My Early Years: Essays by an Idaho Cowboy

by William Senter McCarter (1887-1977)

At the age of 79, William McCarter sat down with a pencil and spiral notebook and, over the next four years, recorded the events of his youth. He dedicated these "scribblings" to his children as "a memento of their old Dad."

His son, Joe McCarter, writes, "Dad had to have been one of the great story tellers, and he enjoyed recounting old experiences, some humorous, some otherwise, as much as anyone I've ever known. He never forgot how to laugh.

"Horses were his best and favorite subject. For those who never knew Dad, he was a real cowboy. This may not mean a great deal now, but when he was 17 years old he drew top hand wages from one of the biggest cow outfits in the state.

"It's hard to think of a present day occupation that requires the same combination of skill, courage, and sheer stamina, or for that matter was so looked up to by most of the other young men of the time.

"The bad horses of today bear only a small resemblance to those of his era. It's interesting to note that he was allowed to try out for the position mentioned above because of a man being killed by one of these horses. The dead man's "string" was, by necessity, his. He rode this same horse as long as he worked for the Diamond outfit."

Settling of Camas Prairie
	"Just like a Glacier" Cow Camps Mail Order Brides Freighters and Emigrants Bill Skyles Goes to School	Farmers Indians Babington Stage Station First Settlers Early Towns
Growing Up on Corral Creek
	Mining and Homesteading Grasshoppers and Crickets Corral Creek School Hauling Fruit Haying in the Swamp	The Virginian Hauling Machinery to Carey Rattlesnake Runaway Sick and Stranded Running Horses to Glenns Ferry
Leaving Home
	Skiing to Mountain Home Getting Work with Satenan Lambing Working with Seagraves Haying at the Reynolds Going to Town	Getting Doctored Ride and Tie Riding for Hugh McMahon Building the Barber Dam Feeding for Wolfkeil Cattle Drive
Riding for the Diamond Outfit: A Year in the Life of a Cowboy
	T.C. Catlin Cavy Roundups Grub Fall Roundup Alone at Camp Little Camas Camp Gathering Strays Winter Camp No Cowpuncher Boss Checks In Getting Cleaned Up Burrow Business	Driving Bulls Dun Colt Blizzard Clodhopper Among City Folks Lost Horses Spring Gathering Feeding White Eagle Turning Out Horse Gathering Back to the Prairie Little Brown Jug
The Horse that Turned Handsprings
	A tough horse and the tough boy that tried to tame him . . .
Maps
	Idaho Maps Camas Prairie Maps	Sheep Range Map Diamond Range Maps

Settling of Camas Prairie

"Just Like a Glacier"

The place was Flathead Reservation, Montana – the year 1919. We had been trying wheat farming. There hadn't been a crop that amounted to anything raised since '16. Everybody was broke, but we had got used to it and had some fun out if it.

One evening my wife had a big dinner fixed up, and we had two of the neighbor families and a prospector by the name of Bert Wring over to break the monotony. They wouldn't allow any prospecting in the reservation before it was opened for settlement. There was quite a lot of quartz cropping out in the hills, so as soon as the reservation was opened, the prospectors came in.

This fellow Wring was no ordinary guy. He had prospected everywhere – Alaska, Mexico, South Africa – and was quite interesting to talk to. He had wintered in Boise one winter that I had been around there.

We were all setting around the table talking about what a wonderful place this would be to be from, when Bert spoke up and says to me, "Billy, I can't see how come you left a place like the Boise valley and wound up in a place like this."

"Well," I says, "Bert, I never lived in Boise valley. I was working for wages there. I was raised about 80 or 100 miles east of Boise."

Bert studied for a while then says, "Where were you from, Hailey?"

I says, "Thirty or 40 miles west of Hailey."

He says, "You don't mean to tell me you was raised on that godforsaken place they call Camas prairie do you?"

I says, "Yes, that was where I was raised."

He says, "No wonder you are here. I wouldn't be surprised to see you in Alaska farming one of them glaciers." Then he went on to tell this story.

"In the spring of '92 or '93 I wanted to get to Rocky Bar because the mining was dying down in the Salmon river country. I had wintered at Challis so the last of March I took off afoot, of coarse, with a little pack on my back and made it to Hailey all right.

"Laid over there a day or so and got in contact with the fellow that carried the mail to Soldier. We left Hailey the next morning, early. He had some kind of a sled. We got along very well till we got over the hill and hit this so called Camas prairie. There the wind was blowing and the snow was going with it. They stuck willows in the snow so they could tell where the road was. When they snowed under, they stuck up some more.

"We finally come to a ranch and changed horses there and made it on to Soldier. There was maybe a couple dozen people there and a store, hotel, and feed barn. I didn't stay there long. They had diphtheria there, and I sure didn't want to get tangled up with that. I was lucky enough to get a ride with a fellow that had stayed the night there at the hotel. He lived 15 or 20 miles west and was going home. I stayed with them folks overnight. They were a German family (the Traders).

"The snow was three or four feet deep, and there was no sign of a road showing. The young fellow drawed me a map to guide me to Louse creek and down that to the Boise river, but I would be on my own. I took off next morning with my pack and a lunch that the lady had fixed for me for the 20 mile hike to the Boise river."

At this time one of the other fellow says, "Now Bert, ain't you getting a little out of line? You were going to wade three feet of snow and hike 20 miles?"

"Wade nothing," says Bert, "you could walk on top of it. It was just like a glacier."

Cow Camps

If Bert had been a couple of months later in crossing Camas, he probably wouldn't of thought it was so godforsaken. When it had greened up, there was grass everywhere – in the hills as well as on the flat. There was no sagebrush on the prairie in them days, and settlements only along the creeks.

Camas prairie was surely a cow's paradise for summer range. I have heard old-timers tell of trailing their beef cattle to Soda Springs to ship them east in what must have been in the late '70s or the early '80s, for Hailey had a railroad in '83.

So into the '80s the prairie was commencing to be the summer range for cattle and horses from the Boise valley to the west, the Wood river on the east, and Snake river on the south.

Among the first (if not the first) to use the prairie was Wheeler and Sockman with their home ranch on Canyon creek, a few miles north and west of Mountain Home [see maps].

Then came Hutchins and Moore of the old muleshoe brand with their home ranch on an island in the Snake river, south of Mountain Home. Their summer camp was on Corral creek on a school section joining the present highway on the south. Their foreman was Frank Bown. They ran cattle until the late '90s and sold out to a Montana outfit.

There was O.P. Jonston's home ranch in the Hagerman valley and summer camp at what was later known as the pole corrals on the east end of the prairie.

Bill Black from the Wood river had a summer camp on Elk creek. Phil Ditto, also from the Wood river or Spring creek, had a summer camp on Willow creek. Ditto, in later years, moved his cattle up Willow creek and into the Smokey country and had Forest Reserve rights which was later turned over to the farmers on the prairie.

Then going west along the south edge of the prairie from the pole corrals, we would come to Davis flat. There, Davis of Clover creek had his summer camp. Dean Perkins rode for Davis for several years. Radamacher, also from Clover creek, ran cattle on the prairie, but I don't remember where he camped.

