WRIGHT, Mabel^{[1, 2, 3, 4]}

1887 - 1958  (70 years)  Submit Photo / Document

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• Name	WRIGHT, Mabel
  Birth	4 Feb 1887	Millcreek, Salt Lake, Utah, United States   [1, 2, 3]
  Gender	Female
  WAC	25 Aug 1950	LOGAN
  _TAG	Reviewed on FS
  Death	31 Jan 1958	Lyman, Uinta, Wyoming, United States
  Burial	3 Feb 1958	Fort Bridger Cemetery, Uinta, Wyoming, United States
  Headstones	Submit Headstone Photo
  Person ID	I49643	Joseph Smith Sr and Lucy Mack Smith
  Last Modified	19 Aug 2021

  
  

  Family ID

  F25271

  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	TAYLOR, Bert ,   b. 22 Dec 1882, Newbury, Berkshire, England Newbury, Berkshire, Englandd. 11 Jan 1950, Ogden, Weber, Utah, United States (Age 67 years)
  Marriage	23 Jan 1906	Millburne, Uinta, Wyoming, United States
  Children	+ 1. TAYLOR, Lester Oran ,   b. 3 Feb 1914, Millburne, Uinta, Wyoming, United States Millburne, Uinta, Wyoming, United Statesd. 13 Jun 1981, Ogden, Weber, Utah, United States (Age 67 years)
  Family ID	F5080	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	24 Jan 2022

  
  

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  [I'm going to type up from some papers my dad found. The entire document goes to page 28. He mentions that he is 77 yrs. old, which means he wrote this in 1975 or 1976.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ [pg 1] My father, Oscar Orlondo Stoddard, came out of the Salt Lake valley in the year of 1897. He filed on a piece of ground, 160 acres, on a flat, west of the Blacks Fork River, in what is now called Millburne, Wyoming. The following year, in August of 1898, he brought his wife, Ann Elizabeth Rhynearson, and their five children to Wyoming, to begin their new life. As soon as they arrived, Father began work on a two room log cabin. Winter set in before he could complete it, so he moved his family to Fort Bridger, with Charlie Larson. There were seven in the family, and Mother was expecting another child, early in the Winter. When the time came for my mother to have the baby, a neighbor lady name Mrs. Mary Dahlquist was called in to help. There in Fort Bridger, Wyoming, November 18, 1898, I was born. Mrs. Dahlquist told me, many years later, of the difficult time my mother had when I was born. We both came very near to dying. Mother had five children in five years, and with the difficult childbirth, her health was very poor. Because she was unable to, all the responsibility of the new baby fell upon the shoulders of my older sister Mabel. She was only eleven years old, but she took care of me, just like a mother. Come summer, the cabin was completed, and the family moved to Millburne. Here an incident took place, which I have been told about. I was very small, just learning to sit alone, I was still in dresses. Mother and a neighbor lady had gone to the barn for eggs, and had left me sitting alone on the floor in a horse collar. Now it seems there was an old sow pig running around in the yard. She proceeded to come in to the cabin, grab hold of my dress, and drag me out into the yard. She was already, I suppose, to have her breakfast. Mother came out of the barn just in time to stop the old sow before she began her feast. The second year we were on the place, a family named Taylor moved onto the flat, from Beaver, Utah. They had arrived too late to get their house completed, so they moved in with us. There were eight of them, and eight of us. Sixteen of us lived in a two room cabin all winter. There were many places in the valley, in those days, when people had to double up, to help their neighbors. Everyone had to stick together to survive. Times were hard around the turn of the century, life was very difficult, so even as small children we were taught how to work, and work very hard. There were some fifteen families on the flat, and we all had ground that had to be cleared before it could be planted. Before I was five years old, I had started gathering and burning sagebrush. We were taught young how to milk cows, and how to drive horses. When I was seven years old, I can remember driving a team on a wagon, hauling hay. In the fall of 1904, when six years old, I began school. We had to walk about three miles, in every kind of weather, we walked. Those days we didn't know what overshoes were--all the overalls we had, Mother made, along with all our shirts. I was twelve or thirteen years old before I had a pair of store-bought pants. We walked this far every day to school, the first year I attended, and up until Christmas of the second year. Then our school house was moved up to Millburne. There had been a township all chosen, and marked out. The school had been brought in, and set down in its proper place. The school still stands today, on the very spot, but no town ever was built around it. When they first moved the school in, there was only one room, but about a year later, they built on another room, then years later another was added. This school is the only school I ever went to in my entire life. I completed the eighth grade there. Dad had a little band of sheep, and when I was seven years old, it was my responsibility to care for these sheep. I had to herd them around the hills, and watch them. I also had to drive the milk cows out in the mornings, about half a mile to the open range. Then come evening, I had to drive them home again. I had a friend named Bill Stribbal. He lived on one side of us. He and I had the greatest times as boys wrangling our cows. Sometimes we were such great cowboys, that we'd play until dark, and neglect to find the cows until it was too late. In fact, sometimes we didn't get them home at all for the night, but we knew where every bird's nest was, and every squirrel hole in the whole valley. [pg. 2] As I grew older, I had the responsibility of the morning and night milking of seven or eight head of cows, and I also had to keep the barn clean. Steve, my older brother, had to do the feeding. When our morning work was done, it would be time for school. We carried our lunch in five pound lard pails. It was generally a sandwich, with maybe a little meat between the bread, or maybe a little jam. Once in a while a cookie or pie, but not very often. We couldn't wait for noon, cause we had us a ball team. We had to make our own bat, and even our own balls, but we thought we had the greatest team in the world. We learned how to work young. We learned how to take responsibility young. We learned to ride horses and drive a team. It was a great pleasure to me, though it didn't happen very often, to have a horse in the evenings to go after my cows. In those days, we had two teams, it was our main mode of travel. These teams we kept in during the winter, and fed them hay and grain. We had to have them handy to go to the store and other places. Dad worked in the timber a lot then, and he used the horses to haul timber with. About the year 1905, a family named Davidson, under the supervision of Charlie Watterson, built a flour mill. It set about half a mile East of our place. People could take their grain over, in the fall after thrashing, and get their winter supply of flour. This mill supplied quite a large area. I can recall seeing teams of four or five wagons come in from Manila, about fifty miles away. They would camp overnight, next day take their flour home. This mill was a great help and benefit to the whole community. In the early days, the community undertook a large job, that of digging a canal from the Blacks Fork river. The canal was several miles long, and it was done with horses, plows, and scrapers. It became an annual spring event for the men and boys to get together and clean the canal. It was quite an event in my life, when I was old enough to join the men working on the canal. I can remember one day working in a rainstorm with my team on a scraper. A big clap of thunder came and scared my horses. They took of running across the field. After about half a mile, they came to a fence and stopped. There was no damage done, except one scared little boy. When I was around eight years old, my oldest brother, Charlie, went on a mission. He was gone two years, so Steve and I had to take over most of the farm responsibilities. Steve was a better farmer than I was, so he took most of the work with my assistance. Along with working, I learned something else very young, that was to fish. I guess by the time I was nine years old, I was a pretty fair