Published in Wetmore Spectator, and
Seneca Courier-Tribune, January—1943
By John T. Bristow
COURIER-TRIBUNE Editor’s Note:—History can be dry or it can be interesting. When it is colorful, filled with the lives of people, it will be remembered far longer than if but dry facts are presented. We think that this true story by John Bristow of Wetmore is one that will make the English Colony of old Nemaha County days long remembered.
Although at the outset you will likely be thinking of a current and very popular song hit, you must read far into this contribution before you can put your finger on the line from which the above caption stems. Also, for a clear picture of it all, you must go back with me three score and five years to a favorite hunting grounds in the upper reaches of Spring creek.
My father had bought a coon-dog from a traveler. This night—Christmas Eve—was to have been the try-out but the way it turned out, Dad could not know then how badly he had been “skinned.” That came later. Old Drum had a wonderful voice, and though he “lied” a few times on later occasions, he never did tree a coon.
In the party were Roland Van Amburg, Bill (Thuse) Peters, Jim Scanlan, Bob Graham, my father and myself. Incidentally, Van Amburg was the last man to take up a homestead in these parts. He homesteaded the 80 acres now owned by Ambrose McConwell, almost adjoining town, in the middle 70’s. He was a happy-go-lucky, clownish sort of man.
Well, Van was not exactly the last one to file on a homestead here, but he was the last one to do it in the regular way. Lawyer F. M. Jefferies, while publishing the Spectator in Wetmore in the 80’s filed on a quarter a few miles northwest of town—but it developed that the land was improved and occupied by Eli Swerdfeger, who had by mistake filed on another number. When Eli’s neighbor threatened to do mayhem to Lawyer Jefferies, he relinquished—and Swerdfeger’s correct filing was even later than Van’s. They called it “claim jumping”—though it was hardly that, in the true sense of the term. There had, however, been some claim jumping earlier, where settlers were negligent in fulfilling the lawful requirements. A claim jumper in the old days was held in about the same degree of contempt as is now the “scab” workman in a unionized community.
With team and wagon and dog, we reached the timber about dusk, barely ahead of a blizzard. Owing to the storm, the projected coon-hunt did not take place. The whole night was spent around a bonfire out there in the deep wood. The men talked about going home, but the intervening six miles of unbroken prairie would have been hard to negotiate with a team on a night like that.
Fortunately for us, it was not very cold. Disagreeably cold, to be sure, but in severity—low temperature—it did not compare with the blizzard which blew in upon us last Monday (Jan. 18, 1943) with a temperature of 10 degrees below zero, to be followed the next morning with 22 degrees below.
The campfire, built in a sheltered spot, was near a tree which had some holes cut in a big limb, old choppings which were assumed the work of Indians. Those holes started Thuse Peters to talking. In telling of an occurrence alleged to have taken place on the Kickapoo reservation, in which he himself had figured rather conspicuously, Thuse graciously endowed the mate of the squaw in his story with a fine growth of whiskers—which whiskers, however, the Redskin did not have. Or did he? Thuse was a little wild of the mark in some of his statements, probably all of them. Bob Graham called him for that one about the Indian’s whiskers. “I’m surprised,” said Bob, “you living here against the Indian reservation all your life. You should know Indians do not have beards.”
“Well,” inquired Thuse, glancing toward one of the party having heavenly hirsute adornment, “does an Irishman have whiskers?”
“What a silly question,” broke in Roland Van Amburg. “Just take a look at Jim Scanlan over there by the tree-trunk. I’d say an Irishman has whiskers.” Jim Scanlan was section foreman here. There could be no mistaking his nationality.
Said Thuse, “I just wanted to be sure of that.” He went about replenishing the waning fire. This done, he said, “That Indian was half Irish.”
One story led to another, and finally my father told of hunting panthers in Tennessee. He said it was claimed by old woodsmen that the panther made a noise like the cry of a woman, but he had never heard a panther scream, and he didn’t believe it.
“Do you suppose, Bill that there ever was a panther seen in this country?” This inquiry was made by Mr. Scanlan.
“Maybe,” said Dad, “I once tracked a varmint that might have been a panther through these very woods.”
Van chimed in, “Did they ever learn what killed the farmer’s stock over on Elk creek? That was believed to have been the work of a panther. And what about that varmint on the Rudy place?” Van was, as I knew stating facts.
It was generally known here that a prowler of some kind had killed a calf on the Bill Rudy farm, and had dragged it several hundred yards to a hazel thicket—and after eating its fill, buried the remaining carcass under leaves, after the habits of the panther. Bill Rudy owned the land where Joe Pfrang now lives.
The storm grew in intensity. It had filled the woods with voices. If you turned your imagination loose you could hear a cry, a laugh—anything you chose. Then suddenly, astonishingly, there it was. A woman’s scream. Or was it?
Thuse said, “It’s Bill’s panther.” Bill was my Dad. Old Drum raised his voice. He made sound enough, in the tree-walled confines of that hunters’ paradise, to raise the dead.
Bob Graham said, “I feel spooky. Think I need a bracer.” He uncorked his bottle and took a good one.
Well, whatever it might have been, that thing had the men baffled. Albeit the storm raged fiercely in the tree-tops and upon the hillside from whence the sound came, a deadly calm settled around the bonfire. The men looked at one another in complete silence for a tense moment. I believe everyone was wondering if maybe Thuse had not named it.
By this time everyone was, shall I say, panther-conscious. I would not want to say that the men actually were waiting in expectancy for the appearance of that killer. You know how it is. After a menacing thing has been discussed in your presence for hours, without realizing it, you just don’t forget.
Then suddenly, miraculously, there it was again—something very like a woman’s voice coming in swells above the howl of the storm. Van, who had repeatedly urged the men to break up camp and make a try for home, said, “It’s the voice of an angel—an angel come to tell us to get the hell out of here while the going is still possible.” Dad scoffed, “An angel out here in the woods on a night like this—man, you must be crazy!”