Then on west to Monument gulch, there was the camp of Billy Wilson. His home ranch was on Cold Spring creek. Also on Cold Spring creek was Stanfield and the Walker boys. The Walkers had bought Stanfield out – ranch, cattle, and everything – but in the last settlement, the Walkers kept the ranch and Stanfield shipped the cattle to Oregon. Their summer camp was the nicest camp on the prairie with some big springs that flowed on and spread out over a big meadow which stayed green until late fall. Dan Hice rode for this outfit.

Then there was Bill Blackman who also had a ranch in the Cold Springs area. I don't remember just where he had his camp, but I do remember his buckaroo Jimmy Armalagy. Blackman was a bachelor and very close, but once or twice a year he would get on a drunk, but it was always out of a bottle. He didn't throw his money away in saloons.

One time Blackman took Jimmy back to Omaha with him. Them days the railroad gave the shipper, or the man in charge, a pass and also passes for his helpers. There was one man for every two cars, but they wanted the head man to keep these passes and to identify his men at the end of each division and turn in their passes to get a ticket for their return. Anyway, Blackman got mad at Jimmy in Omaha and wouldn't get him a ticket back. He was going to get rid of Jimmy.

When Blackman got back to Mountain Home, he figured he had a celebration coming. He didn't go out to the ranch for a few days, and when he did, Jimmy was there to greet him. He had beat his way back and was known thereafter as Hobo Jimmy. I don't think Blackman ever fired Jimmy again.

On Moores flat there is a big spring and down the creek that flows from it, Fin Yearian of Boise valley had a camp. His brand was the two stripe, which he later sold to Fred and Tom Wilson, also of the Boise valley. Edgar Joplin was Yearian's buckaroo.

Then, to the east of Moores flat, Daileys had a camp. They were also from the Boise valley. In 1905, they trailed their cattle to Alberta, Canada, and their camp went to a fellow by the name of Parkins. He ran a dairy close to Boise and at one time furnished Boise with most of its milk. He used to bring a bunch of young jerseys up there in the summer and finally fenced a lot of the country. He eventually got a deed to the land that is still known as the old Parkin's place.

Then later on, Sumner and Falk had a camp on Hunter creek and Rosco Snider had a camp in Sheep basin.

Now we'll come over the hill to the old diamond camp owned by T.C. Catlin of the Boise valley. It was one of the biggest, if not the largest, cow outfits to run on the prairie. However, his range wasn't altogether on the prairie. His range started just east of the Little Camas, and he never had many cattle get east of Corral creek. He counted his cattle up into the thousands, and I don't believe anybody ever, including himself, knew just how many cattle he really had.

Then on south to the Cove (west and little north of Hill City) there was an awful nice place for a camp that had a big spring and had been fenced. Bill Palmer, who usually run a ranch herd out of the Boise valley, camped there, but Catlin's outfit would fix the fence and use the pasture when gathering beef. In later years, when the country was settling up, Miss Bessie Laird filed on the land and proved up on it. Incidentally, Bessie was the writer's last school teacher.

The Pollards, also of the Boise valley, had a camp on Chicken creek north of the old Trader place. Then there was McMahon, also of the Boise valley, who had a camp just west of Three Mile on the creek that bares his name today.

I shouldn't miss the Ake camp on Nigger creek. Frank Ake was a banker in Mountain Home. His home ranch was on Canyon creek – part of the Wheeler and Sockman ranch.

Mail Order Brides

Then there was Dutch John who had a camp in the Moores flat neighborhood and wintered in the Mountain Home area in the rye grass country. He didn't feed but very little.

He wouldn't buy himself any clothes. He always wore heavy brogan shoes and rockford socks that were always down around his shoe tops. In the fall, he'd wear an old pair of secondhand chaps that were about eight inches too short on him and some kind of old canvas coat. Anyhow, he saved his money.

John, being an old bachelor, finally sent off and got him a mail order woman. A bartender in one of the saloons where John went in to get a beer once in awhile liked to kid John. John liked him pretty well, so he told this fellow he had sent for this woman, and that she would be coming in a few days.

The bartender says, "How you going to tell which is the right lady? There may be half a dozen women get off the train."

John says, "We got that all fixed. She will have a little piece of blue ribbon pinned on her coat, and I will have a piece pinned on my coat."

So the day finally arrived for the gal to appear, and ever bartender and hoodlum in town (and some from the country) was there to meet the train with a piece of blue ribbon pinned on his coat.

When the train finally pulled in, the gal got off and sized up the situation as some of the boys, along with John, began to close around her. She walked through the most of them and grabbed a big, nice-looking young fellow and give him a kiss on the jaw and says, "Dear, I knew you was the one."

This fellow was quite a bashful sort of fellow, and it really got his goat as the rest of them began to cheer her on. John couldn't talk nothing but German, and I guess it was just as well that nobody could understand what he said.

Anyway, they finally got it all straightened out and got them married and had a big dance, and John took his bride home to his shack down in the rye grass. But they didn't live happily ever afterward. They had one child, a girl, and then got a divorce. She married some other fellow there in Mountain Home.

John would always come up to his camp during roundup time. He had a good string of horses that he had got from some fellow over in Bruneau. But when it come to cutting his cattle out of the herd, the roundup boss wouldn't let him in. His cattle were wild and hard to handle, and he would tear the herd all to hell.

The boss would tell him, "Go over there and get either Jess Hailey or Bill McCarter to cut your stuff."

So John would take around the herd till he came to one of us and would start cussing the boss and say, "Will you cut my cattle out?" We would usually make him trade horses with us to save our own. But if we was riding one of our top horses, we wouldn't want John on him.

I remember one time when we were rounding up the Moores flat country, the roundup boss told John to take a couple of men and ride the country from Louse creek down the river to Wild Cat canyon. So John took Jess and I to ride.

This Wild Cat canyon has a dead end. You can't get out of it at the top. You have to take everything down to the Boise river, then up the river and up Louse creek.

We had found quite a bunch of cattle and were coming up Louse creek. The weather was hot (it was the beef roundup in August) and the cattle were brushing up on us pretty bad. I was leading John's horse, and he was down in the brush afoot.

There was a couple of bulls fighting up on the hillside, both big bulls. Finally, one thought he'd had enough, and he broke away right down the hill with the other one hooking him in the rear. John stepped out from a bunch of brush right square in front of them. The lead bull hit him and, somehow, John was under the bull's neck and up against his chest. The bull carried him down the hill for 50 or more yards, and then they both ran over him. I thought that would be the last of John, but no, he picked up his hat and went back in the brush scaring cattle out.

In two or three years after John got a divorce, he sent off and got him another wife. Everybody said she was a real lady, a trained nurse. Shortly after they were married, John had rode up to town to get his mail. As he was riding out of town, the wind blew a piece of paper under his horse, and he bucked him off, and John hit the ground pretty hard. The doctor took him home and told him to stay in bed several days. But that wasn't for John. He got out the next day and started to fix some fence. He got wet in a shower and caught pneumonia and died. The story goes that he left an estate of 150,000 dollars – half to his wife and the other half to the daughter by his first wife.