fisherman. One of my best friends, Almy Barnes, and myself would go out on the Blacks Fork, and it wasn't much of a job then to catch a nice string of fish. Almy and I spent many hours along the banks of the river. Steve and I would sneak away from home once or twice a week, and go the half a mile or so from our house to the river. With our poles in our hands, we would just shut our ears to the world. No matter how loud Dad would call, we just couldn't seem to hear him. Sometimes we we would fish until after dark and then head home. If we had a good string of fish we wouldn't even hesitate going in the house. If we didn't, one of us would stand outside and wait for the other one to go inside to see what Dad was going to say. We were always promised a spanking, one that we never got. One of the highlights of my younger days occurred when I was nine years old. This was helping Jonathan Sharp. He was an old man who lived by himself in a log cabin about a half mile from our place. In the fall, Jonathan would hire me to help harvest his wheat. We would start to work early in the fields. I would pitch bundles onto the wagon and he would get down on his hands and knees to load them. He was very careful. Every bundle had to be perfect. When we went into the stack yard --- the same thing, I would pitch the bundles, and he would be on his hands and knees stacking them. He took a great deal of pride in his work and always he built a beautiful grain stack. It seems the best part of the day came at noon, then he and I, both exhausted from the morning's work, would go into the cabin for our lunch. The meal was always very meager, a little bread and bacon, sometimes bacon grease for butter, very seldom a dessert. But this always tasted like a feast to me. I don't know if it was the food, or my great love for the old man that made it so enjoyable. After we would finish our lunch, he would play me a tune on his concertina. I always hated these moments to end, but there would still be many hours work ahead of us. [pgs 3 & 4] I helped him thresh. The machine was a separator with straw carrier on the end of it. My job was on the straw rack, keeping the straw away from the carrier. It was awful dirty work, especially if there was a little breeze blowing and I was real happy when the day came that I was promoted to the bundle stack. The machine in Millburne was run by Charlie Hurdsman and powered by horses, using 7 or 8 teams hooked on his maching, going in a circle. We raised a lot of grain and alfalfa hay. Everyone had a few head of cattle and most of us had a few sheep. Dad worked out, whenever possible, to earn a few extra dollars to buy clothing. In my boyhood, I enjoyed sports. My brother and I built a sled for coasting down the hill. Seems like there was more snow then than now. I could also skate. I would put on my skates and crawl 100 yards to the canal, and soon would be on the river. Our community got together many times to skate on the river. I spent many hours there. My brother Steve had a stiff ankle so he couldn’t join in this. Almy and I both shot guns, and we liked to hunt rabbits in the winter. One winter we had a rabbit drive, for big white hares. They were so numerous, that they were eating into the hay stacks. It was the married men against the single men, for a dance and supper reward. The single men lost, but we sure did have a lot of fun for about 10 days. All we would bring in would be the head. Jase Wilson, a farmer on the east side of Blacks Fork brought in a wagon box full of rabbit heads. He had used a net wire fence, opened it up in the day, and around evening, when it was full of rabbits, he would shut the gate. They couldn’t get out and the men just walked over and killed them with clubs. We had to make our own entertainment back then. I can remember many church dances. Our Bishop, Joe Horricks, was the first bishop of Millburne ward. He was in charge of these dances. Cowboys used to come. You could hear them coming from a long ways off, their hootin n’ howlin. They came in chaps and spurs, and dance for a little while. You almost always saw a flask of whiskey in a pocket, and soon they’d be outside for a drink. As kids, we were so impressed by REAL cowboys and when they went outside, we would follow them. We saw a lot of fights. There was hardly ever a dance that there wasn’t a fight. When I was 11 yrs old, I was still wrangling my cows every night. I discovered a coyote, and decided to get it. Dad had an old 45-70, an old time long barrel rifle, single shot. I had 3 shells for this old gun. I took it with me to get this coyote. I came across her in the same place. I got off my horse, took careful aim, shot, and missed her. She took off on a run, up over the ridge. I ran to get my horse. My saddle cinch was broken, so I jumped on bareback and took off up the hill. Ove rthe top, I spotted her again, shot, and missed the second time. I watched as she circled around and pause don a ridge opposite me. There wasn’t 100 yards between us. For a fact, she was MY coyote this time. I took extra careful aim, fired and missed! She took off running again, so I gave up for the day. I circled back around to the first ridge, to pick up my saddle, when I spied 5 little coyote pups in some green shrubs. Ha! I thought. I’ll get me a coyote anyways. I couldn’t reach down off my horse to get one cause bareback, I would’ve dropped my rifle. So, I took off after a baby coyote on foot. It was quite a chase. I could come within a few inches of reaching this pup, but never gaining enough to pick it up. I guess I chased it about a quarter mile when I heard a noise ahead of me. Looking up, I saw that old mother coyote coming toward us just as fast as she could run. I’m sure if that little pup had been running the other direction, I could’ve caught it, ‘cause I’ve never run faster in my entire life! On Sundays, we always attended Church. ON week days, when we weren’t in school, we were helping out on the place. We never had a great variety of things … especially foods, but we always had plenty of good solid things such as meat, potatoes, and vegetables that we raised ourselves; milk, butter and eggs. We hardly knew what money was. When we were smaller, we would have a nickel to spend during the fourth of July celebration. We thought we were the richest kids on earth. As growing boys, we played around a lot, goofed off and naturally we teased. The one who usually was tormented by us the most, was our sister, Edith. We always gave her a bad time, but in spite of this, she still loved us. In 1912, I had typhoid fever. Most people died of it then. It was very serious and there were few doctors. I was blessed. In this same year, Dad was haying a place in Ft. Bridger. We used what is now the museum, inside the fort, as our hay barn. We had a few head of cattle down there, and each morning we would have to ride down and feed them. On this particular morning, in early November, Dad needed a bull brought home and I was on my horse driving it. As I started up along the road, I could see thick black smoke rolling up from Millburne. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from so I left the bull to come on his own and headed out for home as fast as I could. When I arrived there it was the flour mill. This was a heart-breaking day for the people of our Valley. It placed a great hardship on them. The next winter, 1913-1914, was the worst winter I have ever seen in my entire life. It was also the last year I spent in school. We started out that fall with a teacher, but by Christmas we had had four teachers. Our class had a terrible reputation, I was the biggest kid in school, and I guess I was always ready to do anything, be it right or be it wrong. Somehow I was always right in the middle of it. The day before Christmas holiday, we boys played hooky and went over to the river to skate. Naturally we were caught. The teacher made us a promise that we would make up every minute we weren’t in school by staying in at recess and after school. Low and behold, when we came back from Christmas vacation, the teacher didn’t! That winter was hard. 21 straight days, you couldn’t see across the street because of blizzard. There was a two story house of Hurdsman’s and there was a twenty foot drift of snow against this house. The only way you could get around was with a team and a sleigh on a packed road. If you happened to get off the track you would sink down into the deep snow. They had a