Merrifield and Enoch Merrifield, moved north. A. W.

Merrifield became Teddy Roosevelt's ranch foreman in Medora, North Dakota, and Enoch became foreman of the Drum L o m o n d mine cyanide plant at Marysville, Montana. Granddad Merrifield told of many hard times he had while marshal of Hardin, after the Civil War. One one-legged man owned a farm out of Hardin and had rented it to a man for several years. Each year the river would flood the land and after that possibly he would get a crop and possibly not. For two years he'd been flooded so long that the corn crop had drowned out. He went to this onelegged man in town and told him he would pay him the rent as soon as he could get a crop. The one-legged gentry pulled out a sheath knife and stabbed him through the heart. He fell on the sidewalk and a friend of his came along, stooped over to pick him up, and the one-legged man stabbed him through the heart also and he fell across him. Then he got on a horse and high-tailed it to a ferry going over to Lexington, Missouri, across the Missouri River. Granddad Merrifield took a deputy and went after him. They trailed him up over the south side of the river and corraled him beneath a big bridge across a gulch. Granddad had his deputy shoot into the culvert from one end and attract his attention, while he sneaked around behind and got the drop on him and took him alive. They got him back across the Missouri River via the ferry, and they tied his peg leg and good foot together under the mule's belly and handcuffed him to the saddle horn. They got back in about the neighborhood of Father's farm, three miles west of Hardin, and a hard thunder shower came up. They stopped under some water oaks, and took the man off the horse and tied him to a tree. They left the saddle horses and mule that he was riding under another tree and Grandfather and the deputy got under a third tree. Lightning was coming down in heavy bolts all around. The prisoner started cussing " G o d Almighty". Finally he says, " D a m n Y o u , if you're so smart, hit this tree." A bolt came down the tree, killed him instantly, blew his wooden leg off, and took a strip of hair off the top of his head. Granddad said they tied him across the mule and took him on to Hardin for burial. Granddad Merrifield used a double-barrel shotgun and buckshot most of the time in cleaning up the town of Hardin after the Civil War. During the thirties I had a good many
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letters from people saying that there was an article in the Saturday Evening Post about border marshals and sheriffs that included quite a write-up on Granddad Anson Merrifield. However, I did not take the magazine at the time and never got to see a copy. M y uncle, Oleander Berry, served under General Price during the Civil War. I remember many tales he told us of the service before he was wounded at Lexington and put out of the fight. Once he was stationed out in a big old hollow tree in a swamp, sniping. They forgot all about him and left him there three days and nights with no way of getting ashore with his old rifle. Water extended for several miles between him and his outfit. He said he got so hungry that his mouth would water when he thought of his mother's old soap grease barrel at home. W e lived on the prairie some twelve miles north of Hardin on a little farm along with Granddad Keith. Father b o u g h t , sold and traded mules in addition to farming. He was also a fancier of trotting horses, and usually had some Hambletonians around. When I was three years old he took me to Carrollton, Missouri, to watch the trotting horses. Frank James was starting the races at that time after the Governor had pardoned h i m , (he was Jesse James's brother.) W e drove up and Frank came over and says, " H e l l o , Farry." ( T h e y called my dad "Farry.") Frank says, "That's an awful pretty girl you have there, Farry." Dad says, "Girl hell, Frank. I'll have you understand that's a boy." Well, they had me dressed in a polka-dot dress, long black socks, button patent leather shoes, a Windsor tie, and long yellow curls down to my shoulders. There was no ready made clothing for little boys at that time, and we had to wear what the women put on us. Until I was four years old it was dresses, which I hated. Father told me that he wore homespuns until he was twenty-one. I still remember Grandma Keith's old loom in the attic of the first house that Granddad Keith built, and her old spinning wheel. Each year a bootmaker would come around and spend a week or two with each family making boots and shoes for the whole family, then he'd move on the next farm. Things was different in those days. I still retain some other memories of my toddling days, which is now over seventy years past. Father and Ed Hale kept a pack o f hounds and ran foxes just for their own amusement, just to hear the dogs. When they would never bring in a fox, Mother was provoked and wanted to know why they didn't