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Of course fur traders with Indian wives resented the slurs on their families by newcomers and the story is told of Peter Sarpy challenging a bully to settle the question on the spot with a duel. The bully accepted the challenge and onlookers got out of the way; but as the two duelists left the shop, Peter turned and shot out the candle. When he looked for his antagonist to pace off distances, the fellow had dived in the dark.

By the time Nebraska became a territory, 1854, a stage ran between the two cities and gaiety began to intersperse hard living.

To the barn dances came ladies from Fort Leavenworth, hoops, bustles, fine slippers, with the officers in full regalia. The old Spanish fandangoes and minuets were stepped off gracefully as in any ballroom; but on the same floor danced “mountain men” in thick boots pegged for the rocks, and in traders’ moccasins. The rough floors were not waxed. They were worse. They were cottonwood fresh peeled. Now cottonwood fresh peeled is about as glassy as slippery elm. The moccasin dancers were all right. They could keep on the perpendicular, but as the German fiddlers played faster and faster to the final whirl of the fandangoes, fiddling so their heads almost bounced from the beer barrels on which the orchestra sat, those mountain men came to awful grief. They sat down expectedly on the slippery planking. It added to the fun of the unexpected.