terrible time getting horses out of the snow. There was one family who had to take a shovel with them at night so they could dig their way out again in the morning. On 8 Jan 1914, Charlie and I started off to LeRoy, a railway station, to deliver milk, eggs and butter. It was a beautiful day so we didn’t even leave LeRoy until sundown and we still had twenty miles to get home. We had a good team, but it soon became so bitterly cold that we would ride the sleigh as long as we could stand it, then we got out and ran along behind, to keep warm. We nearly froze to death that night. There wasn’t clothing like now. For winter, you had a pair of woolen underwear, 2 pair of pants, a coat, cap and mittens. Charlie and I got within a half mile from home and couldn’t stand it any longer so we left the sleigh and climbed on the horses. They took us the rest of the way in. Dad was waiting for us and had to help us off the horses, we were so stiff and frozen. It was after this hard winter that Dad decided to leave the valley. He and a relative leased a farm in the Uintah Basin of Utah. Charlie had come to take care of the place here. Early that spring, Dad left. When May came I graduated from the 8th grade and went to Evanston for a job at the feed stables. I drove a team for $1.50 a day plus room and board. I hauled a lot of ashes in those days. People burned coal all winter and dumped the ashes outside the doors until spring came. They would then hire someone to haul it away. It snowed June 1st. I was in town that Sat. Night when I saw my Dad coming through. I left with him, came back to help get things ready for the family move. By the time things were arranged, it was the 14th of June. [pg 5] I and one of my friends drove one team wagon, Edith, who had been working in Salt Lake was riding with us. Ray and I were just flying high, we thought we were real cowboys and brother did we dress the part. We had big boots, a red hankie round our necks, high gauntlet gloves, and huge cowboy hats. We were some hard lookers. It took eleven days on the road. Along the way we had camped by the side of the railroad tracks, when we looked around we found an old hand push car laying there. We set it up on the tracks and decided we would take a ride. The grade was downhill about a fourth of a mile so we had a gay old trip down the tracks.....but then we heard a whistle. Sure enough the train was coming. We had to get that push car back where we had found it and in a hurry. Edith stayed on, Ray and I jumped off and started to push from behind. Boy did we push, it was all uphill. Edith was excited yelling at us, "hurry up, hurry up", and the train was getting closer and closer. Dad seen us then and was waving his hat and yelling "get that thing off of there." Of course the engineer had seen us by this time and had slowed the drain down. He was having a good old time moving that train in closer behind us. We finally got it off the tracks. The engineer tooted and waved as he went by. It's funny now, but then it really scared us. On the way we went over Wolf Creek Pass and came down into what is now called Tabiona. There we camped for noon. We had our lunch out and had started to eat when we noticed a small band of Indians close by. This was the first we had seen any Indians. Mother was very nervous about them, but they didn't bother us at all. Two days later, we dropped down into Altonah where Dad had rented this farm. It seems that I had an awful time adjusting to the move. I was really homesick and lonesome. But I finally got in with a group my own age and this made a difference. In those days it was nothing to see wagon trains of people coming and going. A few people stayed but mostly they moved on. They were just clearing off the land for the Indians then. Men would take a contract for forty acres that belonged to an Indian and clear it off. There were many cedar trees there and the ground was covered with sage brush. We cleared it, plowed it, and many times seeded it, then turn it over to the Indians who generally leased the ground to another white man. We had a lot of dances then. Right after we arrived there they had a dance to celebrate the fourth of July. My sister Edith and I went, I danced with her a few times when a man named Sabie [spelling?] Timothy came up to me and insisted that I meet people and get acquainted with them. I grew to think a lot of this man and we were close friends for many years. I learned from him to get out and meet people. We lived at a time, and in a town where people danced as the main form of entertainment. Many people would come in from neighboring towns, and many strangers would come by. We liked to show them a good time and make them feel welcome. This group of people were a united community, some were rich and some poor. They all stood together ready to help one another. Even though I enjoyed living there, I was still homesick for the other side of the mountains. Steve and I had decided to come home to Millburne. That November Dad had made a deal to trade the place in Wyoming for the one in Altonah so the man from Wyoming came over to finish the deal. As soon as the deal was finished, I came back over with him. During that winter, I had a job with Bensley in Granger, Wyoming, on a construction site. I drove a team of horses, but the job lasted only a month. From there I went into Evanston and got a job on the ice ponds. At that time they had two big ponds and eight or ten big long ice houses. We had to fill these houses with blocks of ice so they could ice the fruit trains that came through. I spent most of the winter there with the Barnes family. It was during the last part of the winter that I got an earache. It had gathered, the pain was so terrible, so severe that I couldn't hardly bear it. There were very few doctors in the area, so there wasn't anything to do but let it ache. I walked the floor for three days and nights, the pain was so bad. Then suddenly it broke.... the pain stopped so quickly that I just dropped into a chair and slept. It took the ear six months to stop running and heal up. In the spring of the year my sister Mabel and her husband Bert, Pearl and her husband Tom decided to go to the Uintah Basin, so I joined them. They stayed for a while and then came home. I stayed there for the summer and helped Dad and worked in the hay fields around. Steve and I found us a job on Yellowstone Creek with Tim Crystal. We worked about two weeks. We spent ten to twelve hours a day in the fields besides milling a herd of cows morning and night, and after a day like that we were still expected to wash the dishes. [pg 6] One night there was four of us out playing mumble-peg. Jim came out and asked for volunteers to wash dishes but nobody volunteered. So the next day he gave us all our time and we went down the road. I carried on and worked in the hay field here and there and grain fields and worked on threshing machines. That fall I got in with the boys playing basketball. My sister Edith had a boyfriend by the name of Wallace Timothy and we became very close friends. He lived about a mile from us and he had a sister named Vera that came with him quite often when he came to see Edith. I would want to take her home but didn't know how to ask her. I was pretty backward and bashful so she finally asked me and that broke the ice and I went with her about three months and we had many good times together. She was a different girl than I had been used to. That was a great country for people to swear, especially the women. When I first went to that country I wouldn't even think of swearing before a woman but she could really rip it off. I remember one night she had to milk five cows alone, so I thought I would be a gentleman and go help her milk. So I went to climb over the fence to help her and she said, “Damn you, if you come in this corral I will hit you over the head with this bucket.” So I said OK and sat on the fence and watched her milk her cows. Of course I heard about that later – anyway we had lots of good times together. They put me on the basketball team and we had a pretty good team and traveled around to other towns in the area playing ball. In the spring, my brother Steve and I decided to go back to Wyoming again. He had worked for Paddy Clyde quite a while and Paddy owed him quite a bit of money and was in Heber at the time with his family so we went around through Heber to see if we could collect his money. We stayed around there two or