Jim Scanlan said, “Well, anybody who don’t believe in ghosts is maybe going to pretty soon.”
We had along a sharp axe and several good woodchoppers. At first fuel for the fire was gleaned from old dead tree tops lying on the ground—tops of blackoaks my father had cut some years before for the tanbark to be used in his tannery. But as the snow became deeper, and the puzzling voices in the woods persisted, the men—including yours truly—somehow did not seem to want to venture beyond the circle of light. They fetched fuel from a close-in rick of cordwood—four-foot lengths. Without leave, we burned Anna Buzan’s wood, a full cord, that night. It was wood my brother and I had cut on shares. Adjustment could be—and was—made later.
Back there on the ridge high above us, in the thick of that blizzard, a woman was singing, as it were, for her life.
Let me explain. Three people—a woman and two men enroute to the old English colony, from somewhere farther south, had bogged down in the storm two miles from home, and were desperately in need of help.
The old road in those days, coming in from the prairie lands on the south, followed the ridge approximately on the line between the John Wolfley timber on the east and the Anna Buzan timber on the west, to a crossing on Spring creek. The road was first used in bringing out cross-ties for use in building the railroad which now skirts the woods on the north side of the creek. Back on the ridge several old wagon trails led into the forest. The team those Colonists were driving, to a ramshackle old spring wagon, had wandered off the road and had floundered in one of those side leads, upsetting the wagon. This had been the cause of that first scream.
Having broken harness which they could not repair in the dark, they had started on foot to where, in passing, they had seen the light of our bonfire, hoping it would lead them to the home of a settler. But when close enough to see it was only a bonfire, misgivings began to assail them. What if it should prove to be an Indian camp, or maybe horse-thieves in hiding? These facts were made known to us after they had reached our fire.
When Van’s “Angel” had come in the flesh—her long skirt, held up in front, trailing atop the snow as she moved in—we could see that she was not garbed in the traditional folds of flowing gauze-like fabric, as becomes an angel. It would have been all out of place on a night like that. As it was, I thought she was dressed rather too thinly.
Bob Graham said, “If you wouldn’t be offended, young lady, I’d offer you a swig of my whisky.”
“Liquor,” she said, “I can take it,” Bob passed the bottle to her. “O-oo, so little,” she complained. “I ‘opes it will ‘elp.”
Their names were Bill and Teddy and Minerva. Bill led off as spokesman. He said, “When we sawer men walking around the fire we knew there would be no ‘ouse ‘ere. And I asked Teddy wot shall we do now?”
“Ted ‘e said,” continued Bill, “Blast me ‘ide if I know wot would be best. Wot you think, Minerva? Want to chawncit?” Teddy spoke for Minerva. He said, “Minerva ‘ere,” pointing to the girl, “said to us—Now you just ‘old your ‘orses, men I got it. I’ll sing ‘em a song.”
Let me remind you here that it was their ability and their willingness to sing on any and all occasions that made those Colonists extremely popular at the country school-house lyceum of that age.
Bill talked again. He said, “Then I said Hindians or ‘orse-theives, whichever they are, would know that ‘appy, singing folks bode nobody ‘arm.” For the purpose intended, Bill’s idea was not bad—but Minerva challenged it promptly. She said, “You can just drop that ‘appy part of it, Mr. Bill.”
Their reasoning was logical. And their manner in coping with the situation was unique. For them to have burst in upon a band of horse-thieves in those days would, most likely, have been suicidal. But with Indians of the times, it is my belief, they would have had no trouble at all.
When they had thawed out, after Minerva had obliged us with more songs—and believe me, that girl could sing—Teddy said he would fetch his concertina from the wrecked wagon. It maybe was a good thing he didn’t know anything about all that panther discussion.
However, after Ted had returned, Van, who, as a boy, had lived in a panther country back east, told the newcomers about the Elk creek incident and other periodical panther scares elaborating on the dangers of same. He told those people they could count themselves lucky in finding our fire. “Wild animals,” he said, “won’t go near a fire.” I knew that this was not news to any of our party. And I knew, too, we would keep our visitors for the duration.
Van started it. When he had guessed the hour of midnight had arrived, he yelled so that all could hear above the roar of the storm—”Merry Christmas!” Our English visitors returned the greeting—though, enveloped in swirling snow, they didn’t seem to put much heart in it.
Looking up toward the high heavens in readiness to speak, Dad was caught full in the face with a gob of dislodged snow from the treetops. He said, clawing the snow out of his whiskers at the same time, “It didn’t look like this could happen when we started out yesterday afternoon—it was so warm, almost like spring. But then maybe this snow is a godsend.” He clawed again at his whiskers, saying “Dammit!” He probably would have quoted the old saying, “A green Christmas presages a fat graveyard”—but old Drum raised his voice again, bringing everyone to rigid attention. The dog ran out a few paces, turned around and came back. He had not gone beyond the circle of light.
Together, or rather alternately, Minerva and Teddy made music against the howl of the storm until morning. They could not team together. This nightingale who had come to us out of the storm, was from another colony—perhaps English Ridge, south of Havensville. Bill sang some, in a comical way. Our improvised shelter, hardly worth mentioning, and our fire had kept them from freezing. They were grateful.
They were of the old English Colony folk—Bill and Ted. This is not to say they were scions of the favored six families who occupied Llewellyn Castle on section 25, in Harrison township. They might have been from any one—or two—of the dugouts scattered about over the prairies outside the Colony-owned section. But they were decidedly English, and none the less Colonists.
When at last morning had come, and we had seen our visitors off, we drove out onto a vast prairie covered with snow, homeward bound. We would be doing well if we reached home in time for dinner. Deep drifts lay ahead of us and there was a sea of white on all sides as far as one could look.
Incidentally, I might say here that the streets in Wetmore were completely blocked by that storm. The main street in the business section was drifted so deeply in snow that to facilitate traffic a cut was made down the center of the street, and one standing up in a wagon had to look up to see the top of the cut.
