161 THE BIRDS OF BATTLE GROVE. 
up for fish baits were the proper disposal of bird life— 
suiting a lack of conscience to the needs of convenience. 
Therefore in early June mornings the crack of a small 
rifle or shot gun was frequently heard in the grove and 
most of them tokened the death or mutilation of some 
little nesting bird. Up to this time with all the harass- 
ing,many of the more fortunate birds survived and came 
with each recurring season brimming with eotiaE and 
joyful song. 
But more people came to the village and their habita- 
tions multiplied—for the period of the second boom 
was at hand. Young men leaving the older States east, 
unmindful of the rapid changes on the border—had ex- 
pected to find the wild Indian in his red paint and the 
plains covered with wild game, much the same as in 
Lewis and Clark’s day, whose account of the country 
many of them had read or been told, and were not pre- 
pared to find it so unlike their dreams. But some of 
them had come prepared to shoot something, and as 
Washburn was then the end of the railroad, and the 
trees nearest to the station were those of Battle Grove, 
the slaughter of the few remaining birds went steadily 
on To make the destruction of the birds more certain 
the principal part of the grove was cut away and a brick 
yard covered the vacant space, and to add to all,a con- 
tractor’s grading camp located in and around the re- 
maining timber and these with the groups of Sunday 
idlers with guns for practice on the unfortunate song- 
sters, life ended for the feathered tribes in the narrow 
brush space in what was once known as Battle Grove. 
That this useless and wanton and shameless slaugh- 