three days and in the meantime we ran into Ves (Sylvester) Broadbent who needed some sheep herders up in Wyoming. We hired on and I came out with him and Steve brought the horses. We were in a Model T Ford. His sheep were out on Coyote Creek south of Evanston. We came to a creek, or mostly a slough, about ten feet wide and he drove up a little hill about a hundred feet away and he opened that old Model T wide open and we sure went through that slough but we were sure plastered with muck. We finally made it to camp and I was supposed to be the camp tender. I had pretty good luck getting some supper and breakfast. I had never really done any cooking, but after that I guess we had some pretty bad meals and was getting pretty hungry when they sent out a new camp tender, a young fellow by the name of Teddy Bear. He had quite a lot of experience and was a pretty good cook. I went out helping the herder. We were lambing and needed extra help. In the meantime, my brother came and went to another herd and I didn't see him for a month. When we got through lambing, we met in Evanston. Steve let a friend of mine, Almy Barnes, take my horse. He was living at Randolph at that time, so Steve and I went out to Millburne and stayed with our sister Mabel for a few days and then went to Randolph to get my horse. We got a job on a ranch working for Ernest Carless in the hay field. Ernest was a fine man to work for, but he was quite a drinker. A few days before we went there, he got drunk and ran his new Buick car off in Bear River, and I guess it is still there because it was sure wrecked. He didn't drink while we were haying, and he told us guys if we didn't drink until we got through haying, he would buy us a case of beer. But about once a week we would have to go over to Sage, a little dump on the railroad, to get the mail. There was a bar there so we would bring back a little beer and have a little party that night. We thought we were putting something over on the boss, but we weren't fooling him at all. There wasn't anything said, we were a good hay crew and about the first ones through on the Creek and helped a neighbor finish his. The last day of haying someone mentioned this case of beer and he said, “ You guys never kept your promise, but I will furnish the money and the buckboard if someone will go get it.” My brother Steve and another guy went after it so we put on quite a celebration riding cows and what not, but that finally ended and Steve and I headed for Evanston. In the meantime I had found my horse that Almy had lost. A man said he had caught it out on the range. We had about a thirty mile ride to Evanston and it was a little late when we got there, but we were in time to go to a show. We ran in to Benzly boy, and after the show we stopped and had a drink or two. Steve couldn't hold much liquor, just a few drinks and he was drunk. So I tried to get him to go to bed. I could handle him alright, but he finally told me if I would leave him alone, he would got to bed. So I watched him walk down the street and into a hotel where we had a room. So the rest of us went back into a saloon and ran into the gang we had been working with. We celebrated the rest of the night. It was about five o'clock when I went up to the room. Steve's pants were laying out in the [pg 7] middle of the floor and he wanted to know why I threw them there. I told him I didn't, so he looked through them and found he had been robbed. He had a 32 automatic pistol under his pillow, but it was still there so that left us short. After I paid for our breakfast and horse feed, we had thirty-five cents left. We decided to go home, but we didn't have money enough to buy us some groceries. We went over to Millburne where Mabel lived and we went to work for a man by the name of Wade over on Smithsfork. We worked there for about ten days and it was terrible. we were loading hay behind a hay loader – work all day and pick foxtail half the night. [Foxtail is a weed that has nasty, pokey seeds. They get stuck in your socks and pants] We stood this as long as we could and decided to go home. So we quit, but I guess we were kinda homesick anyway. As we were leaving, we had to go through Bill Henry's place. My horse was a real good little horse, but he was getting old. Bill offered me a trade. He had a nice three year old mare with a colt, and he said he would trade me that mare for the horse and he would keep the colt. I thought that was a pretty good trade, so we headed for home, and I was on my new horse. We made the tie camp that night up on Blacks Fork. We stayed that night and had some breakfast the next morning. We didn't have any food with us, as we planned on being home in a couple of days, but we had never been over this pass before. Before we left that morning, one of the Swedes at the tie camp told me to rub my mare's bag with turpentine to dry her up. Of course I was just a kid and didn't know any better, but it scattered the milk through her body and made her sick. Anyway, we headed out and of course, being kids, we had to get lost. We made it over into the head of Smithsfork, and if we had only known, that was where we were supposed to go over the mountain and down Yellowstone Creek on the other side. The signs were all down, and the trails were dim, so we didn't really know which way to go. We kept going, went over on the head of Henry's Fork, and and camped out that night right under Gilberts Peak and nothing to eat. My horse was give out on me the last part of the day, I had walked most of the time. It seemed like the wind came in from all directions, but anyway we survived and went on over the mountain the next morning. We ran into a sheep camp about nine o'clock. There was nobody there, so we went in and fixed us a pretty good breakfast. We hadn't eaten since the morning before at the tie camp. Being overgrown kids, we were pretty hungry. When we got through, we cleaned up the camp and dishes, which was an unwritten law on the range, and went on down the Uinta Canyon on the other side. We didn't have any luck finding anything to eat that day. We tried to catch fish out of Uinta River, but didn't have any luck. We survived another day, slept out another night, and headed out the next morning. By this time, my horse was so weak that she couldn't pack me, and I had to lead her all the time. There came up a terrible rain storm, and thunder and lightning. It can really pour down up in those mountains. Steve went on ahead to see if he couldn't find something to eat, and by this time my horse had become so bad, I had to let her rest a few minutes every few hundred yards. I would have left her, but I had bought a new saddle that summer, and I was determined to get it home. A new saddle them days was the same as an automobile to a kid now days. There happened to be some trail builders down the canyon a few miles, but on account of the rain, they weren't working, and were in camp playing cards. They had a big pot of “mulligan” stew on the stove, so Steve came back and told me he had found something to eat. So I plugged along with my horse, and finally made it into camp. There were four or five of them in camp, and the stew pot was a pretty good size. They told us to go ahead and eat it all if you can, and I tell you, we ate it all. We were about two of the hungriest kids you ever seen – we hadn't eaten then for about thirty hours. Again, we cleaned up our mess and went on down the canyon. We ran into a sheep camp that night, and there was an Indian herding sheep there. We stayed with him all night and had breakfast the next morning. Steve headed out for home the next morning to get another horse to come back and meet me. he got home and got the horse alright, but we were both lost and he didn't find me. I knew the general direction to go, but had never been in that area before. Later I learned it quite well, because it was some of the range of my cowboy days. I plugged along and finally I came out on the edge of a large cedar hill. I recognized a little cedar hill right in front of our home. I was tired and hungry. I guess I had never been that tired before in my life. I stood and looked at that home for a while and could imagine a table set with some of mother's good food, and my nice warm bed with a tick full of cat-tails which made a wonderful bed. I guess I was really a homesick boy right at that time, and I guess I shed a few tears. I finally got down from this hill and headed off across the