The Prairie Detective — page 17: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

8 THE PRAIRIE DETECTIVE. The most mysterious personage in the outlaw band was its leader. Many and varied were the attempts to discover his identity, but they failed, each one in succession. Numbers of people had seen him, but his name, origin, and former vocation remained enshrouded in darkness. Everybody in the West knew of him, and he was generally spoken of as Persimmon bill. The prefix was earned, I believe, once when the redoubtable chief was seen to eat half a peck of the fruit indi- cated. His real patronymic, however, was known only to himself. But whatever it might have been, no man on the border was so well known, or so thor- oughly feared, at the time at which I write. He was virtually king of the whole region from the Missouri River to the Rocky mountains, and he kept up his sway with extreme success. Old Fort Hayes, situated in the far western part of what is now the State of Kansas, a few miles south of the Smoky River, was formerly one of the princi- pal points where the hunters gathered each autumn - to remain until the following spring. The fort itself, built of native limestone, has long since been trans- formed into sheep-pens by a farmer, who now owns. the land. | The hunters were absent, generally, all the sum- mer, and only returned to the fort when the snow began to fly. Their families usually remained at all times under the protection of the government post, sometimes not seeing their male relatives for months together. In the heated season this life was dull and devoid of pleasure. But as the chill air of winter ap- proached, numbers of traders from the East began