THE RETURN--ERNEST NICHOLSON
I left St. Louis about April first with about three thousand dollars in
the bank and started again for Oristown, this time to stay. I had just
paid Jessie a visit and I felt a little lonely. With the grim reality of
the situation facing me, I now began to steel my nerves for a lot of new
experience which soon came thick and fast.
Slater met the train at Oristown, and as soon as he spied me he informed
me that I was a lucky man. That a town had been started ajoining my land
and was being promoted by his brother and the sons of a former Iowa
Governor, and gave every promise of making a good town, also, if I cared
to sell, he had a buyer who was willing to pay me a neat advance over
what I had paid. However, I had no idea of parting with the land, but I
was delighted over the news, and the next morning found me among Dad
Durpee's through stage coach passengers, for Calias, the new town
joining my homestead, via Hedrick and Kirk. As we passed through Hedrick
I noticed that several frame shacks had been put up and some better
buildings were under way. The ground had been frozen for five months, so
sod-house building had been temporarily abandoned.
It was a long ride, but I was beside myself with enthusiasm. Calias
finally loomed up, conspicuously perched on a hill, and could be seen
long before the stage arrived, and was the scene of much activity. It
had been reported that a colored man had a claim adjoining the town on
the north, so when I stepped from the stage before the postoffice, the
many knowing glances informed me that I was being looked for. A fellow
who had a claim near and whom I met in Oristown, introduced me to the
Postmaster whose name was Billinger, an individual with dry complexion
and thin, light hair. Then to the president of the Townsite Company,
second of three sons of the Iowa Governor.
My long experience with all classes of humanity had made me somewhat of
a student of human nature, and I could see at a glance that here was a
person of unusual agressiveness and great capacity for doing things. As
he looked at me his eyes seemed to bore clear through, and as he asked a
few questions his searching look would make a person tell the truth
whether he would or no. This was Ernest Nicholson, and in the following
years he had much to do with the development of the Little Crow.