flat. It got dark and I didn't really know where I was, until I ran into the back of a neighbor's barn about a mile from home. I didn't get much farther when my horse quit me, and I couldn't even get her to move. So I just took my saddle off and threw it under a bush and walked on home. Mother was up waiting for me, but as hungry as I was, I couldn't eat. I was just too tired. So I went [pg 8] to bed. Steve got in about two o'clock in the morning. I went and got my horse and saddle the next morning and turned her loose in the field. She run about a month, and when I got on her again, I had to ride pretty good or I would have got bucked off. She turned out to be a real fine animal, but that is one of the experiences in my life that I will never forget. I realized what it was to have to endure a little hardship, and it taught me a lesson in more ways than one. I had a very close friend by the name of Chase Watterson. We were about the same age, still kids yet, and I had this little brown mare. He had a little buckskin horse. We decided we would go get us a job punching cows, so we headed out for Rock Creek. It was about thirty miles from home. There was a cow camp over there that was run by Andy Whitlock, a cow man, and a half breed Indian by the name of Walt Daniels. They run their cattle in there together so they hired us on as cowboys. We would have to take turns in the morning getting up to get breakfast and have it over with by day light so we could start riding. I guess I was pretty lucky, the first morning I drew a horse that was pretty gentle, but Chase got one that decided to warm up bucking and made him ride to stay on. Chase was always a better rider than I was, and he got to be a pretty good bronc rider. We spent several days rounding up beef to ship and we moved a bunch of cows and calves over around Altonah in some fields. I was left to take care of these, and Chase went with the rest of the gang to trail the beef out to Colton, Utah, a railway on the D&RGRR. It was about a ten or twelve day drive on the trail to Colton to ship them. They had been gone about ten days when Andy's wife called me from Roosevelt and wanted me to go over to Rock Creek and tell Andy to come home as quick as he could. His daughter had to have an operation for her appendix. I told her that I didn't think they were back yet from the beef drive, and she asked if I wouldn't go and see anyway, so I did. It was about thirty miles over to camp. I headed out and got to camp just a little before dark. There was nobody in camp, no bedding, and no food. I knew of an Indian village down the creek several miles, so I decided I would go down and stay in the village. I knew the chief, Dick Wandroads, a real fine Indian. So I rode down, and it was after dark when I got there. There was a young buck Indian rode in at the same time I did. He turned his horse in the hay stack. I rode on up to the house. They always had a lot of dogs around, and there must have been eight or ten come out barking at me. Dick came out and seen who it was, and said, "Put up your horse and come in, and my squaw will fix you some supper." So I just turned my horse in the haystack with this other Indian's horse, and went on in. They lived in a very comfortable log cabin. She fixed us a meal like I had never eaten before. It wasn't much. We had salt side pork and light dough biscuits. They were raised good and baked perfect. They were beautiful to look at with choke cherry jelly that was thin and run like syrup. We sat down and proceeded to eat this meal. The Indian didn't eat very long, but the more I looked, the smaller that pan of biscuits would get. But I never tasted jelly in my life that had a better flavor than that. I finally got ashamed and quit--not that I couldn't eat more if I could have held it, because it still tasted good. The other Indian went out to bed, but Dick and I visited. Dick had a picture of every president of the United States hanging around on the wall of his cabin. He asked me to mark on the calendar what day Thanksgiving was on, and also Christmas. This was about a month early for Thanksgiving, but he wanted to go over to Altonah to some friend's place to spend these days, so I marked it on the calendar for him. I went out to bed where he told me to sleep. I went out into the tent, still with this same Indian. I guess we hadn't spoken to each other as yet--they are not much on conversation. My bed consisted of nothing but sheep pelts. They tan their sheep pelts, and they are just as soft as a quilt. I got into this sheep pelt bed, and it was a very good bed. I slept good. It was nice and warm. Once in a while there would be an Indian hollering. I knew who he was, and it didn't bother me, and I slept well. Next morning I went into the cabin and Dick was smiling. "You sleep good?", he asked. "Yes, Dick" I said, "I slept fine. Why?" Then he told me, "Maybe you get scared. My father, he yells lots -- old -- over one hundred years old now and helpless. He doesn't know what he is doing--lost his mind." Then he told me that his father talked seven different languages. I enjoyed my visit very much. It was one of the highlights of my life, and I will tell you more about Dick later on. I went back to Altonah and reported that they hadn't got back yet. I stayed around and took care of the cows until they did get back to move their cows back to Roosevelt when that put Chase and me out of work. [pg 9] We didn't have any work for the rest of the Winter. We played basketball and had a lot of fun dancing and playing ball and what not. We managed somehow to keep in money enough for dance tickets, which only cost about thirty five cents them days. We had at least one or two dances a week. We had one of the finest groups of young people that I ever associated with. They were all sociable them days. I thought it was awful if I didn't dance with every girl in the hall. Maybe if we took a girl to a dance, we would dance the first dance with her, one in between, and the last dance and that would be about it. There were two more towns within five miles of Altonah--Mount Emmons and Mountain Home. They would all come to our dances. We had a man there by the name of J. M. Millard who had helped settle Altonah. He worked hard and almost succeeded getting Altonah as the county seat of Duchesne county. He ran a store there and built a dance hall just to keep us home. He didn't want us to go to any other towns for our entertainment. He had a player piano in this building, and we could go in and dance anytime we wanted to. He let us roller skate there, also. We had many great times, but we played around until spring. It was at this time that Steve got married. He and Paddy Clyde went out to Heber and brought in four or five hundred head of cattle to winter. They bought up quite a lot of hay and feed to winter them on, but we had a pretty hard winter and we run out of feed. We cut them out early and run them down in some lower country where there was no snow and it was a lot warmer. The grass was starting to come. They hired Chase and me to take care of them, but the cows were weak and heavy with calf. It turned out to be a terrible, rough spring--lots of rain, sleet, and snow--and we lost a lot of cows. We were dragging them out of mud holes and every other place they could get in trouble. We skinned quite a lot of cows, and lost a lot of calves. We had to help many a cow have her calf and had a heavy loss. We soon learned the life of a cowboy, but with all the hardships. We loved it. I would like to tell you about a dog that I had at this time. I took him out to the cow camp when he was just a pup--too small to follow me. He went in the camp one day and dragged out a piece of bacon and wallered it around in the dirt until it wasn't fit to eat. So I proceeded to give him a little paddling. From that day on, the only way I could get that dog in camp was to carry him in. I couldn't even feed him inside, but I could set it outside and he would eat it. After a couple of months, Chase quit and went back for Whitlock. I stayed on with Paddy and Steve. We were short of range. We had to keep them off the Indian grazing ground as much as possible, and also off the Forest. We kept them down in the lower country, and I was left alone with them. I had quite a hard time, and this dog turned out to be one of the best cow dogs that I had ever seen. I always knew right where he was--right at my horse's heels. If I saw a critter lagging