He had none to give me but wired the chief despatcher at Big
Rock, and in answer thereto I was sent the next morning to Healyville.
And what a place I found! The town was down in the swamps of southeast
Missouri, four miles north of the Arkansas line, and consisted of the
depot and twenty or twenty-five houses, five of which were saloons.
There was a branch road running from here to Honiton, quite a settlement
on the Mississippi river, and that was the only possible excuse for an
officer at this point. The atmosphere was so full of malaria, that you
could almost cut it with an axe. I stayed there just three days, and
then, fortunately, the chief despatcher ordered me to come to his
office. He wanted me to take the office at Boling Cross, near the Texas
line, but I had the traveling fever and wanted to go further south, and
he sent me down on the I. & G. N., and the chief there sent me to
Herron, Texas. There wasn't much sickness in the air around Herron, but
there were just a million fleas to every square inch of sand in the
place. Herron was one of the few towns in a very extensive cattle belt,
and a few days after I had arrived I noticed the town had filled up with
"cow punchers.
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