settlers and had helped to build the first hewed log house that was built on the prairies of Labette county. A blight had been cast on the entire community. Not two miles from where I helped to build the house mentioned above, I gazed on the open graves of the Bender's victims. Personally, I think I was better known, and knew that people better in the first settlement of western Labette, eastern Montgomery, and southern Woodson, than any other man. While John Harness, of Ladore, was suspected of being an accomplice of the crime, he undoubtedly was as innocent as his accusers were. 'Twas the same with Brockman, whom the Independence party hung to a tree on Drum creek until life was almost extinct; although Brockman was a cruel and inhuman man to his own family. No, the Benders had no accomplices. But neighbor had distrusted neighbor, and some were standing aloof from others. I sold farm machinery in that locality the summer of the spring that the Benders disappeared and the bodies of their victims were found. I was traveling for B. A. Aldrich, a hardware man of Parsons, Kan. I was from house to house, and became familiar with all the neighborhood stories, versions, and suspicions about the Bender murders. What became of the Benders? Read on in this book under the caption of the "Staked Plains Horror" during the summer of 1877. Listen to the story as told to me, as the narrator and I were lying on our blankets, with our saddles for pillows, the night of the 20th of July, on the border of western Texas and eastern New Mexico. Then let the readers judge for themselves what became of the Benders. Yes, let them decide for themselves as to the truth or falsity of the story. I believed the story _then_, I believe it _now_. CHAPTER III. A Trip to New Mexico.—Prospecting Around the Base of Mount Baldy.—Experience with a Cinnamon Bear.—Wail of the Mountain Lion.—Tattooed Natives, bound for the Texas Panhandle.—Lanced a Buffalo.—Loaned My Gun and Suffered. Early in the spring of 1874 I started for Santa Fé, New Mexico, stopping off at Granada, Colorado, for a short time. Granada was at that time the end of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. From Granada I went to Las Animas, and traveled over the Dry Cimarron route, through Rule cañon, on over the Raton mountains, through Dick Hooten pass, and on into Las Vegas, New Mexico, where I arrived in May. There I fell in company with the Eighth United States regulars, whose commanding officer was Major Alexander, and who gave me permission to travel with his command to Santa Fé. At Santa Fé I met a Dr. Strand, one of the notorious Star Route mail contractors at the time. We two, with an assayer, H. C. Justice, formed a company to prospect for gold in the Saint Mary's range, near the head-waters of the Picorice, Lumbay, and Bean creeks, all tributaries of the Rio Grande river.