Well that is all for Dutch John. I don't know why I have carried on so much about him, unless it is that we had so much fun with him. He was always in some kind of a mess. Sometimes with a little of our help, but usually all on his own.

Freighters and Emigrants

In the '80s, Camas prairie was a part of Alturas county [see map] which embraced Elmore, Gooding, Lincoln, Jerome, Minidoka, Blaine, Camas, and parts of Butte, Custer, Bingham, and Power. In these early days, Rocky Bar was the county seat of Alturas and had a lot of mining going on. Freighters hauled all the supplies from Kelton, Utah and all come through (or most anyway) Camas prairie.

The fine natural pasture land of the prairie was known far and wide. The freighters would lay over a few days and let their horses or mules rest up and put on a few pounds of flesh. The caravans of emigrants headed for Oregon would also stop for a few days to let their stock rest up.

The freighters would usually travel together in groups of three or four outfits. Each team had 16 to 20 head of horses (all were jerk lines) with two or three loaded wagons and a lighter wagon behind with grain and the camp. Each outfit would have a helper along for brakeman, etc.

The stage line from Kelton, Utah to Boise also passed through the prairie going both ways ever day. The stage from Hailey met this main line at Timmerman hill and forded the Wood river at the Stanton Crossing – the same as the freight wagons had to. There was one of the main stage stations on Poison creek, and I have an idea there are some of the old remains still there.

(I have no records of the following, but take it from old-timers' tales.) Anyway, some enterprising fellow figured these people, especially the freighters, would be getting dry and started a saloon on Nigger creek which is a few miles north and west of Hill City. This was a pretty wild place for three or four years. There were two men buried on Grave creek (just a little ways east of Nigger creek) that died with their boots on. Whether they were killed at the saloon or was emigrants, I don't know. I do know there is the grave of a little girl by the lava butte on Corral creek that died from an emigrant train in the '80s.

Among others that liked to take advantage of the prairie's fine grazing during the '90s were the Oregon horsemen. Almost every summer they would trail large herds of horses (1,000 or more) east to Nebraska and Kansas to sell to farmers. They would lay over for a week or ten days to rest up and let the horses fill up and would trade horses. The cowboys would usually hold their own in the trades, but the farmers would usually get skinned. I remember one instance very well.

McGowan, a farmer on Corral creek, bought a horse for his boy George who was about 12 or 13 years old. They told him he would make a good kid horse, and they would bring him up and tie him in the barn and, for several days, there he was. The old man and the boy couldn't get in the barn with him, let alone lead him out to water. They tied a bucket on a pole to water him.

Bill Skyles, a young fellow whose folks lived five or six miles west, heard about the deal. He had worked for some of the cow outfits and was a pretty good hand with horses and a good rider. He came down and got the horse out of the barn and saddled him up and rode him.

Bill was about 18 or 19 years old and had never went to school much, but wanted to. So he made a deal with McGowan. If he would board him and let him go to school, Bill would ride the horse to school every day and maybe get him broke. It was only about a mile to the old log schoolhouse on Corral creek, where we had three months of school in the winter.

Bill was in the third grade and would ride the horse up there every morning. When he would get on him when school was out, the old horse would buck and bawl around the schoolhouse and finally take off down the road in a run. Bill finally traded the boy a nice little bay mare for the old bawling horse.

When someone found some gold at Thunder mountain, I believe in '99 or 1900, there was quite a stampede to get there. Bill Skyles and his brother-in-law and another fellow took off for there and got killed in a snow slide. Their bodies were not found until the next summer.

Farmers

As the prairie was beginning to settle up, the main worry of the cowpunchers was – who was going to roll up the wire after the homesteaders pulled out. We didn't think they would ever make it, but they did, and in a few years there were wheat fields waving in the wind as the grass had 15 or 20 years before.

The first main settlements were along the creeks such as Soldier, Corral, Willow, and Chimney [see map]. In 1892, the grasshoppers ran most of the settlers off the prairie, although a few of them hung on [see article].

Prior to 1900, the farmers' main market was the mining camps in the Smokies, Rocky Bar, and Atlanta. There was a market for vegetables, oats for horse feed, and, in the fall, pork and dressed beef – although not too much beef, for the rustlers could furnish beef cheaper than the farmers.

In later years, I had a good many talks with Johnny Baxter about the early days. He tells about coming to the prairie for the first time as a scout for the army in 1877. He came from the south and ran into this lake [the Malad, now Camas creek] late in the afternoon. He said it looked miles wide, and he didn't know how deep. His horse was tired, so he camped and came on the next morning and didn't get in water over his horses knees.

The Malad heads in what is now Elmore county and runs east. After entering Camas county, it spreads out and forms a lake of high water over several sections of land, usually till about the 1st of July. The part of the Malad known as the swamp lays south of Hill City and some west and east of the same. This was a great hog pasture in the early days. Someone would take the hog herding job and hogs would come from as far as Wood river and Clover creek. They would usually stay in the swamp until September.

As the prairie later was named the Bread Basket of southern Idaho, this swamp should have been named the Hay Basket during the grasshopper siege in the '90s, especially for the people on Corral creek and west, and also to some of them from the Fir Grove settlement.

After the water went down, and as soon as the ground dried out a bit, then haying started. There was lots of grass meadows with very little Camas or weeds, and that was where we made hay. One wouldn't think that would have been possible with hundreds of cattle, horses, and hogs roaming the country, but after the hay was cut, they never bothered it. Neither did the Indians that came to dig Camas. Although the Indians did complain about the hogs taking their Camas.

Early Towns

The first town on the prairie was started at Peck's and called Crichton. A townsite was laid out in 1884 and, at one time, consisted of a general merchandise store run by D.C. Daugherty, a hotel, a blacksmith shop, and a post office.

In 1892 Daugherty moved his store to Soldier, close to where the road came out of the hills from the Smokey country where there was a lot of mining going on. The post office discontinued in '94 and Crichton became a ghost town.

William Phinney opened a blacksmith shop in Soldier shortly after Daugherty moved there, and Bashford started another store known as the Pioneer Store. Cap Boyce put up a hotel, livery, and feed barn. So Soldier was the main town on the prairie until the railroad came in 1911.

In about 1905, about three-quarters of a mile west of the Babington stage station, the little town of Corral began to show signs of life which consisted of a little store and post office, and a saloon and feed barn owned by H.L. Clark. Finch also put up a hotel and feed barn.

Harrison and Hale bought Clark out and rented the saloon to Cap Homer. Joe Jones put in a good line of groceries and also some farm machinery and a hotel. In about a year, Clark put up another store across the street and Cas Arnold another saloon. So Corral was on its way.

Corral got its name from the creek which was named by Hutchins and Moore of the muleshoe. I don't know just when they started in the cow business, but it was probably in the later '70s. They had a camp on the creek about one-half mile south of where the highway crosses at the present time. This is a school section which Lloyd Barron has now.

They built a house and a lot of good corrals and had about half of it fenced to hold the cattle in while they were gathering. When they would get what they wanted cut out of the roundup, the boss would have the boys take them to the "corral creek" pasture and that is how the creek got its name.