Van stroked old Drum’s head. He said, “Too bad, old boy, you didn’t get a chance to show Bill how good you are. Skunked this time, but maybe better luck next time. Wish you could tell us what kind of a varmint you saw, heard, or scented, when you made all that commotion back there. You wouldn’t lie to a fellow, old longears, and you are not afraid of the dark—are you?”
Dad said, in a tone that indicated his great disappointment over the bogged down coon-hunt, with maybe, also apologies to his guests, “Well, damn it, men—it wasn’t a complete waterhaul. We’ve got a white Christmas.”
Published in Wetmore Spectator
March 5, 1943
By John T. Bristow
The hunt was staged in Uncle Nick Bristow’s timber—way back in the 70’s. It was on the home place over on the Rose branch, the farm now owned by Bill Mast. The trail of the hunters would range down stream, overlapping into the Jim Hyde and Bill Rose woods, and on down to the junction with Wolfley creek. Ostensibly, it was to have been a coon-hunt, but it soon developed into something bigger and better. ‘
There was a good moon—but to attract the hunters, a big bonfire was built in the woods, and the men flocked in from all directions. The interesting part of it was that three of them were from the old English Colony, two miles west of my uncle’s farm—”Green Englishmen,” the Wolfley creekers said they were. Couldn’t name them now—and be sure. One of them was a stocky little man, very talkative, very agreeable.
Then there were the Porters, the Pickets, the Piatts, the Snows, the Mayers, the Barnes boys, and others—not aiming to overlook my Uncle Nick and his son, Burrel. The elder Mayers, Gus and Noah, were Pennsylvania Dutch, with Holland ancestry. Gus liked his fun while Noah liked to stay at home and mind his own business. But some of Noah’s boys were in the gathering, as was also Peter Metzdorf, who had a while back married Gus Mayer’s daughter, Anna. Peter was German—the real thing. He lived in Wetmore.
Of the five Porter brothers, Ambrose was the only one that I can now positively say was present. But John and Tom and their brothers-in-law, Bill Evans and Ben Summers, were probably around somewhere. Bill Porter had just married my Aunt Nancy, late of Tennessee, and he couldn’t come. And Ben Porter—well, they said he was too contrary to appreciate a good thing like this. Ambrose wore his red hair—it was really red—at shoulder length. He wore gold earrings, too, and three gutta-percha rings on one finger, rings he himself had made from old coat buttons.
It was good to have Roland Van Amburg with us. Roland was a grand old sport. Moreover, Roland Van Amburg had much in common with my Uncle Nick Bristow. They had both suffered, or were due to suffer, heavy losses in large herds of Texas cattle they had bought from Dr. W. L. Challis, of Atchison. It is barely possible that those cattle might have been milling about on the western part of Uncle Nick’s farm that night.
The bonfire was built on the edge of a small clearing, with a large tree backed up by a clump of small growth on the right. In the distance—not too distant—was a big log lying on the edge of a ravine, with a 10-foot bank at this point. A small tree with good height stood at the top end of the log on the left side of the clearing. One approaching from the north would see the log only after advancing so far, and even then only if not otherwise attracted. Had it been a plant for a modern movie scene it could not have been a more perfect setting for the thing that actually happened.
While yet around the bonfire the talk turned to panthers. One had reportedly been seen, or heard, in the woods a couple of miles away—up in the Rube Wolfley neighborhood. The men would be careful not to hunt that timber because they didn’t want their dogs to be torn to pieces. Uncle Nick owned a timber lot over in the panther country.
The natives saw in this hunt a chance to have some fun at the expense of the Englishmen. Also, they wanted to impress those Colonists in a way that might be the means of keeping them on their own reservation, so to speak. A lot of timber-stealing had been going on and the Colonists were suspicioned. As a matter of fact, timber-stealing in those days was widespread. But in that business the Colonists were no worse than the natives, but the Colonists were always sure to get the blame.
While people generally scoffed at the idea of panthers roaming the woods, there were some who said it was not altogether improbable—that one might have escaped from a menagerie. You must understand that practically all the older men here at that time had come from panther states back East—and, I might say, the rising generation had more or less been steeped in panther talk.
It is written in the family records, and was generally known here then, that the grandmother of Bill and Ben Porter was killed and partly devoured by a panther back in Indiana. She would have been the great-grandmother of Jim and Bill Porter, and Zada Shumaker and Harry Porter.
Also, there is one man now living in Wetmore—G. C. Swecker—who would tell you how one of those ferocious beasts hopped upon the roof of his father’s hunting lodge, while occupied, back in Virginia and ripped the clapboards off. He also declares that panthers do scream like a woman. And, as one old fellow around the fire had said, they do sometimes migrate. I myself recall that during a severe winter in the Rocky mountains nearly a half century ago, that those killers actually came right down into Colorado Springs.
At that time panthers were quite numerous in the Missouri hills across the river from Atchison—and with the Missouri river frozen in the severe winters of the old days, it would have been an easy matter for them to cross on the ice to this side; and then only a distance of forty miles to get out here. And supposing—just supposing—that, perchance, they might have come over in pairs, and carried on in the usual cat tradition, there was the bare possibility of our coon-hunters even running into a “family” of them. The panther’s young stay with the mother until grown.
Let’s say, then, that there was just enough to it to keep timid people on edge. I doubt if there ever was a night coon-hunt in those days when some of the hunters didn’t give some thought to that killer. The thought seemed to hit one the moment he was in the deep woods. And on moonlight nights that thought was simply unshakeable. A shadow in the wood—a shadow that was somehow alive—could be highly disquieting.
Uncle Nick and the men, with the dogs on leash, took a turn about the woods while waiting for my father and the inevitable Thuse Peters to arrive. They would be coming out from town. I had gone out earlier that evening with my cousin, Burrel.
