Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1882 — A Western Drover’s Story. [ARTICLE]

A Western Drover’s Story.

[Chicago luter-Ocem.] My name is Anthouy Hunt. lam a drover, aud live miles and miles away upon the Western prairie. There wasn’t a house within sight When I moved there, my wife and I, and now we haven’t many neightors, though those we have are good ones. One day, about ten years ago, I went away from home to sell some tifty head of cattle —tine creatures as I ever saw. I was to buy some groceries aud dry goods before I came back, aud, above all, a doll for our youngest Dolly; she had never a store doll of her own—only the rag babies her mother had made her. Doliy could talk of nothing else, and went down to the very gate'to call after me to buy her a lag one. .Nobody but a parent can understand how full my mind was of that toy, and how, I when the cattle were sold, the first I thing I hurried off to buy Doily’s doll, j I found a large one, with eves that ! would open and shut when you pulled a wire, and had if wrapped up in paper, and tacked it under my arm, while I had the parcels of calico and delaine and tea and sugar put up. Then, late as it was, I started for home. It might have been more prudent to stay until morning, but I felt anxious to get back, aud eager to bear Doiiy’s nraises about her doll, I was mounted on a steady-going old horse of mine, and pretty well loaded. Night set in before I was a mile from town, and settled down as dark as pitch wMle I was in the middle of the wildest bit of road I know of I could have felt my way though, I remembered it so well; aud when the storm that had been brewing broke aud pelted the rain in torrents 1 was five miles, or may be six from home yet, too. I rode fast as I could, bu'taliof a sudden I heard a little cry like a child’s voice! I stopped short and listened—l heard it again. 1 called and it answered me. I couldn’t see a thing; all was dark as pitch. I got down and set around in the grass—called again, and again was answered. Then I began to wonder. I’m not timid, but I

was known to be a drover and to have money about me. It might be a trap to catch me unawares and rob and murder me. I am not superstitious—not very; bht how could a 'real child be out in the Erairies in such a night, at such an our? It might be more than human. The bit of a coward that hides itself in most men showed itself to me then, but once more I heard the cry, anu said: “If any man's child is hereabouts, Anthony Hunt is not the man to let ir die.” . I searched again. At last I bethought me of a hollow under the hill, and grooed that way. Sure enough I found a little dripping thing, that moaned and sobbed as I took it in my arms. I called my horse, and the | beast came to me, and I mounted and tucked the Itttle-Jioaked thing under I my coat as well ass I could, promising t> t ke it home to mammy. It seen ed t r-d to death, abd pretty soon cried j i sslf to sleep against my bosom. | It had slept there over an hour when I saw my own windows. There were lights in them, and I supposed my wife had lit them for my sake. But when I got into the door-yard I saw someI thing was the matter, and stood still with a dead fear of heart five minuti s before I could lift the latch. At last I did it, and saw the room full of neighbors, and my wife amid them weeping. When sbe saw me she hid her face. “Oh, don't tell him,” she said. “It will kill him.” j “What is it, neighbors?” I cried. “Nothing now, I hope—what’s that in jour arms?” “A poor, lost child,” said I. “I found it on the road. Take it will you? I’ve turned fai t” And I lifted the sleeping thing and saw the face of my own child, my Dolly. My little child had w r andered out to meet “daddy” aud the doll, while her mother was at work, and whom they were lamenting as one dead. I thanked heaven on my knees before them all. It is not much of a story, neighbors, but I think of it often in the nights, and wonder how I could bear to live now if I had not stopped when I heard the cry for help upon the road, the little baby, hardly louder than a squirrel’s chirp. That’s Dolly, yonder with her mother in the meadow, a girl worth saving —I think—(but then I’m her father aud partial maybe) the prettiest aud sweetest thing this side of the Mississpippi.