"With the Past Let These Be Buried": The z873 Mob Massacre of the Hill Family in Springtown, Texas HELEN MCLURE* IN LATE AUGUST OF 1873, DEEP INTO THE FIERCE DOG DAYS OF A TEXAS SUM- mer, smoke from a burning homestead stained the bleached blue sky. The terrified inhabitants fled ahead of their pursuers, but forty-seven- year-old widow Laduska ("Dusky") Hill and two of her daughters, Ade- line, seventeen, and Eliza, sixteen, were cornered a short distance from their charred home.