Uncle Nick bade me remain at the fire so as to direct Dad and Thuse when, and if, they should come while the hunters were away. Ambrose Porter said, “Nick, you’re not going to leave that boy all alone out here. I’ll- stay with him.” Uncle Nick said, quietly, “Oh no, you won’t.” Uncle knew that Ambrose never liked to exert himself needlessly.
If not inclined to discount my statements—and you really should not—you are now maybe thinking what I thought that night—that it was a darned shame to leave a boy all alone out there in the woods like that.
The hunters were now coming in from the north. Uncle Nick and the Englishmen well in front. Uncle Nick called out, “Johnny my boy, where are you?”
I had climbed the small tree at the end of the log—as far up as I could go. I called back, “Up here in this tree, Uncle Nick. Look on the log—quick!”
The hunters had now advanced a couple of steps, bringing the log into view. I glanced back in time to see them shift their gaze from my tree-perch to the log—and I took one more look at the log myself, just as Uncle Nick fired his rifle. In that split second I could see two eyes shining brightly in the glare of the bonfire—and I saw the yellowish form of the ugly thing fall off the log.
Uncle Nick was a sure shot with a rifle. And quick too. As told in one of my former articles, he had killed a mountain lion in the Rockies while placer mining in Colorado in 1858. The great beast was shot in the nick of time—in midair, after that 200 pounds of destruction had made the spring for my uncle from an overhanging limb of a great pine.
Addressing Uncle Nick, the little Englishman said, “I say, my good man, let’s ‘ave another one soon. Over in the big woods. Beard the lion in ‘is den, so to speak.” In high good humor, he shook a pudgy fist at my uncle, saying, “Hand mind you, if I am hignoredI shall be disappointed.”
The one mistake of the whole evening—if one can be sure there was a mistake—was when the hunters, after they had “impressed” the Englishmen with the danger of the panther to their dogs, turned the dogs loose on the trail of the pet coon they had brought into the woods at the right movement to make a “hot trail.”
It had taken four yoke of oxen to plant the log—and my Aunt Hulda gave the men a spirited tongue-lashing for making use of one of her hens to bloody the trail.
Now, imagine if you can, my uncle’s surprise when the next time he went over to his cherished timber lot he discovered that someone had robbed him of valuable post and rail trees. Not being present at the time, I have no way of knowing what his immediate reactions were. But had it been my Dad instead of my uncle, who never swore, I’m darned sure I could name more’n half of the irreverent words he would have employed in taking the epidermis off that stocky little Englishman.
Not Hitherto Published—1950
By John T. Bristow
You can never tell by the caption of one of my stories what all is going to be in it—the caption might well have been something else—but the line that inspired the heading is sure to be apparent to the careful reader; if he, or she, will look for it.
The oil strike on the Oreon Strahm land one mile south of the Sabetha hospital, in August, 1950, and the two producers previously brought in on the Mamie Strahm land three and one-half miles to the southwest, refreshes my memory of an earlier try for oil in Nemaha County—and some of my own experiences in this greatest of all “get-rich-quick” opportunities.
In 1904 Dr. Joseph Haigh and Dr. A. P. Lapham secured a block of oil leases around Wetmore, and contracted with a driller, W. H. Hardenburg, of Oklahoma, to drill a well to the depth of 2,000 feet—or to the Mississippi lime—for $5,000. The site was on land owned by Dr. J. W. Graham in the west part of town; later owned by Mr. Mathews.
The drillers struck a little gas at 1700 feet, which spurted water over the 80-foot derrick. This caused a great deal of excitement—but after “pulling” the fire in the coal-burning power plant and quickly taking other precautionary measures, the drillers said “there was nothing to it.”
Gas had previously been encountered in two water wells in the north part of town—on the Cyrus Clinkenbeard property west of the school grounds, now owned by the Thorn-burrow girls; and on the J. W. Luce property near the cemetery, now owned by Gene Cromwell. The flow in the Luce well was the stronger, agitating the water in a way to produce a bubbling sound. It created a lot of excitement. But the State Geologist said it was helium gas, which, rather than burn, would extinguish fire.
In the oil test on the Graham lot, at about 1800 feet, a hard formation was encountered, which the drillers pronounced the Mississippi lime—but State Geologist Haworth said it was not. Then the drillers completed the contract at 2,000 feet. Mr. Hardenburg had a drilling contract coming up in Oklahoma, but he remained on the job here about a week longer, at $40 a day—and the hole was put down to 2225 feet. It was planned to have Mr. Hardenburg come back and drill the test deeper, but he got rich in his “share-the-profits” contract in the Tulsa oil field—and retired to a home on “easy street” (Morningside Drive) in Kansas City.
When Hart Eyman was getting up a block of oil leases here in 1934, I called up Mr. Hardenburg, while in Kansas City, and told him of the activity out here. He asked me to let him know when the first test was to be spudded in here, saying he would drive out. He said he still had faith in this section and that he would have been glad to have finished our test. I believe our people failed to raise the necessary funds. The money for the original test was raised by selling stock. And it was a clean promotion—but that is more than I can say for some of the outside oil promotions in which our Wetmore group dipped.
In view of the recent strikes in the Strahm field, with a 30-barrel producer in the Hunton lime at around 2800 feet; and the Mamie Strahm number 2, rated at 1440 barrels in the Viola lime at approximately 3600 feet; and the Oreon Strahm test, with even greater potential production in the Hunton and Viola and still another producing sand topping the granite at around 3900 feet, it looks as though we Wetmore “investors” might better have kept our speculative eggs all in one basket, so to speak, contrary to high-powered promotion advice—and completed the Haigh-Lapham oil test. And I still believe we overlooked our best bet right here at home.
But then we had no data to enlighten us. The nearest and only drilling at that time was ten miles south of us. It was not deep enough to prove or disprove anything. In the heyday of his great financial flight—in the 1880’s—Green Campbell drilled a test to the depth of 1,000 feet on the east edge of Circleville. I believe the incentive was a reported seepage of oil in the creek south of the town.