Anyway, along came a salesman who wanted to establish a creamery at Corral. They put up a nice little building and he made a go of it. The old-timers were the main subscribers. In the deal the salesman would send a butter-maker and the subscribers was to pay him 100 dollars a month. So everything worked out very well. The fellow they sent was a good butter-maker, but the trouble was getting it to market with a team and wagon in hot weather. The fellow they got the next year was just out of college and didn't turn out very well, so they closed it down. The building stood there for a year or two and was moved to Soldier and didn't have much better success there.

In 1900, the Bell Telephone put a line through the prairie from Hailey to Boise. But it wasn't finished till 1901. This made it better, especially in regard to sickness. The people up to that time had to get a doctor from Hailey. Someone would have to ride to Hailey and the doctor would drive out with team and buggy. The round trip would take 12 to 14 hours to Corral. But it was about the same time that Dr. Higgs came to Soldier.

The coming of the railroad in 1911 was hard on the old towns. Soldier and Corral were both missed by over a mile. Corral struggled along for a couple of years or so with the post office and a pool hall. Harrison and Hall had went broke and left. Clark had become an alcoholic and didn't live long. Cas Arnold moved his building to Hill City. Cap Homer also moved to Hill City. Joe Jones was shot to death by Ben Higgs in Soldier.

About the time Corral was being moved away or torn down, Amon Wilson bought the land and built a house and other buildings right where the town set. Some of the buildings were moved down to the railroad, and the store and post office was run by John May and his wife.

The town of Hill City had begun to take life even before the railroad ever got there. Hill City was first called Prairie City, but when they tried to get the name recorded, they found there already was a Prairie City in Idaho, so they changed to Hill City.

I don't remember just when the railroad came in, but I believe they drove the golden spike either in August or September 1912. So Hill City became a town at the end of the railroad with two or three good stores, a pool hall, grain elevators, and good farm land all around.

By this time, the sheep had begun to pore into the country. No longer could the settlers cut hay along the creeks in the open country, or did the bunch grass wave in the wind on the hills as the sagebrush had begun to show up.

Hill City got to be the biggest sheep shipping station in Idaho. It shipped a trail load a day during June of the 1920s and for a while in the '30s.
Trailing all these sheep into these corrals, and the ewes back out, didn't do the country any good and just about put the cow outfits out of business in the country north and west of Hill City. This had been the center of the range for Catlin and Ake and other Boise valley outfits.

But Hill City wasn't to last very long. I don't know just what happened to make it become almost a ghost town. I haven't been there for quite a while, but I think there is a store and post office and grain elevator and the railroad, but not very many trains. But that seems the way of this world. Build up and tear down.

Growing Up on Corral Creek

Mining and Homesteading

In 1886 my dad came out from Virginia. He had a brother, Jim, here in Idaho that had come a few years before during the mining boom. Jim had located a claim in the Smokey country. He called it the Tyrannus. I remember all of us (that is in the family) going over to his mine when I was probably four or five years old. What I remember most was that he had a Chinaman cook and several other men working there.

Jim had also filed on a homestead in the Wood river valley which is now part of the old Bill Black place. Him and a fellow by the name of Charley Davis had been prospecting in Wyoming and had come on to the Wood river excitement. They, of course, traveled ahorseback and had some packhorses. I don't know just what time of the year they landed there, but I remember Uncle Jim telling about them cutting hay with a scythe and stacking it up the best they could to winter the horses. Along towards spring, they finally had to cut down cottonwood trees for the horses to eat the bark.

Anyway, my dad landed in Idaho in 1886 looking for a place to build a home. He finally bought out Hicks on the old place there on Corral creek. Hicks had not proved up, so my dad had to file on the land. Hicks had filed a homestead on what is the Boardman place and built the log house there. He also filed a desert claim on the 160 just east of his homestead and a timber culture on what is our home place. Hicks later gave the Boardman place to Green Boardman for moving the log house over into the timber culture.

My dad also filed a timber culture on the home place and a homestead on the dryland. I can remember when we would move over on the dryland every summer for a few months. He had built a small house there which was later tore down and rebuilt as the kitchen on the home place. In the meantime, he had build another room onto the log house.

After my dad had made the deal with Hicks, he went on back to Virginia and disposed of his property there and the next spring moved to Idaho. As they came through Kansas City, Dad bought some machinery and had it shipped to Bellevue. He bought a wagon and two plows – one 12 inch that they called a half breaker for sod and a 14 inch stubble. Of course both were foot-burners or walking plows. There was no riding plows in them days. The breaking plow would lay the furrow over and not break the sod from one end of the field to the other. The other would lay the dirt over very nice in old ground but was not good in sod.

He also had shipped a grain drill and a harrow. The drill didn't take too much of a swath (two horses would handle it) and the harrow was the same. He had also bought two sets of harnesses and a saddle with a horn six inches or more across at the top and a very low cantle and buckle stirrup leathers. But he rode that old saddle for years, in fact, as long as he ever rode.

Dad bought a team of mules from William McCann (Jim McCann's father). Later on, he bought a team of good big mares from a prospector that placer mined along the Snake river in the wintertime and prospected in the hills in the summer. He would come up to our place in the spring with team and wagon and leave his wagon and pack his horses and go in the hills. But one spring, he never got away from the place. He took down with the spotted fever and died and was the first person buried in the Corral cemetery. This was before I can remember.

I don't know how Dad got the folks and his other stuff moved out from Bellevue. It may have been that he came out on the stage bringing his saddle and got the mules, as one of them was a good saddle animal, and hitched them onto his new wagon and moved out there that way.

I remember Mother telling about when they stopped for noon by a little stream of the nicest clear water she had ever seen. After they had eat their lunch, she walked up the stream a ways, and there was a dead sheep in it. Anyway they got out to Corral creek and moved into the old log house. I was born there the eleventh of November 1887.

Grasshoppers and Crickets

During the first several years, the times were bad with the grasshoppers and crickets. Oats was the best cash crop because there was always a sale for them in the mining camps such as Rocky Bar and Atlanta. But oats were the main target for the hoppers. A swarm of them would light in an oat field in the forenoon, and by sundown they would have every oat cut off at the stem and laying on the ground.

The hoppers were so thick on the ground that I can remember us kids would run down the road and could grab handfuls of them as they flew up in front of us. The team of mules would fight them about as bad as the horses would fight the nose flies later on. [See this newspaper story on how neighboring communities came to the aid of the Prairie's farmers.]

After the grasshoppers had worked us over for a few years, then came the crickets. I remember a bunch that was coming into our field from the east. Most of the land in the east forty – on the other side of the Hot creek – was still in sagebrush. We all got out there with tin pans or cow bells, anything we could find to make a racket, and we finally turned them back. There wasn't as much cold water run into the Hot creek then as there is now days, so when the crickets hit the creek lots of them drowned or scalded. So many of them perished in the hot water that, for a week or two, it had an awful smell.

Corral and Chimney Creek Schools

About the first thing I can remember was the school teacher, Miss Helen Daugherty, taking me to school with her now and then. I think I was three years or would be four soon. I can remember laying on a bench in the fore part of the schoolhouse and going to sleep.

