Leavenworth, their occupation gone. The government held itself
responsible for the depredations of its wards, and the loss of the
wagons and cattle was assumed at Washington.



CHAPTER VI. -- FAMILY DEFENDER AND HOUSEHOLD TEASE.

THE fame to which Byron woke one historic morning was no more unexpected
to him than that which now greeted Will. The trainmen had not been
over-modest in their accounts of his pluck; and when a newspaper
reporter lent the magic of his imagination to the plain narrative, it
became quite a story, headed in display type, "The Boy Indian Slayer."

But Will was speedily concerned with other than his own affairs, for as
soon as his position with the freighters was assured, mother engaged a
lawyer to fight the claim against our estate. This legal light was
John C. Douglass, then unknown, unhonored, and unsung, but talented and
enterprising notwithstanding. He had just settled in Leavenworth, and he
could scarcely have found a better case with which to storm the heights
of fame--the dead father, the sick mother, the helpless children, and
relentless persecution, in one scale; in the other, an eleven-year-old
boy doing a man's work to earn the money needed to combat the family's
enemies. Douglass put his whole strength into the case.

He knew as well as we that our cause was weak; it hung by a single
thread--a missing witness, Mr. Barnhart. This man had acted as
bookkeeper when the bills were paid, but he had been sent away, and
the prosecution--or persecution--had thus far succeeded in keeping his
where-abouts a secret. To every place where he was likely to be Lawyer