a little behind, all I had to do was whistle and point it out. He would slip out and grab it by the heel. One day Paddy was with me trailing a bunch of cows. He asked, "Is that dog any good?" "He's pretty good," I said. "I like him." I worked him a bit and Paddy said, "There are a hundred and fifty cows there. You can take your pick and I will take the dog." "No, I don't want your cows anyway." I said. I was left with this herd of cattle. One day I was crossing a flat with three or four hundred cattle. It was about four miles, and there was sleet and snow coming into their faces. I was having quite a time, so I cut fifteen or twenty head out to lead, just enough that I could handle good, and left the dog behind. He brought them along just as good as a rider could. We finally got across and into a draw where it was warmer and wasn't storming. We went into town that night, and that was the first good meal I had had for a few days. I was quite hungry anyway. Along in May I was doing a lot of hard riding. I had about three head of horses and was having a hard time. As much as I rode, a good share of the cows got away from me. I could send this dog just as far as he could see me wave my hat and bring a cow back in. He finally got sore footed and I had to leave him in camp. Nobody or anything could come into camp. I had a pile of hay there that I didn't even need to fence. I came in a lot of times to find a bunch of cows standing back from my hay pile, and the dog would be on the hay pile watching it. It was finally time to take the cattle back to Heber. I was going part way with them. I went as far as Red Creek, which was about half way, then came back home again. I made the sad mistake of letting them take my dog to help them out. That was the last time I seen my dog. When they came back my dog wasn't with them. I shed a few tears, and for months I would catch myself looking back for my dog, and then realize he was gone. It was like losing one of my best friends, and I missed him very much. [pg 10] I would like to tell you another little story about Red Creek. Paddy Clyde's father-in-law Dave Murdock and his sons had a ranch on Red Creek. Dave, the father, was a half brother to Ab Murdock, who was around this area quite a lot. Ab had a bad reputation of living outside the law. He was a half breed Indian, and he stayed with us quite a lot, even when I was a small boy. anyway, he got in trouble here one spring. He was supposed to have stolen a horse from Al Skrugs, who was a Deputy Sheriff at that time. So Skrugs went after him. There was a man by the name of Bub Meeks with Ab. He was quite a character. I guess he did a lot of things that wasn't lawful. I remember him quite well. He was friendly and sociable and had many friends here. He died in the State Hospital in Evanston when he was an old man. Anyway, he was with Ab Murdock at this time. Skrugs met Ab and Bub coming up a dugway from the ranch house and the story was that Skrugs told him to surrender, but Ab went to turn around in his saddle and Skrugs shot him. Murdock didn't even have a gun on him. I know the very spot where this happened because I was very close to the Murdock family. I had lots to do with them years later. I think of it every time I go through that area. After I came back from trailing cattle, I guess I wanted to drift a little. So after a short time, I decided to take my horses up to Paddy's ranch on Yellowstone Creek and turn them loose for the summer, head out some place and find me a job. I went up to Paddy's and told him what I planned to do. He said, "If you want to work, why don't you stay here and work for me?" So I went to work for him on his ranch. I guess I was up there for about three weeks before anyone knew where I was, except Paddy. He went to town one day and ran into Mother. She wanted to know if he had seen me. I spent the summer there on the ranch with him. I did quite a lot of fencing, and we had quite a lot of hay to put up. After haying, we did quite a lot of riding. There were a lot of Heber cattle scattered around on the range, and Paddy had his own running up Yellowstone Creek. Most of them would come home in the fall if we didn't gather them in, but he came home one night and said there were two roundups to go. One over on Dry Gulch, and one on Rock Creek. He told me to go to the one on Dry Gulch, and that I would see something there that I had never seen before. I would see the old farmers come up from Roosevelt. They all had a few cows up there. All of a sudden, some farmer will say, "There is old Jers" and make a dive out in the herd for old Jers. You will see hay ropes for lariats, and blind bridles, and old cow ponies. I went to this roundup and took the first bunch in on the holding grounds. I had a tent, bedding and food with me. I found a camp spot and fixed my camp. Later, there were more cattle coming in until dark. The next morning, the boss headed us out to ride our circles, and I guess we spent two days gathering cattle and holding them there. Finally the day came when we were to cut out these cattle and take them home. We had a man from Altonah that had two or three cattle out on the range. He was from Oklahoma originally, and he wanted to see a roundup. He wanted to stay all night, so I told him he could stay with me. I had never pitched my tent, and another old fellow from town wanted to stay with me, so the three of us bedded down in this bed. Max didn't do much sleeping all night. There was a tent peg under him, and maybe a rock or two. This was his first experience of roughing it. When morning came, he had had enough and went home without his heifers. We had a man cutting on the East side and one on the West side cutting all of the cattle that went those directions. Anyway, I seen the very thing that Paddy said I would see. There was an old man from Roosevelt riding a little sorrel mare with a pancake saddle, a blind bridle, and a hay rope for a lariat. He saw old Jers out in the middle of the herd and he went after her. His horse was a pretty good little cow pony, so he took after old Jers. She turned quick and the horse followed her, but the man didn't. She left him on the ground out in this herd of cattle, but someone went to his rescue. It was quite an experience for me, because I loved that kind of life. I loved the outdoors and loved the range. It just seemed to be a part of me. I loved to be with livestock. The association with the men that rode the range was a great life for me. A fellow by the name of Nick Killian rode with Chase and me quite a lot. He was a wonderful guy and we had a lot of good times together. For instance, the three of us were riding together on Fall in Rock creek. We would have to get up early and be in the saddle by daylight. We would take turns getting up and getting breakfast. This morning it was Chase's turn. We had plenty of honey in camp. It would get cold and stiff during the night. We wore two pair of overalls all the time. Chase took a quart this honey and poured about a third of it in Nick's pants between the two pair. Of course it was alright until we got out riding and it warmed up. Then Nick got to sticking to his saddle. Such was life in the cow camp. [pg 11] One day we were riding circle. I was riding a horse that we used for a work horse and a riding horse, too. He was kind of a knot headed animal, and we run into a cow that had a sore eye. We thought we would stretch her out and examine here and see if we could do anything for her. Chase caught her by the head, and I got her by the feet and discovered she had a cancerous eye. There wasn't much we could do. It was mud about four or five inches deep, and Chase was pretty fast on foot--a good foot racer. He had a pair of bat-winged chaps on. Anyway, I told him to take his rope off, and I would hold her down. I knew she was on the fight, so he took his rope off her head and started coiling it up. He got about a third of the way to the fence, and I turned the cow loose. She took after him and I hollered, "look out!" Boy if you ever seen a man run, he really stepped out of it and got around his horse just in time. He always swore he would get even with me some day, but that day will never come in this life. I had the sad experience of helping bury him on the 18th day of February, 1975. It was just like losing a brother. I went to work for Paddy again, feeding his cows. He had bought up quite a bit of hay around the valley. I stayed at John Ashby's [John