The schoolhouse was only a quarter of a mile from our house on our land [see map]. It must have been the same fall that my dad had Tom Carter build an addition to the log house. That was how come Mother could board the school teacher as she did several times thereafter.

My school days wasn't too many. It was during the disastrous grasshopper years. The school year was only three months – December, January, and February. We also had interchange with the Chimney creek district. Any of the Chimney creek kids could come to the Corral creek school in the winter, and the Corral creek kids could go to the Chimney creek school in the summer.

The folks sent Card and me over to the Chimney school three different summers, I believe it was, and we hated ever minute of it. To get to this school, Card and I rode our old standby horse named Camas – a great old palomino pony. That was our first introduction to Mrs. John May, as you children will remember. When we went to school to her, her name was Miss Alley. She also taught in Mountain Home.

The school at Chimney creek started two weeks before the Mountain Home school was out, so she sent a young high school grad to teach the first two weeks. Her name was Miss Turner – a very nice-looking girl and a very good teacher. Us kids all loved her. When Miss Turner left, the girls all cried, and I think the boys eyes were a little wet. The morale was very low the beginning of the third week when Miss Alley rang the bell, and it lasted through most of the term. However, Miss Alley turned out to be a pretty good-old girl. She was courting Green Boardman (a sheepman who made his headquarters on a 160 that joined our place on the west), and she finally landed him.

One other teacher I remember was a woman named Dee Weston. I don't think either of us learned much there.

My first teacher at Corral creek school was Miss Helen Daugherty and my second was John May. This was a summer school. The next, I believe, was Clay Waldren. The pupils were Joe Babington; Pearl and Edith Combs; Ollie, Sal, Siddie, and Clarence Hedden; Manda and Della Kromeri; Jim, Dave, and George McGowan; our own clan – Orla, Sallie and myself; Arthur, Ethel, Ida, Victor, and Harry Hicks; and Frank and Minnie Wondershack.

The grades them days was designated by the reader. When you got to the fifth reader, you was supposed to be about the top, and you was supposed to be able to take Algebra and so forth. It was a long time before I got there.

Our next teacher must have been Andy Carson. He was an old Virginian and, I believe, a brother to Mrs. Meg Perkins, wife of old W.Y. Then our next was a Mrs. Chester from Atlanta. Poor woman had more than her hands full. She had more pupils than had ever been there before.
There was a young one from most every family on the creek, although the Combs girls only came the one term and, I believe, Joe Babington and Jim McGowan had dropped out. So that left my brother Card, Joe Hedden, Albert Wondershack, Mamie Kromeri, Orla Hicks, and two new ones from up the creek – Bob and Clara Lansing. The Lansings were both in the upper grades and very nice kids. The teacher had a daughter Ruburta – a very nice girl one or two readers ahead of me.

Next was a girl from Bellevue and a dud. The school was not much that winter, although they had lengthened the term to six months, I believe it was. But our next teacher was a Miss Harnett. I don't know where she was from, but there was a real teacher. The kids had to get their lessons done, and she had good order. The next was Miss Helen Daugherty again. She also was a good teacher. The next was Dewitt Higgs, who later became our doctor along with his bother Ayer. Both were very good doctors.

The last teacher I had was Bessie Laird, a girl from Nebraska. She had been a neighbor of Jesse Carey who had bought the Hot Springs place. She was a very good teacher and would have probably got me through the eighth grade, but I left school and home and went with some other guys out to Mountain Home to seek a job.

Hauling Fruit

In the fall of '98 or maybe '99, little Charley Babington was hauling fruit from the Boise valley and peddling it around the neighborhood. My folks thought it would be a good idea to send me along with him with a team and wagon to get winter apples and other fruit for canning.

When I got down to Charley's, he wasn't ready to start, but he said if I would help him, we would start at noon and go to Little Camas for the night [see map]. So that was what we did.

We spent the next night at Indian creek and the next day we pulled into south Boise about noon and ran into Lew and Sal Hedden. They were picking apples there. We didn't load up where they were working.

Instead, we all went over to town that afternoon. Sal and me got on the streetcar and went up to the Natatorium and took a swim. Then we went back to town and just looked things over, which wasn't much of a job them days.

We camped there in the orchard. The next morning we started picking what fruit we wanted and took some that was already picked and got ready to pull out the next morning. While we were getting supplies, I heard a familiar voice. I stepped out of the trees and, sure enough, there was Ray Williams asking if he could stay overnight. The owner didn't seem too interested about the proposition. Ray was an orphan boy. He stayed at the Cas Arnold place about a mile or a little more south of the Chimney creek schoolhouse.

Ray was traveling on a bicycle. He had been some kind of a messenger boy at Caldwell. He had on good clothes and a bundle tied on his wheel and was headed for the prairie to help Fred Burnett feed a bunch of cattle down in the swamp through the winter. So we took him in.

As we were pulling up Bennet creek the next day there was a cold wind, so Ray said he believed he would get on his bike and go on ahead and wait for us at Dixie.

There was a stage station about half way up the Dixie hill. As we came down (Charley was some ways ahead of me), a fellow came out and stopped me wanting to know if I knew anything about a boy coming down the hill on a bicycle. I, of course, told him yes. He had been away from the station, and when he returned, this boy was laying along side of the road – plum knocked out. He picked him up and had him laying on a bed in the station. When I went in and commenced to talk to him, Ray began to come out of it. He said the bike got the best of him and throwed him. Anyway, we loaded his bike back on the wagon and came on over to Little Camas and camped there that night.

When we got out our grub box, there wasn't anything much left in it but salt and pepper and a little piece of bacon. I thought maybe Charley would suggest we eat over at the house or buy something out of the store – maybe a few spuds – but Charley says, "No, we got lots of grub."

The store was run by ex-senator Bailey. It seems Charley had asked before what spuds were worth, and Bailey told him he didn't know what they was worth, but he sold them for four cents a pound (spuds them days was usually about seventy-five cents a hundred, or maybe one cent a pound).

Anyway, Charley got a bucket of apples out of the wagon and after frying some bacon, he dumped the sliced apples in and fried them, and they sure tasted good. That was the first fried applies I had ever eaten.

We, of course, got home that day. Ray quit me as we came along close to Burnett's (Harry Kunkle's now). I never saw much of him for several years. He had got to working tending sheep for the Skillern outfit on the south side of the Snake out from Bruneau some miles. In this same area, Kitty Wilkens had some corrals for corralling horses right near a good spring. She tried to protect the country around the corrals for their saddle horses while they were gathering the range horses. (She was the horse queen of Idaho – probably didn't know how many horses she had).

When Ray pulled a camp into this spring, Kitty's foreman Joe Pellissier, looking over the range and so forth, seen it and told Ray to have it out of there by the next day. Ray didn't get out, and the next day when Joe came riding up around the corrals, Ray up and about killed Joe right on the spot. At the trial with the Sheep Association's lawyer and so forth, Ray came clear, although they did bar him from working with the sheep anymore but gave him the job of trapping and poisoning coyotes.

