But father was not by any means the only one whom the Border Ruffians molested.  They were continually riding around the country, frightening the people, and “pressing” horses—­which was another name for stealing them.  And the Free State man who made himself prominent was liable to be shot any time they could catch him.  The Free State men kept their horses hidden in the brush, and often hid there themselves.  Every time any of the neighbors saw several horsemen riding over the prairie, they thought it was the Border Ruffians.

One day Caleb May saw quite a company of men riding toward his place.  He and his son and hired man stationed themselves under the bank, where both the house and the ford would be within range of their guns.  Mrs. May was to talk to the horsemen as they rode past the house, and, if they were Border Ruffians, she was to shut the door, as a signal to the husband to be ready for attack.  When they rode up, however, they proved to be Mr. Speck, and about twenty other neighbors from the lower neighborhood, who had brought their horses up to Mr. May’s to guard them from the Ruffians, who stood in great fear of Caleb May.

When the Ruffians returned to Missouri, after one of their raids, some of them told in De Kalb, where Mr. May lived before coming to Kansas, that they had killed him.  One of his old neighbors, named Jones, rode into De Kalb one day, and was accosted by on e of the returned Border Ruffians with “We’ve got Caleb May this time; got his head on a ten-foot pole.”

“Anybody killed?” queried Mr. Jones.

“Oh, no.”

“Anybody hurt?”

“No.”

“Then it’s a lie!” responded Mr. Jones.  “I know Caleb May well enough to know that when you get him somebody ’s going to get hurt.”

Mr. May had for years been a temperance man, in the midst of a drinking population of the frontiers of Arkansas and Missouri, and made the first temperance speech ever made in De Kalb.  His oldest son, when fifteen, had never tasted whisky.  One day, when Mr. May had gone on a journey, the boy was in town, and loafers, seeing him pass a saloon, shouted, “Cale May’s gone; let’s have some fun with his boy.”  So they dragged him into the saloon, and poured whisky down his throat, and sent him home drunk to his mother.  When Mr. May returned home they told him what had happened.

At that time there was a local option temperance law in Missouri, under which a majority of the people in a township, by signing a petition to the court, could have the saloons abolished as public nuisances.  De Kalb was full of saloons, and there was one on almost every road corner in the county.

Years afterwards I heard Mr. May tell the incident, and his eyes flashed, as he said with his slow, strong emphasis, “When I came home and heard what had happened, you bet I WAS wrathy!  I just jumped on my horse, and I rode that township up and down, and I never stopped until I had signers enough to my petition, and I cleaned every saloon out of that township.”