Then, some twenty years after the Wetmore try, a couple of promoters came out of Kansas City, with a plan to rejuvenate interests in the Haigh-Lapham test—and “feather their own nests.” Joe Searles’ drugstore in the east room of what is now the First National Bank building, was the unofficial headquarters for oil hungry “investors”—local and transient. With Joe and the two promoters, I went over to the Matthews lot, now owned by Bert Gilbert. Mr. Hardenburg had left the top 100 feet of casing in the well to prevent cave-ins against the time when he might return to finish the well. Measurements to the exhaustion of the string available showed the well open for fifteen hundred feet—and likely all the way down to the bottom.
Excitement began to mount again.
Dr. A. P. Lapham presided over a packed gathering in the opera house—and appointed a committee of five to confer with the promoters. The committee met in the Thorn-burrow bank. The promoters came up with a contract whereby they would undertake to raise the funds for the completion of the well, against numerous and assorted requirements by “the people” of Wetmore.
I was offered the trusteeship—but I declined to accept it. I think the reason the committee offered it to me was because I had been the trustee—with no part in the promotion—of a block of eight hundred acres of oil leases in Elk and Chautauqua Counties, purchased from Charley Cortner, salesman, of Iola, and Dr. C. E. Shaffer, vendor, of Moline, by our Wetmore group, at $10 an acre, with further obligation of $1.00 per acre yearly rentals, for five years, which had been carried through to a successful termination, with no gain to the “investors” and a loss to me of only $85—aside from my $250 first come-in and my part of the rentals, $25 a year, through payments of rentals in general, as trustee, in excess of collections. I had to collect four hundred dollars twice a year from fifty-three people—and I didn’t quite make it. I therefore regarded the trusteeship now offered me as not a desirable recognition.
To keep the record straight, I shall now give with a little more enlightenment. I actually had a little velvet in the Shaffer oil deal—leastwise it looked like velvet at the time. Not for promotional influence—but for services rendered, and to be rendered.
I went with Charley Cortner, the salesman, and three other Wetmore men to the Moline oil field—paid my own expenses, even to transportation equal to railroad fare, and therefore was beholden to no one. The Moline acreage adjoined a block of leases on which the discovery well, a small producer, had recently been brought in. There was, however, big production—and growing bigger every day—at Eldorado, where we stopped on the way down to get our appetites (for oil speculation) whetted. I wanted to go in with them, of course.
You know, should you pass up an opportunity to go in with the home folks on something that was to pan out big, you would always feel that God had given you less sense than He had given your more fortunate neighbors. And, should you strive to live down the mistake, there would always be lucky ones to remind you of your dumbness. The hope of oil-money was in my system. Had been hankering to get in with the home folks on something good for a long time.
When reminiscing for entertainment, as well as for record of historic fact, with no particular theme to exploit, you will, doubtless, agree that it is permissible—nay, oft-times necessary, to break all the rules laid down by learned teachers; such as to never let one incident call up another. And, if you don’t agree—you are going to get it now, anyway.
Aside from the matter in hand, I may say that only a short time before this, I had been denied the chance to go with a Wetmore group on an inspection trip to another oil field in southern Kansas—because I had not as yet signed up, as they had, for an interest in the lease. Well, the energetic young salesman, after securing pledges enough here to put him in the clear, went ahead of the boys to the headquarters and bought the lease, at a discount, on partial payment, using his own money, which, had all gone well, should have netted him more than the promised commission. He intended, of course, to deliver the lease to the group up here at the contract price, or rather the pledged commitments, with only a few amounts yet to be peddled, or held in his own name, at his discretion. But the Wetmore group—the boys who had said that to let me go with them on the inspection trip without first making a commitment, would be unfair to those who had signed up—turned down the deal, cold. Then, after returning home, the group heard rumors of lawsuits—and counter suits. The lease vendor was demanding payment in full, and the poor boy-salesman could not raise the money.
Charley Cortner, the salesman earlier mentioned in this writing, had been here for five or six months selling life insurance. He was a whole-souled, persuasive, sort of man who had made many friends here. Cortner and Dr. J. R. Purdum, in whose car the trip to Moline had been made, went out among the people and in almost no time secured pledges for nearly enough money to take over the Shaffer leases. They were selling interests in $125 “units.” But, at the finish, to accommodate all the eager applicants, some subscriptions were taken for as little as $50 and $25—sub-divisions of a unit.
When they came to me—at the corn-house, where I had been sorting out seed corn—I surprised them (and maybe shocked them, too) by declining to subscribe. Not that I didn’t want to get in on the big prospect—but because, as I believe, it was an improper if not a dangerous way to form a syndicate. Somewhere I had acquired the notion that if fifty people chipped in and bought a thing that it would take fifty people to sell it. But I didn’t tell them this until after they had “flared up” and had their say. They started to quit me, in disgust—but the Doctor, who was regarded among my best friends, thinking to erase some of the unkind comment, said, “Well, John, when you get through sorting your sour corn, come and see us—we’ll save some units for you.” My corn was not “sour” corn. It was well matured, and making an average of eighty bushels, with some acres on grubbed ground making 125 bushels.
Now, for a little laughable reaction within a none too laughable story. The Farmers Union elevator manager, a farmer not so long out of the corn rows, refused to buy my culled corn, said it would be unfair to his company to permit me to take out the best ears. After I had sent several loads to the Netawaka elevator, as it accumulated in the house, after taking out only about ten per cent, the Farmers Union manager came over to the corn house, looked at the culled corn we were loading out at the moment, saying he guessed maybe he had made a mistake in refusing to buy the culled corn. The culled corn was far better than the general run of corn brought to market that year. It was an improved strain of Boone County White, which would shell out equal to Reid’s Yellow Dent.
While still at the corn-house that day of the Purdum-Cortner call, Charley had an inspiration. He said, “Why couldn’t you write something for us like you think we ought to have?” I said, “I can try—but it will have to be approved by an attorney before you can use it. I don’t want to cook up something that might get our people in trouble.”