I never saw much of Ray afterwards, but I remember seeing him once on the road west of Corral. He had been trapping wild horses over in the Laid Low Park country. He was riding one and leading one with a pack that wasn't much to brag about.

Haying in the Swamp

We used to cut hay down in the swamp. My dad had bought 166 acres in the swamp (south and east of Hill City) from a fellow with quite a family of boys by the name of Osborn. They had lived there long enough to prove up. It had a log cabin that must have been 40 feet long and had three rooms and a good well, so we had a place to camp. But the next year, someone stole all the lumber, windows, and doors out of it. They must have done it in the late fall. Anyway, when we pulled down there to hay, we had to camp outside as usual.

The country was all open them days. I always enjoyed camping and making hay down there, especially in the mornings. There were lots of cattle run there, and the old bulls would get up early and start sending their calls, and they would get answered from all directions, and then the cranes would start their songs.

We would rake the hay up into big shocks, and when we thought we had enough would start hauling it home. Or sometimes we would stack it down there and O.J. would go and batch in the old Hicks house and feed it out.

The Virginian

One time O.J. wasn't down there, but Dad, Card and I were doing pretty well. We had quite a lot of hay in the shock, and some that wasn't, when it commenced to rain. The next morning there was two inches of snow on the ground. It was the third day of July, so we came home and the next day went down to Soldier to celebrate the fourth.

Card and I went down ahorseback. As we came out the lane there at home, we saw a boy over at the Hot Springs go out to the barn and get on a horse. He caught up with us before we got very far. He says, "You boys going to the celebration?" We told him we were. He says, "Maybe I could go along with you." We told him sure.

He was a clean nice-looking boy, a year or two older than I was. He said they had come up from Boise. His dad was taking baths in the hot water for whatever ailed him. He said his name was Wister. I have often wondered, and do yet, if his dad wasn't the Wister that wrote the book The Virginian, as he was supposed to have done his writing in Boise.

Hauling Machinery to Carey

In the fall of 1902, my dad took a trip over into the Wood river country to buy hay, as we had begun to get more cattle than we could rustle hay for. He wound up buying at Carey on the Little Wood.

The next spring he and Orla bought the place that he had got the hay on, and he loaded all the machinery he could get on what we called the big wagon and started me to Carey. The roads were soft and muddy with some snow yet in places. I hadn't drove four horses much and got stuck just west of the Pearson place, about four and a half miles east of Soldier. I didn't know what to do and was there two or three hours until George Peck came along. He says, "What's the matter sonny? You stuck?"

I says, "I sure am."

He says, "Your horses balky?" I told him that they wasn't but hadn't been worked all winter and was a little cold-shouldered.

He says, "You watch my team, and I'll give them a try." He got up on the wagon, gathered up the lines, and spoke to them, and they pulled her out. He was a teamster.

He wanted to know where I was headed, and I told him my story. He says, "You had better stay at my place tonight. When you get there, unhitch your team and put them in the barn. I'll be back in a couple of hours."

When he got back, I had a campfire and was cooking my supper. He wanted me to come in the house and eat with them. I wouldn't go in – too many girls there. I was up and pulled out before they were stirring around. I nooned at Rock creek. There was nobody living there at that time.

As you leave Rock creek going east to Poverty flat and across the bridge on Wood river, there is quite a little range of hills to cross. As I pulled up near the top of the road, where it makes a turn to the right under the brow of a ridge, there was a snow drift I knew I couldn't possibly get through.

I was pretty scared and sized up the situation for quite a little while. There was only one thing to do – take off straight down the hill (which was pretty steep) and across the draw (where there was a little stream of water) and see if I could get over onto the next ridge. I was afraid I'd bog down in the draw and if I didn't, could I pull up the hill back to the road? Anyway, I had to try it. I had a good wheel team that I knew would hold back all they could, and my brakes were good.

So off I took down the hill and across the draw. It took me quite awhile to get back on the road, but I made it on over to Poverty flat and camped that night at an old fellow's place. He let me have hay and turn my horses in his corral. He had a few head of cattle and was having trouble with his calves coming with goiters and choking to death. A few others around the country had the same trouble, but I don't remember of us having any trouble that way.

The next day I got to Carey without a mishap. There was plenty of work to do, because most of the place was still in sagebrush mostly higher than a man's head. What was cleared was seeded to hay, and O.J. and I cleared what more we could and put it in grain and a half acre in potatoes. We shoveled ditches and made some new ones.

We, of course, had to batch, and O.J. was one of the world's worst cooks. The log cabin was the only building on the place and chuck full of bed bugs. When the weather got warm, we had to move out and sleep outside. There was a good well and good water, and we burned sagebrush for wood.

Rattlesnake Runaway

Along in the latter part of May, we took off with the team and some running gears of a wagon up into the Muldoon country to get some timber for a derrick to stack the hay with. It was about 25 or 30 miles away. We forded the river over to the west side, to a gulch they called the Hi Five. It had quite a lot of fir timber, but we had to hunt for quite a while, but finally found some that would do. We got it cut along about sundown and went back to the wagon.

We had hobbled the horses and turned them loose. There was good feed and they hadn't got very far. We brought them back to the wagon, gave them a feed of oats, tied them up over night, cooked supper, and rolled out our beds. Got up early the next morning and turned them loose for a couple of hours then harnessed them while they were eating another feed of grain. We had to drag our timber quite a ways. We got it drug out and loaded and headed out about ten o'clock.

Everything went alright until we were coming down across Muldoon flat and spotted a big rattlesnake alongside the road. O.J. says, "Let's kill him." We couldn't find a rock or a thing to smash him with, so O.J. got hold of a piece of bark hanging down from one of the logs and peeled it along the log for a ways and broke it off. He had a strip probably about ten feet long. So he pops the old snake with that. The snake started to rattle and our team did too. They took down the road for a ways and then off to the west.

They had got about a quarter of a mile away from us, when they came to this draw that ran west to the river. On the north edge of this draw was a rim rock, about four or five feet high. When they hit this rim, over they went. When the hind wheels went over, they couldn't get to the ground because of two or three logs that were probably 30 feet long. The weight of our load had been two-thirds on the rear axle. Anyway, when the ends of them logs hit the ground, it stopped the runaway. In fact it stopped everything. The team couldn't pull it off, try as hard as they could.

We sure hated to unload them long logs, so we finally decided to loosen our rear binding chain and let the rear wheels to the ground. We carried rocks and built up under the wheels, so, when the weight came on them, they would roll to the front and give the team a little help. We also took the back binding chain and put it on the front to keep the logs from pulling out.

So everything was ready. O.J. picked up the lines and spoke to the team. Everything started to move a little, and when the hind wheels came off the rocks, it give them a start, and they kept it moving until they were up onto solid ground. O.J. stopped them, and we rebound our load. We vowed that if there were any more rattlesnakes along the road, we wouldn't pay them any attention.

Sick and Stranded

Everything went along all right for a while. We got the derrick built and the first cutting of hay up. O.J. took a team and went over to the prairie to help put the hay up there, while I was to irrigate there at Carey. I got along very well for a few days, then my water begun to fall off. I went over to see Simpson, who lived just west of us about a quarter of a mile. He said he would see what he could do, although he had his own irrigating to do and was also helping someone else.

