The Sheriff! If there is anything a non-
resident needs to learn, it is to avoid a clash with high
officials of a given section, if it can possibly be avoided. . .
I was worried. Then I thought of William Allen White and of his
famous editorial, and of other great and honorable men Kansas had
produced, a good part of them farmers, like me. I decided to
beard the lion in his den. . . He sort of braced himself, and I
could see he was getting ready to get mad. . . I told him I
wanted the fence left alone. I was arranging to turn this land
over to the woman up the road for her two cows. . . "You can't
expect me to give you that fence. . ."
Either he came to realize the probable justice of my stand, or
else he concluded he might be a trespasser if he persisted.
Anyway he did nothing to the fence. I wrote a contract in
duplicate to the effect the woman was to have possession of the
land for her cows until I gave her written notice to the
contrary. No rent or charge of any kind was to be made. . . I
never did see her husband. And I never saw her again. By the time
of my next trip, I was told they had sort of given up the ghost
and gone back to Ohio.
. . .Father was a bit proud of that "virgin soil", as he called
it, although neither he nor mother ever got a penny out of it.
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