The Prospectors Depart

When the Missourians yoked up their beasts and drove away, with their wounded in the wagon, the men were no longer swaggering and insolent, but conducted themselves in a fairly decent manner, while I, boy though I was, felt that we had done a great thing in holding our own and forcing them to repair the wrong they had done us.

But now, grown older, I question whether we were wholly within our rights to hold the cattle. It seems to me that we should have been justified in killing the beasts that were trespassing upon our lands, but to seize them and fight a pitched battle, taking the law into our own hands, may not have been right, although at the time we benefited by it, and plumed ourselves not a little in having stood off this force, so much larger than our own, and bringing them to terms.

As soon as our troublesome visitors had departed, we set about repairing the mischief as far as possible, replanting the hills where the corn had been trampled down or eaten, and otherwise effacing the evidences of the struggle.