Mrs. Simpson came out to where we were talking and asked me if I was feeling all right. She says, "You don't look like you are feeling too good." I told her I was all right, but I wasn't. I had dysentery.

I never got out of bed alongside of the hay stack the next day. But the next morning, Mrs. Simpson sent their oldest boy, Ray, to see how I was and if it wasn't all right to bring me back with him. I sure hated to go over with him, but I hadn't eat any for a couple of days and was really sicker than I knew.

Anyway, Mrs. Simpson took me in and give me medicine. She put me to bed with hot cloths on my stomach, and it really brought me out of it. I was there for two or three days. When I was leaving, she asked me what I was going to do. I told her I thought I would get on a horse and go back to the prairie and tell O.J. to come and tend his farm. She says, "You do that."

The next morning I caught a bay horse that O.J. had traded for that spring. He was a pretty good horse but mean to get on. I rode him home that day and was sure tired that evening. I hadn't eaten anything since morning and not too much then.

I asked Mother where Orla was. She said he was with several other young people who had gone over to Red Fish lake for an outing. About then my dad came in and said, "What you doing back here?" I told him about the water situation.

He says, "You get back over there and see if you can't do something about it." I didn't go back for a couple days, as I had lost all interest in Carey. I had only been there two or three days when O.J. showed up and started giving me hell about things. So, I saddled a horse and pulled out again.

Running Horses to Glenns Ferry

When I came back from Carey, I didn't do anything much for a while. Then one day Fred Koontz and I was riding up the road from Corral and met a fellow, a man probably 35 or 40. He stopped us and says, "You boys live around here?" We told him we did, and he says, "These are my horses here in this pasture (that was the old McGowan and then Hobdey place), and I want to take them to the railroad in a few days and would like to hire you boys to help me take them down." We said we would – that was just what we would like to do.

His name was Abe Wertz, and he had bought the last of the old FF horses and had some more in different brands – about 200 head in all. He had been running horses all summer. Stover Mink had been helping him some, as his brothers had traded for some horses on the range that belonged to a fellow named Carter Edwards.

In a few days the morning came to start with the horses. Four of us – Wertz, Stover, Fred and I – took them down across the Malad and up the trail to the top of the divide at the east end of Davis mountain.

There is a basin, or quite a flat, there where the head of the east fork of Clover creek heads. There, we held them up. There was pretty good feed, and they all started to graze. Wertz told Fred and me to watch them and let them quiet down. He and Stover was going up on Davis mountain and get a bunch up there that they had never been able to corral. There was one bay gelding who led the bunch that was hard to handle.

Wertz says to me, "You are riding a pretty good horse. You see them three trails coming off the mountain through the rim rock?" I told him I did.

He says, "In about an hour, or a little over, you go up and get close to the highest one where it breaks over the rim. But get out of sight, because when this bunch hits here, that bay horse will try to double back and come back up one of the other trails. We will be right behind them and head him off at the two lower trails. So keep a good watch and, as soon as they break over the hill, don't lose any time getting to that other trail, because he's fast and when he sees this bunch of horses here, he'll know something is up."

I got up to my station and hadn't been there long, when here they come. That horse leading the rest tried just what Wertz said he would. He tried all the trails. I guess he had done it before, maybe several times.

After we got him in the bunch, Wertz said he was going to take the lead, and for Stover and me to take each side and for Fred to bring up the rear. Mine and Stover's orders was to stay even with this bay horse. If he worked up towards the lead, we was to work up the same way and the same if he worked back. So we started them off on a long trot back down across the Malad and up across the prairie to the Walker cow camp.

We put the horses in a well fenced pasture and stayed all night with Charley Walker. We started out the next morning the same way and were in the Glenns Ferry stock yards quite awhile before sundown.
There were several Indians camped around there and they came right over when they seen the horses. We did have a few Indian ponies, and they spotted them right away and would point them out and say, "Him my horse."

Wertz would kid them along, "Where you get a good horse like that? Maybe him no lead. How you get 'em?"

"Yaw, him lead. Me get 'em."

So after quite a powwow Wertz would tell us to catch 'em and sure enough, they would lead. They were the regular Indian ponies, weighed about 800 or 850, but would carry a big fat Indian all day.

The next trouble was the cars wasn't there and didn't come until the second day. Wertz stayed close to the yards. I think he slept there by the gate. Whether he had a bed, or not, I don't know. Anyway, the next afternoon we turned the main bunch out to water at the river but not the bay gelding. Wertz said he would swim the river and probably take some more with him. We left three or four in the corral with him and did the same the next day before noon. The cars finally came a little after noon. So we loaded them and away they went for somewhere in Nebraska. We stayed another night there in the Ferry and came home the next day.

Leaving Home

Skiing to Mountain Home

In the spring of 1904, about the middle of March, a bunch of us left school and came out to Mountain Home to get jobs lambing with the sheepmen. In this bunch was Dee Miller, Fred Koontz, Clarence Hedden, Cliff Carpenter, and myself. This Carpenter kid was an orphan. He had been staying with his grandparents who had moved into a vacant house on Three Mile creek, but he had stayed most of the winter with us there at home.

When we left the Corral settlement, Arthur Hobdey took us up as far as Trader's with a team and sleigh, and from there on it was skis. Clarence Hedden had a big bed, or anyway it was heavy, so he had made a sled to haul it on. Cliff and I took turns with him for the privilege of sleeping in it.

We got to Little Camas the first day and stayed at a ranch south of Bailey's store. The next morning we took off for that low divide at the foot of Bennet mountain (the range of hills that lays between Little Camas and Dixie) [see map]. I don't remember where we got rid of Clarence's bed, but we got it on the stage, and it was at Finch's barn when we got to Mountain Home. Anyway, we got over the hill and came out on the road again on Bennet creek and were still in snow.

About four or five miles down the creek was the old Johnny-Behind-the-Rocks place. He had taken up land there along the creek and had leaned boards up against a big rock alongside the road.

He had seen us coming, and when we got near, he came out and hailed us. "Come in boys. Come in and have a cup of tea." We did, and it tasted pretty good.

I believe Johnny was the dirtiest man I ever saw. I don't believe he had ever washed his face in years, but he had a big heart. He must have been of Irish or Scotch descent, because his name (I learned several years after) was McCune. When he got sick, they took him to the hospital and give him a bath the first thing, and he died the same night, poor old fellar.

After Johnny's place, we went on down the creek a mile or so and had to leave our skis, for it was mostly mud from then on. We stuck them up on end in the willows and, as far as I know, they are still there. We took off at a pretty good gait. Seemed good to be on bare ground in through the Devil's Dive, Sagehen flat, Toll Gate and down Rattlesnake creek.

When we got within a couple miles of Mountain Home, a fellow came along with four good-looking horses and an empty wagon and asked us to climb in. His name was White, and he had taken a load of coal out to somebody. We didn't hesitate to get in. Our feet had been picking up mud for quite a ways, and his wagon wheels was doing the same. There were a lot of freighters with headquarters in Mountain Home, and some of them wouldn't have let you climb on their wagons under any consideration.

