When darkness overshadows a lone cow ranch, wild and drear,
One's nerves they get a-trembling in a way that seems so queer;
When you feel the spirits round you, 'tis idle then to boast
You don't believe those stories you've heard about the ghosts.

One dark, rainy evening while we were waiting on a sidetrack the boys insisted I should tell them some adventure of mine. So after considerable urging I told them an actual experience I had, that has always convinced me that murdered people's ghosts come back and haunt the place they were murdered in.

Twenty years ago Jerry Wilson was known as the cattle king of the Platte River. His cattle roamed for hundreds of miles up and down the main river and all its tributaries, and, as the cowboys used to say, no one man could count them even if they was strung out, cause he couldn't count high enough.

Jerry had a beautiful wife and two lovely children, a boy and a girl, and for years he and his family had no settled place to live, but went around amongst his different ranches, staying awhile at each one, the children being kept in school in Chicago, except in the summer time when they came West to stay on some cattle ranch with their parents. Finally Jerry Wilson bought a new ranch up in the south part of South Dakota, on Battle Creek, and stocking it up with registered cattle and fine horses, built a fine house, furnished it very expensively and settled on this ranch for their home. He built magnificent barns that were the talk of the whole country, and spent a small fortune in building up and beautifying this ranch. But one day Jerry was riding his horse after a cow on a hard run. The horse stepped in a badger hole and fell on top of him, crushing in his ribs and otherwise injuring him so he only lived long enough to be carried to the house and bid his wife and children good-bye before he died.

Mrs. Wilson mourned for Jerry a long time, but the care of her two children and the increasing cattle herds occupied her mind and time to such an extent that her grief had settled into a quiet sadness, when a young man from New York City, who had been discarded from home by his family for his profligate excesses, came to Battle Creek, and stopping at Mrs. Wilson's ranch was (as is the custom at all cattle ranches in the West) made welcome to stay as long as he wanted to. At this time Jerry Wilson had been dead seven years. His daughter, who was the oldest of the two children, had married a prominent lawyer of Chicago. The son was in school in the same city, and Mrs. Wilson made her home at the Battle Creek ranch. She had successfully carried on all her cattle enterprises and was known all over the West as the Cattle Queen. She was about 40 years old at this time, still a beautiful woman and had received many offers of marriage, but had rejected them all till this graceless and unprincipled scoundrel from New York, whose name was Clayton Allen, came to the ranch. Mrs. Wilson had arrived at the age where a great many women begin to hanker for a young man's society and attention, and was soon violently in love with Clayton Allen; and he, seeing a chance to get hold of large sums of money to gamble and go on sprees with, and knowing he could never hope to get any more from his family, laid siege to the Cattle Queen's heart and herds with all the wiles he was capable of.

To make the story short, Mrs. Wilson married this worse than scamp and learned too late to regret her mistake. He persuaded her first to sell all her great cattle herds and ranches and invest all the money in bonds, which she did, keeping only the ranch and blooded cattle on Battle Creek. He now persuaded her to go to New York City with him, and soon as they arrived he joined his old gang of profligates and spent his nights with gay men and women, only coming to see her when his money was exhausted, and then only long enough to get more money. In vain she plead with him. Finally, in sorrow and grief, not having seen him for several days, she took the train for the West and returned alone to her old Battle Creek home.

She had been home about a month, staying in her room alone most of the time, weeping and crying, when one stormy, black night Clayton Allen returned about 10 o'clock. He immediately went to his wife's rooms. The servants heard loud talking and angry words between them for some time, and apparently he was demanding money and she was refusing to give him any. There was a large hall that ran through the center of the house, dividing the building its entire length. The servants had their rooms and the dining-room was on the west side of this hall, and the Cattle Queen had her parlors and sleeping apartments on the other side. About 11 o'clock the servants heard their mistress walking up and down this hall, crying and moaning, but on opening their door that led into the hall found she had gone back into her rooms, but Clayton Allen came in the hall just then and asked the housekeeper to bring a bottle of wine, as her mistress was ill and wanted some. The wine was brought, and Clayton Allen taking it out of her hand at the door closed the door in her face, telling her if she was wanted he would call her. Thirty minutes later the housekeeper heard her mistress scream for help in the hall, and rushing in found her lying on the floor in violent spasms, and picking her up carried her to the bed, only to see her die the next moment. The death-stricken woman only spoke once as she was being carried to the bed. She whispered in the housekeeper's ear, "Mr. Allen has poisoned me."

All of the Cattle Queen's money and bonds were kept in a portable safe and where she kept the keys hidden no one knew. But at the funeral the lawyer from Chicago, who, it will be remembered, married Jerry Wilson's daughter, appeared on the scene, and after a consultation with the housekeeper and cowboys at the ranch, Clayton Allen disappeared, in fact the cowboys kidnapped him and kept him guarded in an old dugout for several days, and when they let him go the lawyer had returned to Chicago. The safe disappeared at the same time the lawyer left. So Clayton Allen never got the enormous fortune that was in the safe, but he got an administrator appointed, and the administrator sold the herd of fine cattle at the Battle Creek ranch to me, as also the use of the ranch for one year, and the hay.