Latham Ashby] where he had bought some hay -- a real fine man. We were good friends, but he had to go to the army and left his brother there. this was in the year of 1918, in the first World War. I ran out of hay around the first of the year. I had called Paddy a time or two and told him I was geting low on hay, but he never got out to get me any more. So I had to move the cattle to the ranch up on Yellowstone Creek. He had a big barn full of hay, and a big stack besides. In the meantime, the war was over, and Asa Snyder (we called him Snyde) came home from the army. I was the only one of the old gang around there, and he was the first to come home. I asked Snyde to come up to the ranch and stay with me, and I would give him half of my wages. I was only getting fifty dollars a month, and he was happy to go along. We trailed the cows up to the ranch, and it took us a good day. We had to leave one old cow along the trail, and went back the next day in a sleigh and hauled her home. We had an old 25-35 rifle, but you couldn't hit anything with it--at least I couldn't. There was a rabbit sitting upon a big rock, and I said, "Well Snyde, we'll have rabbit for supper." So I shot and missed it. It went down in a hole in the rocks. We went over there and I thought maybe I could reach the rabbit down int the hole. I stuck my arm down in and I couldn't find him. But when I went to get my arm out, it was stuck. I had on a big heavy coat, leather cuffs, and gauntlet gloves. We worked there quite a while and finally made it, but it sure tickled Snyde. He said, "Boy, I've been wanting to do something to you for a long time, and now I will have to cut your arm off!" We finally made it home and got our chores done. We really enjoyed ourselves playing around like a couple of kids, but we had enough work to do to keep from getting bored. We had a couple of cows that were awful breachy, and they kept getting in the hay stack. We had one that was mean and would fight anytime she caught you out on foot. Snyde got mad one morning and said those cows would come out the same way they went in where they had broken the fence. So he went after them. That old cow put him back out of there in a hurry. I knew what would happen but didn't say anything. I only stood back and watched the fun. It seemed like something was always happening for a good laugh. One time Paddy and I had two yearlings in the corral to brand. We didn't bother to saddle a horse. He put his rope on its head, and I put mine on its feet, and we stretched it out. I had my rope wrapped around me and was going to hold it down. I could se that the other one was mad, but I didn't say anything to Paddy. He had his back to it branding the critter, and the loose one came after him. I waited until it was getting quite close, then I hollered at him. He turned just in time and kept it off with the hot iron until he got to the fence. I hadn't thought of myself, and when Paddy was on the fence, and I had had my laugh, it came after me. I really had to do some scrambling to get untangled out of the rope to protect myself. These things were a lot of fun anyway. We had a beaver dam about three quarters of a mile from the house up on the creek. A spring coming down out of what we called Cove Canyon and kept it open all winter. we would ride up there every few days to try and shot a duck that was always on that pond. We tried to shoot it with our rifle, but we never could hit it. One day, Snyde and I went down to see if there were any fish in there. Man, talk about fish, there were a lot of big old red bellied trout that would weigh about two pounds. We decided to try and get some the next morning. I told him I would tie a piece of wire on the end of a stick and lasso them. He said, "Man, that is the craziest idea I ever heard of. I always thought you were crazy, and now I know it. Imagine a man thinking that [pg 12] he could lasso a fish. I'll show you how to get those fish." So we went in and fed our cows. I got an old broom and took the wire off it and burned it to soften it up a little. He got a stick about five feet long, and wired his pocket knife to it real good. He filed the blade down to a pin point. He was carrying on all the time about how he was going to show me how to get them fish, and how that crazy idea of mine wouldn't work. But I knew what I could do, because I had done it before. Next morning we hurried with breakfast and our chores, and headed for the beaver dam. He got out on the dam and was poking around with his spear, trying to stab a fish. I went out in the brush and cut a willow about twelve feet long. I tied a wire on the end of it and put it out in the water. I looped it over a nice big trout, pulled it out, and said, "Here, Snyde, take that out of there so I can get another one." Man, you should have seen him go in the air. He jumped up and down on that beaver dam, threw his hat down and stomped on it, and about went wild. By that time, I had another one. "You got another of them wires?" he asked. I said, "No, they are no good. Go ahead and stab them the way you had it figured." He was going back to the ranch to get some wire, but I told him we didn't have any more old brooms. He threatened to tear up our only good one. He started out, so I told him if he was going to be a boob like that, I had one I would let him take. I had four or five of them in my pocket. I gave it to him and he went and cut him a willow and wired it on. He was having a little trouble at first, and I had to show him how. Finally, he got to catching them, and we sure had a lot of fun. It was quite muddy on the bottom of the pond, and got riled up pretty quick, but we stayed there all day and caught twenty-two of them. What I mean they were really nice ones. We would go down town about every two weeks to see if our folks were well. We wen down the next Sunday and took these fish home. One of our dear old friends, Les Shiner's mother, was down with the flu and was in pretty bad shape. So we left some of these fish for her. She told us after that was all that saved her life. We took what we wanted home, and gave the rest to the neighbors. We didn't have any freezers in those days. We went back to the ranch the next day. Snyde was just an overgrown kid, really. There was an old ironing board there, and a little old truck. He would lay the board up on the bed and would load this truck with potatoes. He would get stuck and cuss and swear and have a terrible time and would finally make it to the top. He would play like that for hours. I would be cooking, reading, or something, and just listen to him. He was good company to have around. By spring we had the fish all caught out of the pond. There must have been over a hundred of them. We kept two saddle horses in all winter and kept them in good shape all the time, along with our team. One morning, we rode into town and there was one man leaning on the hitching post. He said, "Don't you boys know it's dangerous to try to be safe around this town? There are only eight people laying dead in this town and not enough people well enough to dig their graves." This was during the flu epidemic of World War I. I'll tell you, it was pretty sad. Of course we would have to know who they all were, and always it was some close friends. One boy lay beside his father and sister and watched them die. He almost died, too. One lady lost her husband, oldest son and oldest daughter. My good friend Dick Wandroads, the Indian that I stayed with overnight, died with the flu, along with several other choice Indians. It was really a dreary time. You never seen any smiles on faces, because it seemed like everybody was trying to do something to help someone else. We were all in trouble. This one young fellow, Lawrence Rich, told me one day, "Wif, I am going to get the flu and I'm not going to live." I told him I didn't like to see him that way, but he said he couldn't help it because he knew it was going to happen. Sure enough it did, along with two of his brothers. They were quite a large family, and they lost their share. We went through the winter that way. Mel Behunin, a good friend of mine, almost died with it that winter, but finally made it through. He later moved to Wyoming and died here several years ago. The flu started to die out along towards spring. Les Shiner came home from the service and came right up to the ranch. He stayed there for a few days. Then he and Snyde left me there alone again. Spring was about