Poor boy! When he realized that death was near his every thought was for the mother. “Their days,” I afterward learned, were anniversaries which they had always kept, to which was added “Benny’s day.” Also there was a letter to his mother asking her not to grieve for him and to keep their days faithfully. They found a letter addressed to whoever should find it, saying that the body was that of Benny Louderer and giving them directions how to spare his poor old mother the awful knowledge of how he died. High up in a willow, under which the poor man had lain down to die, they saw a small bundle tied in a red bandanna and fast to a branch.
The coroner and the sheriff were notified, and next morning went out for the body, but the wolves had almost destroyed it. One day the cook belonging to the camp of a construction gang went hunting and came back running, wild with horror. He was the only child of his widowed mother, who has a ranch a few miles from here. The ex-sheriff cited a case, that of a young German who was returning from the Philippines, where he had been discharged after the war. It seems that persons who come from a lower altitude to this country frequently become bewildered, especially if in poor health, leave the train at any stop and wander off into the hills, sometimes dying before they are found.
My happy Christmas resulted from the ex-sheriff of this county being snowbound here. Stewart’s “Letters of a Woman Homesteader” continued:
0 kommentar(er)