But did I—or did I not?
Charley said, “Can you get at it right away?” So the “sour” corn sorting was postponed until another day—and I went to my home at 11:15. My typewriter and writing desk were in an alcove up stairs. I had hardly gotten the corn-dust and the insult to my purebred seed corn, which had been engendered within the hour at the seed house out of my system when my wife came to the stair door and said dinner was ready. I had no time for dinner. The necessary words had not come to me readily. Charley came at 12:30, sat close to me, in a more pleasant mood with occasional verbal expression indicating the reason for the improvement. But he was careful to hold back the main reason. His presence didn’t help in furthering the writing. However, we got away at the appointed time—one o’clock. No dinner.
Fred Woodburn, the corporation-wise member of Wood-burn & Woodburn, lawyers, Holton, Kansas, approved my draft, as written, with one exception. I had made provision for transfer of units. Fred said it would break the partnership. And, may I say, before I forget it, that I was censured for being so careless as to omit making provision for transfers—and this, too, by an individual who, as you will hereinafter see recorded, found fault with my correct line of reasoning in another instance—correct as in reference to the one incident, understand.
I’m not trying to “hand” myself a bouquet. The agreement cooked up by me was neither “air tight” nor “fool proof.” The Trustee had not a chance. The error was that I did not require the subscribers to include in their checks a sufficiency to take care of their rentals for the full life of the leases. True, there was the chance that rental payments might be legitimately discontinued before the expiration of the lease, as in case of production terminating the payments, or disposition of the lease. But it would have been a lot simpler and safer too for the Trustee to return the unearned portion of the lease money.
Charley Cortner paid the Woodburns for writing a new draft of the agreement—and asked me, on the road home, for my charge. I told him, “No charge.” He thanked me kindly. He felt good of course—but I could see he had not yet got all he needed to allay a worry, the thing that had hit them so hard at the corn-house.
Unauthorized, and unknown to me, in soliciting subscriptions, it seems, they had carried the impression, if not the promise, that I would be the Trustee—possibly demanded by some of the prospects. After miles of silence on the road, Charley said, “You know, I feel so good about this that I’m going to give you one unit; you can have it in cash, or in stock in the syndicate.” From the ultra pleased expression on his face when I said I would take it in stock, I’m sure he had been holding his breath awaiting my decision.
True, I had not as yet agreed to accept the Trusteeship—in fact, I knew nothing about their plans—but I was now as good as in, and they could, at least, make a plausible showing at the called meeting in the City Hall the following night, when the vendor would appear in person to deliver the leases. Charley’s gift to me was acceptable grapes—equal to $4.50 a line, or 45 cents a word for the writing. I really wanted to get in, and would have subscribed for an interest, anyway—now that apparently a safe and workable organization would be formed.
Well, Doctor Shaffer spent much of his time here in my home. He was agreeably pleased over Charley Cortner’s work, with my assistance in preparing the agreement—and said so in no unmistakable terms. He had a pleasant word for my wife, too.
In an aside, I will say, that while in Moline on that inspection trip, I was troubled with a slight attack of appendicitis—which had been chronic with me for twenty years, and still is—and had gotten temporary relief from the Doctor. Dr. Shaffer now said that should I ever decide to have an operation, for me to come down to Moline, and bring my wife along, that she could stay in the hospital—all free of charge. This was by far the best offer I had ever had.
First, I might say Dr. Sam Murbock, our old reliable, had said he could not tell me what his charge would be until he got into me. I told him that he would never get into me, or my pocket, without first naming his price.
Also, when a guest at the Stratford hotel in Kansas City, Dr. Pickerel, of the Stratford, went with me to the University Hospital early one morning. He said he would sit awhile in the lobby and he would spot the surgeons as they came in. I passed three of them, trying to get my nerves settled.
The fourth one was more in general appearance to my idea of what a good surgeon should look like. He was called—and we went up stairs to a room. On examination, Dr. Jabes Jackson, Kansas City’s top-notch surgeon, said I was just right for the operation. I asked him what would be his charge? He said, “One thousand dollars!” I told him that I would have to be a lot sicker before I would think of giving up a thousand dollars. Then, Dr. Pickerel said, “He doesn’t come under that class, doctor.” Dr. Jabes then said, “Three hundred—that’s the lowest.”
Again, while at the Byram hotel in Atchison I had a severe attack in the night—and believed that the time had come when I should have the old appendix taken out. I called for Atchison’s foremost surgeon. He was in Kansas City, but would be back at one o’clock. I went up to the Atchison hospital in the forenoon, asked for a little “home” treatment. In bed, the nurse felt my “tummy,” shook her head, and said, “You will have to wait for your doctor.” The doctor said I could have the caster oil and an enema—but he told the nurse I was to have no breakfast. In the morning, I was feeling pretty good and was about out of the notion of having the operation. However, I asked the doctor what would be his charge? He said, “You are most too weak to stand it now. Come back in a week—we’ll talk it over then.” One week later, the doctor said, “Owing to your long residence in the state, and your standing in the community, I’ll do it for five hundred dollars.” I recalled that our old Nemaha County reliable had done the job for one of my friends for a very reasonable fee, and also remembered that he had charged others less reasonable. I said, “If and when the time comes, I’ll just give you $150.” He said, “I’ll do it—but if you ever tell anybody, I’ll kick your butt all over town.” You may know that we were on quite intimate terms, having on earlier occasions met at Atchison’s friendly club—or he wouldn’t have dared to talk to me like that.
Back in my home again, after enthusiastically discussing the likely prospect of the new oil field. Doctor Shaffer went out on the street to mingle with his boys, and the prospects who were now coming in from as far away as Holton, Circleville, Soldier, Corning, Goff, Netawaka, Whiting, Sabetha, and intervening farms—including my long-time friend Tommy Evans, whose farm north of Capioma had the reputation of being the best kept and most productive in the neighborhood—saying he (the doctor) would be back soon. My wife said, “It looked like your promoter friends have all ready unintentionally cut you in on the big melon should you be mindful to follow up the lead—and wish to be bothered with the Trusteeship.” She laughed, “If you don’t make that Doctor Shaffer cut you in for a generous slice you are not as smart as I think you are.”
