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.