Here, too, were
other ruins--of beaver-dams, built by the first settlers of all.
Leaving this creek, we went on to Little Bitter Cottonwood, a similar
dry creek, but smaller and more lightly timbered. Then passing some
more low hills with a few pines, always with the Platte on the right
and Laramie Peak on the left, we crossed a long hill or divide called
Bull Bend, and descended into the fine valley of Horseshoe Creek. We
were now upon the old Overland Route to California, once so much
traveled, but now deserted for the railroad. Here was the abode of
Jack Slade, one of the station-masters on that famous stage-road--a
man of bad reputation, and more than suspected of having been a
freebooter, and even a murderer. This did not prevent his station from
being one of the best on the road, his horses always good, his meals
easily bolted. Of him and of his band you may read the history in Mark
Twain's _Roughing It_. After the railroad was finished the Indians
descended upon these lonely ranches in the valley of the Platte, now
left out in the cold: they attacked Slade's house one morning in
force, and there was a savage fight.
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