Returning Evil for Good

I believe that all of us went to sleep happier for having fed the hungry Missourians; but when we arose at daybreak next morning and looked out on our broad acres covered by a forest of cornstalks swaying to and fro in the summer breeze, our hearts were filled first with amazement and then with hot anger.

Those miners from Missouri, who had come to us almost starving and had had their wants supplied freely, had actually turned all their cattle into our cornfields, and there the beasts were feeding ravenously, as they trampled down the stalks.

I was the first out of our shanty that morning, and it was fully two minutes before I could persuade myself that people whom we had so befriended were capable of playing us such a mean trick.

The truth was, however, forced home to me, and I called loudly for Mr. Middleton.

Such an uproar did I make in my anger and excitement, that not only Mr. Middleton but his wife and children rushed out to learn what was happening, and then, like myself, they stood in open-mouthed astonishment, gazing at the scene of destruction.

Suddenly we heard distant shouts of anger from up and down the river bank, where the neighboring homesteaders had their fields planted, and, roused from our trance, we all set about trying to drive the hungry beasts from among our growing corn.