153 AT THE PAINTED WOODS. 
close to a by-trail, was the overturned wagon box and Ape 
by its side lay two of the men he had seen in the wagon 
the previous evening—one rigid in death the other dy- 
ing. The Coroner made a hasty inspection of the-ruin 
and wreck about him with a practiced eye, and asa 
familiar to such tragic scenes, uttered the one plain 
but expressive word :—‘‘Murdered.” 
Burial of the murdered men over, woodyarding was 
resumed in the same point above mentioned with two 
brothers as choppers, and temporarily suspended when 
one was arrested for the murder of the other. One 
more attempt was made to resume, but the proprietor 
being then over sixty five-years of age, and who had 
been almost totally deaf for many years, was afflicted 
with blindness as an added misfortune. To abandon 
the scene of his many trials and join the family of his 
one remaining son was all that was left him to do, and 
with a heart of anguish he turned his back to the home 
that had brought him so much sorrow, and reached his 
boy’s home for a brief rest, ere life closed and the 
scriptural injunction read to a small but solemn band 
congregated around his coffin that—‘‘dust thou art and 
dust thou shalt return.” 
The members of the three rival yards were almost 
equally unfortunate in the general sumup. Konrad the 
proprietor of the Dry Point wood yard, who dated his 
first residence there since 1869, became insane and died 
in a Minnesota asylum. Merry, the Senior, hunter, 
trapper, ranchman, and lastly—woodyard proprietor— 
who shouldered the attendant misfortunes of Burnt 
Woods, and braved the superstitious Indian at Appa- 
