THE CATTLE QUEEN'S GHOST.
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 through
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.
[Illustration: _The Cattle Queen's Ghost._]
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.