Well, maybe I needed this tip—and maybe I didn’t.
Doctor Shaffer came back, and without more preliminaries, proposed to cut me in for two units ($250) if I would prepare him two copies in blank, of the agreement I had cooked up for the home syndicate, and, incidentally, permit Cortner and Purdum to make good on their promise to the subscribers that I would be the Trustee. He said they were expecting it, and desired to have my acceptance before going into the meeting. Thus, I wouldn’t rightly know to whom I was indebted for the generous slice of the melon.
Or was it a melon?
I suspect it was as Myrtle had said, unintentionally cooked up by the two solicitors—and that, in its final phase, it was a joint settlement, with the solicitors having to kick back a portion of their rake-off. Anyway, it was more unsolicited grapes for me—twice over the $4.50 a line, or 45 cents a word for the original draft. I used a carbon and made the two new copies at once, while Doctor Shaffer waited. He had another sale on with a Missouri group.
Fifty-three subscribers crowded into the City Hall, and all signed the agreement, and each set down the amount of his subscription opposite his name—and all wrote checks. At the finish I had fifty-three checks totaling $8,000—my own check for $250, and Doctor Shaffer’s check for $1,000, included. Doctor Shaffer would reimburse me for this $250 and also pay me the $125 promised by Charley Cortner. I was instructed to send payment for the lease in two $4,000 bank drafts. I had no intention of paying out $8,000 until those checks had time to be cleared. In the meantime our attorney had called for complete abstracts to the acreage instead of the certificates of title supplied by the vendor—delaying settlement for several weeks.
But the eight thousand dollar payment was made, and I received the $375 velvet from Doctor Shaffer—I guess. For reasons of his own, unknown to me, Dr. Shaffer had a Wichita man mail me his personal check for $375, nothing more. I suspect one of those $4,000 drafts had been deposited in a Wichita bank. The transaction was legitimate. I had nothing to cover up. This payment to me had come off the salesman and the vendor, negotiated subsequent to the pledges made by syndicate members—leaving their full “investment” intact to work out its own salvation.
This is the God’s truth—and mine, too.
Now, kindly figure out for me, if you can, where anyone had been worsted through my part in the transaction. Two “bright” young clerks in the bank here—whom I shall not name—caught it at once. That mysterious $375 check had alerted them. They put their own erroneous construction on it—and passed the word along. Then I caught “hail Columbia” from the younguns’ superior (in point of banking tenure) who had “invested $125 in his wife’s name—the idea being that a banker himself ought to have more sense than to dabble in such matters. His “boys,” as he called them, meant well, of course—and it didn’t take me too long to convince the banker that I had taken no part in the promotion. But, what if I had? It would not have been a crime. I want to say, however, that the banker did me the favor of trying to correct the false impressions he had helped set afloat. Once in a blue moon even the worst of us will meet such a manful man.
In this story I only aim to hit the high spots—not, at any time, deviating from the truth. It was not all easy sailing for the Trustee. In a case of this kind, the conscientious person representing his friends, does not wish to let them down because of failure to collect rentals in full. With syndicate members widely scattered, the Trustee must make his own decisions—and quick. He can put up the delinquent amount himself, or he can forfeit the lease—if he does not wish to raise the ire of his friends who have paid.
Our syndicate was in reality an unfinanced holding partnership—barred from creating indebtedness, euphoniously christened “The Elkmore Oil and Gas Syndicate.” Here, I must give the wife credit—if, in the long run it really merited credit—for suggesting this expressive name, which embraces, in split infinitives, the location of the lease holdings (Elk County) and the home (Wetmore) of the “investors.” It pleased Dr. Shaffer—no end. I think it got Myrtle included in that proposed free entertainment at his hospital in Moline.
Like Doctor Purdum’s good natured crack at my purebred seed corn, those altruistically donated helpings of “grapes” showered on me by Cortner and Shaffer, had begun to “sour”—and, I may say, that they deteriorated until less than nothing was left of the windfall. It posed a perplexing dilemma.
As there was little chance of getting action before the expiration of the leases, aggravated by draggy collections of rentals, a feeler was mailed to all subscribers, in ample time before the fifth year’s payments were due. More than half of them favored dropping the leases, and sent me their written authorization. Nearly half of the interests remained expressionless. The four leases were canceled. The majority of the interests wished it so. But, it was the delinquents who hollered most, even censured me for giving up the lease—when some of the acreage came into production several years later. It seemed not to have occurred to them that wo would have lost out, anyway.
But, in the Moline field we got some experience which should have taught us a lesson, that a bird in hand is worth a whole flock in the bush—but it didn’t. We could have sold our leases at a nice profit.
An oil gusher was brought in on a large tract of pasture land one mile away from our holdings. Dr. Shaffer wired me to come down at once. He drove me out to the well. There was a terrific jam—at the well, on the road, in Moline. Crowds of people were at the well ahead of us that morning—Art Hough, a former Wetmore boy, and his oil-rich partner, from Independence, among them. Excitement was running high. One man was killed in his overturned car while rushing out from town. And I, myself, spent the night in a Moline hospital. This fact, however, does not necessarily pertain to the gusher—except to show that there was genuine good-feeling all round. I was the guest of Dr. Shaffer and his wife, who were the only other occupants of his new hospital, not yet ready for public patronage. Dr. Shaffer owned a one-eighth interest in our leases.