I tried to get some cowboys living in that part of the country to take care of the ranch and cattle, but all of them promptly refused, saying they wouldn't stay there for any amount of money. Then I sent some of my men from my Wyoming ranch, where I was living at the time, but in a week they came back, looking shamefaced and sulky, but refusing to stay at the Battle Creek ranch. After I questioned them pretty sharply, they said they didn't believe much in ghosts, but the Cattle Queen's ghost was too much for them. They said from 10:30 o'clock in the evening till after midnight she tramped up and down the hall in the house, crying, screaming and groaning. They said the doors leading from the hall to the Cattle Queen's rooms kept opening and shutting, and they could hear her talking and expostulating with someone and walking back and forth from the hall to her rooms. I had an old man working for me at the time who was almost totally deaf, so I sent him and my own son, Georgie, who was a manly, brave little fellow of 12 years, to the ranch. I had a talk with George before they started and told him all about it. I said some one was trying to buy the ranch cheap and was making these disturbances in order to give the ranch the name of being haunted. But in a week I got a letter from my boy, saying there might not be any such things as ghosts, but there was certainly some kind of carrying on in the hall of that old house every night, and wanting me to come up. So taking my gun and dog, I went up there to lay the ghost. My dog was one of the largest specimens of the big blue Dane breed and wasn't afraid of anything. And I said to myself, "Now I will nail these parties and convince my son while he is young that there isn't any such things as ghosts."

When I arrived at the ranch I found Deaf Bill, as we called him, and my little boy had taken up their quarters in the housekeeper's room, which was in the extreme western portion of the house, which was built without any upstairs, all the rooms being on the ground floor. I went into the hall of the house and found that the doors at each end of the hall were locked from the inside, the keys being in the locks. I next went into the parlors and sleeping apartment used by the Cattle Queen in her lifetime and where she met her tragic death, and found the curtains all down and the windows closed with catch locks and screens outside of the windows. Everything was apparently in the same condition as when the rooms were fastened up after her death. Her books, and pictures, and paintings, and wardrobe, and easy chairs were all there, just as if she might have stepped out expecting to be back at any moment.

I raised a window in her bedroom with some difficulty, as I wanted to air the room a little, for I had made up my mind to sleep in that bed that night in those haunted rooms and convince superstitious people that I at least wasn't afraid of ghosts. I tried to get my little boy to sleep in there with me, but with pale cheeks and staring eyes and chattering teeth he begged so hard that I didn't insist on it. I have always been thankful that I didn't oblige him to stay with me that dreadful night.

When I retired, about 8:30 that evening, with my dog and gun into the haunted rooms I was very tired from my long drive from the railroad, and setting the lamp on a stand at the head of the bed and putting my six-shooter under my pillow I called my dog to the side of the bed and laying down with my clothes on, pulled some blankets over me, blew out the light and immediately went to sleep.

How long I slept I know not, but was awakened by my dog who was whining and licking my face. When I first woke up I didn't remember for a moment where I was, but the next moment heard a long-drawn sigh across the room from me and could hear somebody walking on the carpet. I bounded up and had just lit the lamp when I heard someone open the door from the parlor into the hall, and the next moment heard an agonizing cry for help in the hall. I now grabbed the lamp and my six-shooter and running thro[Pg 145]
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[Pg 147]ugh the two parlors opened the hall door suddenly, just after hearing the second cry for help, and found that the hall was absolutely empty, the doors at each end still being locked, and the door that led into the servants' part of the house was also locked from my side of the hall, as I had locked it when I went through to go to bed.

I went back into the two parlors and sleeping apartments and searched them thoroughly, even the wardrobes and clothes closets; tried all the windows, but there was no trace of any living person's presence. I then noticed my dog. He had crawled under the bed and was lying there whining in the most abject terror. I dragged him out and kicked him a couple of times and told him to "watch them." But apparently he'd had all the ghost business he cared about, for he lay at my feet trembling and whining. Disgusted with him, I laid down again, thinking I would blow out the light, but be ready with my six-shooter and some matches and catch whoever it was prowling around that house, trying to hoodoo the place.

I hadn't any more than laid down and blown out the light before my dog was trying to get out of the window back of my bed and whining piteously, and then I heard a woman crying in the same room with me and coming slowly towards my bed. I began to get nervous, but scratched a match and in the flickering light saw that the room was absolutely empty. But as the match went out I heard someone run through the parlor, open and shut the door into the hall, and then heard a long despairing cry for help in a woman's voice. I plucked up the little courage I had left, ran to the hall door, opened it, and, lighting a match, gazed up and down that empty hall, seeing nothing or nobody. But as the match flickered and went out there came a breath of cold air right in my face, and then out of that black darkness, seemingly right at my shoulder, arose that awful blood-curdling cry for help again, and as my blood froze in my veins my dog answered the cry with one of those long, despairing, drawn-out, mournful howls that dogs always give as a premonition of death in the family. I tottered back to the bed and vainly tried to light a match, but was too nervous; then hearing that light footstep and that rustling presence coming from the hall through the parlors again towards the bed, I dropped the match and pulling a lot of blankets and bed covers over my head, I huddled down in a heap and lay there trembling with fright and horror till the next morning, when I heard my boy pounding on the outside of the window and calling me to breakfast.

No money would have induced me to have stayed another night on that ranch, and getting an offer next day for the cattle, I sold them. Five years afterwards I saw a man who had come by The Cattle Queen's ranch and he said nobody lived there. The house and barns were all out of repair; the fields overgrown with weeds and an air of desolation to the whole premises. The administrator had finally sold the property for a song to an easterner and he moved his family up there in the day time. He had to go back to town that night for another load of his goods, and when he returned to the ranch the next day, he found his wife roaming around the fields a raving maniac, and she is still in the asylum in South Dakota. They say the Cattle Queen's ghost still keeps entire possession, and will till her murderer is punished for his crimes.