ready to break anyway, but they decided to have a dance. The flu quieted down pretty well, and everybody was excited because we hadn't had an entertainment for a long time. We were anxious to get together again. We had our dance. We all went, but it was a pretty sad affair. It seemed good to get back together again for a little amusement, but there were quite a number of our old friends that were gone. Things like that in your life you never forget. They are sad occasions when you lose some of your very choice friends. Time went on just the same. [pg 13] I had run out of hay entirely and turned the cattle loose the 15th of March. As luck would have it, spring broke early that year, so I put the cattle up on the slopes of the hillsides where the cattle didn't get the feed in the summer time because it was awful rough and no water. The melting snow made plenty of water, and there was a lot of bunch grass. So I herded my cattle up in there a few days until they got used to staying. I never lost any, and brought them out in pretty good shape. Finally Paddy came home and I left. Les Shiner and I looked around for a job herding sheep or something. We couldn't find anything, so we decided we would go to Wyoming. We landed in Evanston the third day of May in 1919. We went in to Blythe and Fargos, and a guy by the name of Hogan was running the store at that time. We told him we were hunting work, and he said we were just the men they were looking for. Chipman and Grant were shipping some sheep in from Nevada and would be there in two or three days. He said, "They have a bunch of camps and horses out at Wasatch, and you can go and take care of them. There is a job there for you as soon as the sheep come in." We went out the next morning with nothing to do for a few days, only feed and water this bunch of horses. Finally, the sheep started to come in. They were shipped on the rairlroad, so they headed one herd after another out. They wound up with seven lambing herds. I was put with one herd and Les with another one. We stayed that way for about six weeks. They were taking the sheep out for the summer range. Les and I weren't going to stay for the summer, and my herd was the first sheared. I tromped the wool for all the herds, and Les helped up pat way on the summer range, and then came back. We were in Evanston when the country went dry (law passed against alcoholic drinks). There was a great celebration going on, and they got the hearst out at midnight to bury the town. It was pretty quiet the next morning, only there were about a hundred drunks laid out on the lawn by the depot. We left town that morning and went back out to camp. We got s a pack load of "spirits" to drink and headed for home. It was just as dangerous then in Wyoming as it was in Utah, because it was a national law that there was no more liquor. It took us two or three days to get home, and pretty soon the fourth of July came around. We put on quite a celebration. Bill Gurr and I weren't quite as bad as the rest of the gang. We sobered up in time to play a game of baseball that afternoon with the team. We had a pretty good time and finally the rest of them came out of it. We went to the dance that night and had a good time. Times were pretty quiet. We jobbed around in the hay fields some, but I was getting restless again and wanted to get out and go somewhere else again. I decided maybe I would go back to Wyoming again. Paddy Clyde had sold out to a man by the name of Draper Giles from Tabiona, and he bought in on a ranch in Lonetree with Bill Buckley. I thought I would ride over the hill and see how Paddy was getting along. Another guy and I had been sleeping it off for a couple of hours. We got up and went over town. The first thing I saw as Paddy's horse tied up in front of the store. I walked in and shook hands with him. The first thing he said was, "come and go back with me." I said, OK. So I came over the mountain with him, and that was really my first introduction to Lonetree. I hadn't seen his family for some time. HIs oldest girl was bout sixteen and was quite a girl--one of the biggest tomboys you ever seen. She was quite a horseman. Paddy had a Model T Ford, so we went down to the store - about five or six miles - after some groceries. We came back up the East side. I hadn't seen Laura yet. She was out riding when I first got there. We looked out across the fied , and there she come on a big bay horse. She had a straw hat on, and a ribbon on it to hold it on. Only it wasn't on. It was flying back behind along with her red hair. I have often thought of that. If I could have had a picture painted of her, it would have been a real picture of a typical western girl. Next morning we decided that we had better get ready for haying. Av Hanks lived about ten miles below Lonetree, and he was going to help us hay. We were working on machinery to get it ready for haying. In the meantime, the Buckley family had moved out to the ranch, and I got acquainted with them. I enjoyed it very much. I mixed in with some wonderful people. Finally we started haying. I was going to run a bullrake, because I had run one before, and none of the rest of the crew had. Paddy came to me and wanted me to run a mowing machine, because he had four or five head of colts there that he wanted to break. That was a good place to break them. I hayed there quite a number of years, and I helped break quite a number of horses. After haying, I came back over the mountain after his cattle, and had a man with me by the name of Martin Schwab. Somehow or other, they were tied up until we couldn't get them, so I stayed over there to help gather them. Then I stayed home all that winter. [pg 14] The next summer, I thought I would head out again. So I went out to Price. I didn't like it there. Then I went into Salt Lake and it was too hot there. So I wound up back out in Wyoming again. I stopped in Millburne to see my sister Mabel. While there, I called Buckley in Lonetree to see about a job haying. They were pretty well filled up with help, mostly a group of boys out of Salt Lake that had never seen a ranch before. So he said come on over, we sure need you. I got a ride over to Lonetree with the mail man, and Harry Buckley met me down at the store. I got there too late to do anything that day and figured my job would be stacking hay. The next morning, Mr. Buckley told me to pick my horses and go on a mowing machine. We were allowed three horses, so I picked mine. One I picked was a grey horse

  
  

• Sources

  [S203] Ancestry.com, Unknown, (Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2010. Images reproduced by FamilySearch.Original data - Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920. (NARA microfilm publication T625, 2076 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Rec), Year: 1920; Census Place: Election District 11, Uinta, Wyoming; Roll: T625_2029; Page: 9A; Enumeration District: 99; Image: . Birth date: abt 1889 Birth place: Utah Residence date: 1920 Residence place: Election District 11, Uinta, Wyoming http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=sse&db=1920usfedcen&h=80831918&ti=0&indiv=try&gss=pt [S215] Ancestry.com, Unknown, (Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002.Original data - United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930. T626,), Year: 1930; Census Place: Millburne, Uinta, Wyoming; Roll: 2625; Page: 1B; Enumeration District: 12; Image: 366.0. Birth date: abt 1887 Birth place: Residence date: 1930 Residence place: Millburne, Uinta, Wyoming http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=sse&db=1930usfedcen&h=113253186&ti=0&indiv=try&gss=pt [S83] Ancestry.com, Unknown, (Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006.Original data - Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910 (NARA microfilm publication T624, 1,178 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Wa), Year: 1910; Census Place: Clear Fork, Marshall, Kansas; Roll: ; Page: ; Enumeration District: ; Image: . Birth date: 1886 Birth place: England Residence date: 1910 Residence place: Clear Fork, Marshall, Kansas http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=sse&db=1910uscenindex&h=133195099&ti=0&indiv=try&gss=pt [S32] Unknown, (Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com. Original data: Family Tree files submitted by Ancestry members.), Ancestry Family Trees. http://trees.ancestry.com/pt/AMTCitationRedir.aspx?tid=32128504&pid=9593