If you have never seen an oil-gusher, you don’t know what a thrilling sight it is—especially, if you own nearby leases. Oil spurted in gusts at regular intervals high into the air, spread out in all directions and arched down over the four case-setters, stripped to the waist, encasing them in a film of oil so heavy as to exclude them from view, at times. Art Hough and his partner, who owned some producing wells in the shallow field near Independence, wanted to buy our leases—but who would want to sell in the midst of all that excitement? And, anyway, I was not in a position to deal with them on the spot, as there were fifty-three signers in the group to an agreement which provided for fifty-one per cent of the interests to say when to sell. We did, however, later, arrange to sell part of the leases—carrying a provision for drilling—and the papers were sent to the Moline bank; but the prospective buyer was unable to come through with the money.
The gusher was on land owned, or controlled, by a Moline banker, and another man. I heard one of the partners say, not once but many times, always the same sing-song word for word, “I just told the Lord that since He had been so good to me, I shall never desecrate His holy name.” If I may express myself, unbiasedly, I would say the Lord played no favorites in the Moline field; that I think He had nothing to do with the man’s good luck, except, possibly, in a general way of being the creator of all things—else why would He have destroyed the gusher with salt-water, and got the owners the threat of a robust lawsuit to boot—for polluting a God-given stream of fresh water?
In the matter of a fresh try to reopen the Wetmore oil test, I protested the contract offered by the two Kansas City promoters, maintaining that we had no valid authority to sign anything in the name of “the people” and that liability would fall on the individual signers. One of the committeemen who had been in various lines of business in Wetmore, and had finally settled himself in a real estate office, said, “Why, John—there haint a day but what I make contracts like that.” Questioning the man’s competency in such matters, I said, “I wouldn’t doubt it in the least—but it will take still more plausible argument to induce me to sign this one.”
The other members of the committee had caught the spirit of the meeting in the opera house, and were anxious to see further development of our oil prospect. They conferred the “favor” of the trusteeship on committeeman Sam Thornburrow, cashier of the State Bank—and they all signed the contract. Then the promoters went back to Kansas City to await the hatching of the egg they had laid here. And in due time, Sam got notice from a lawyer in Kansas City that he was about to be sued for breach of contract. Then one morning as I was passing the bank Sam hailed me. He said, “You know, those Kansas City fellows have sued me for $1,000—what would you do about it?” Remembering how they had “ribbed” me for refusing to sign with them, I said, “I’d pay it.” After he had turned this over in his troubled mind a few times, I told him to pay no attention to it—that the promoters were most likely trying to frighten him into a settlement; that they would have to start their action in Kansas—and that I doubted very much if they would risk doing this, as the contract would show them up for the grafters they were.” The Kansas City promoters did not follow through with their claim for damages.
It took only one more throw at the get-rich-quick oil game to convince me that it just could not be accomplished by throwing in with the other fellow on his home grounds, after he had carried the project to a point where any day’s drilling might bring riches. But I’m still strong on the home-test—for that would be furthering something for the good of all the home folks.
Our Wetmore group, with “investors” at Goff and Bancroft, contributed a sum said to be $14,350 toward the completion of a well in a producing field east of Enid, Oklahoma, on land owned by a Bancroft man. The headquarters of the Company was in a fair sized city in southern Kansas, with a department store owner as president, a physician and surgeon as secretary—and a banker deeply interested in a covered-up sort of way. The president and the land owner had departed with our money, supposedly to complete the well—and then we would all most likely be “sitting pretty.” But in about a week we got notice of a called meeting to vote $30,000 increase in capital stock. Also, we were advised of the bringing in of a gas well of ten million feet potential on the lease adjoining the company ground on the south, still farther away from the known production area on the north, proving that we were still “sitting pretty.” Had this been reported before we joined-up with our Southern Kansas financiers, I, for one, would have kept my money. Sane people do not let the public in on a speculative enterprise after its success is practically assured.
Our Wetmore “investors”, gave me proxies, and sent me down to investigate. I first went with the land-owner to the Oklahoma field. We found no activity at the well on his land, but the rig was still up. And the drillers were working on the reported gas strike just across the road. They told me that they had struck a small flow of gas—that it was not strong enough to blow your hat off the casing.
I got back to the Kansas headquarters on Saturday about noon, and went at once to the department store owned by the president. He introduced his wife, who worked in the store, and his father-in-law, whom I shall call Mr. Shapp—though this is not his real name. The president insisted that I take dinner with him at his home. I sensed something was wrong—but I couldn’t place it just yet. I learned later that Dr. Lapham had got wise to something pertaining to the call for an increase of capital stock, and had written him a critical letter. Dr. Lapham told me later that it was a “scorcher”—and I can well believe it was. They were all rather upset. Of course the president, and the secretary, and the banker, knew some things which I didn’t know—yet. My dinner host was a bit “jumpy” because of that “scorcher” letter of Dr. Lap-ham’s, and my appearance two days in advance of the called meeting. But had he known what I had just learned at the dinner table, he could have trusted me implicitly.
Some years prior to this I had sold, through advertisement in the Topeka Capital, 500 shares of our mining stock to the fictitious Monroe P. Shapp, of that address, and through him 200 shares in the name of his daughter, Ella J. Shapp. Now, when the merchant called his wife “Ella” I put two and two together—then I knew that I was among old friends. And I couldn’t find it in my heart to get rough with them.
Not that I had any apologies to make for our mine promotion. We had used their money, as promised, in the development of the mine, and at this time were still putting our own money into it—and we had no intention of going out and selling a block of stock to rub out the deficit. That would have been illegal in Nevada. But the fact remained that we had not as yet been able to make any returns to stockholders.
When I called on the secretary of the oil company, he said he could not give me any time that afternoon, that he had to perform an operation at the hospital at 4 o’clock. I said to him, in the presence of the president, “You fellows seem to be scared about something—but you need not be. I give you my word that I am not here to make trouble. All I want to know is what chance you have to make good, and if it will be to our interests for me to vote my proxies for the increase of capital stock at the meeting Monday.” The secretary looked at the president, and the president looked at the secretary—then they both looked at me. The president nodded—and the secretary said, “Come along with me.”