When we got into Mountain Home, there were lots of guys there looking for a job, so Miller and Koontz took the train to Glenns Ferry. I think it was about the second day, when I was walking by a blacksmith shop, someone hollered at me to come in. It was Neil Cheever. He had been working there all winter. He quizzed me about what I was doing here. I told him my story. He said, "Just what I expected. If you get low on money, drop in."

It was later that day that the three of us was standing on the sidewalk, when a fellow stopped and says, "You boys look like you have come out of the snow." We told him we had.

"Can you handle skis?" We all said we could.

He said, "I have the mail contract from here to Atlanta and one of my men that carries from Rocky Bar to Atlanta got hurt. I need a man to take his place. The wages are good – three dollars a day and twenty-four cents a pound for anything you carry besides the mail."

Cliff says, "I'll take it." And that was that. I tried to talk him out of it. Poor kid only had a dollar when we left home. I had five dollars and had paid for his last meal or two. We were only eating once a day. Could get a good meal for twenty-five cents. I had maybe a couple dollars left, but wasn't feeling too bad.

Anyway, Cliff took the job. I never saw him but once after that, and he passes me right on by. Don't know what ever became of him.

The next day I was walking around out in the outskirts and ran into Charley Porter. He had moved from the prairie a year or two before and was running a kind of haywire freight outfit there in Mountain Home. Before that he had homesteaded what is now the east 160 of the old Collis place. He had, of course, known our family for several years.

He says, "You one of the boys that come down from the prairie?" I says, "Yes."

He says, "You looking for a job lambing?" I told him I was.

He says, "Come go along with me. I'm just going to see a fellow about hauling his wool, and he wanted to take a man out as he went."

I went with him, and we met this fellow. His name was Satanen, and he was a Finlander. After Porter had given me a great recommend, the fellow says, "Yes, I take you out." I asked him when he would be going. He said, "Not for another day or two. Have lots of things to do. Going to take a big load out. See me tomorrow at Finch's barn." I told him I didn't have a bed. He says, "I fix you up."

Getting Work with Satanen and Honga

So Satanen and I finally pull out early one morning. He had a heavy load and four pretty good horses. Everything went all right till we got to the ferry across the Snake. As he pulled off the board on the far side there was a drop of a foot or so, and when the front wheels went off, the axle broke. The ferry man let him take the axle, wheels and all, from a wagon of his. It was quite a job to get it done, but we made it and pulled on over to Bruneau and stayed all night there.

The next morning we went in the general store and bought me a bed and pulled out again and stayed the next night at the Joe Black ranch. Black ran quite a lot of cattle and used to be a good roper. He competed at Boise fairs and won a good deal of the time. It was either Joe Black or Jesse Hailey (the dad of the boys I worked with later) that always won the roping contest.

It started to rain that afternoon, and we got to the headquarters camp awhile after dark. The next morning, after jacking up his partner for bringing out a kid to herd sheep, Satanen's partner, old Honga, packed up a horse with my bed on top and started up the canyon. Honga was a hard old customer. Him and Satanen were brothers-in-law – had married sisters. They had been in the Klondikes during the big gold stampede. Had made a little money and came to Idaho to get into the sheep business.

Anyway, we started up the canyon with him riding and leading the pack horse, and me following along behind. This was what they called Shoo Fly creek. We went up the creek about a mile and took off on a side gulch. When we got to the top, the country leveled off and didn't look so bad.

When we got out on this flat a ways, the pack horse took off bucking and got away from Honga. He had a set of tent poles and some groceries, besides my bed, on him. The horse got the poles loose and, when the end of one pole hit the ground, the other end ran through my bed. It ripped a hole about two feet long in the tarp and poked a hole in one of the quilts. Before we got straightened up, here come an old Basco. His sheep was just over a ridge. Old Honga told me to take over the sheep. He was taking the Basco with him and would leave my bed and the grub at the camp down in the canyon.

Lambing

So my first day as a sheepherder started. I had about 1,000 head of old ewes, some yearlings and bucks, and no dog. Anyway, I stuck it out for about ten days, when someone came and told me to start down on the other side of the canyon for the corrals there at headquarters. I was sure glad (and was gladder still) when them sheep went into the corral. They was to be dipped the next day. The outfit was quarantined there and couldn't leave that country [see map]. They had to dip, shear, and then dip them again.

I don't know where they got all the shearers, but they had quite a crew. Most of them was pretty fast. Got more than 100 a day. They would talk about working on north – winding up in northern Montana. It was two weeks or more before they were through with the whole rigmarole, and when they dipped the last band, the lambs had started to come.

When it come time to run my bunch out, old Honga told me I could stay there and work in the corrals. Some other fellow had sooner herd. I was sure glad.

There was a kid about my age, Jim Goldman, that had been working at the corrals that had stayed on too. Him and I used to scuffle around, as kids do, until old Honga would get after us. "Stop. Stop." he would holler at us. "You play and laugh around here. You never saw any hard times. You all foolish."

The evening they turned my bunch out with the other herder, I walked up to where my camp was and got my bed and carried it down to the corrals. They put me to picking up the ewes with lambs that had strung out from the corral. I would work them along until I got a few head, four or five, or so, and would leave them and would go on and start it again. They were moving the whole outfit clear off this country they had been quarantined on.

The first night I came back to the headquarters camp, I had just got there, when here came Honga. He rustled up some lanterns and sent me back to set them out where I had left any sheep.

The next morning I went and carried on as the day before. Had to take some white flags and find a juniper stick to tie them on, to keep the coyotes away. Finally I came to a little stream and got a good drink. I walked up the stream a ways and there was the old Basco's camp. He says, "You hungry?"

I says, "I sure could eat something."

He cooked a pretty good meal, and he showed, the best he could, where I would find the other camp. I started out and finally found it, but thought for a while I was going to have to lay out.

Working with Seagraves

The herder at this other camp told me what the score was. They had throwed the whole works together except the yearlings. I was to help him herd the big band of about 7,000 west. The Basco and another fellow or two would pick up the lambs and put out the flags and lanterns.

This fellow's name was Seagraves. He was a Virginian, who had come from the same parts as my folks and had knew my Uncle Ken Senter and his family. Seems as though he had been an orphan kid. Had worked in the coal mines in North Carolina driving a mule hauling coal out of the mine until he was 15. He made up his mind to get out of there.

To hear him tell it, he got on a freight train and beat his way out to Oregon and finally got a job herding sheep in the western part of the state. From there, he had wound up herding for old Bob Noble in the Owyhee country who, at that time, was the biggest sheepman in Idaho.

From there, Seagraves had wound up with the Finlanders. Had loaned them 2,000 dollars and had quite a role of money in his pocket. He hadn't been to town for over two years. Him and I got along fine.

Seagraves and I had it pretty easy for a while. We would let the old ewes scatter out and feed for three or four hours. The feed was good and they wouldn't move much. Then we would start them to all feeding in the same direction and would leave 40 or 50 lambs and, of course, their mothers. One night something got into a bunch and killed about 20 head of the lambs, regardless of the lanterns. Satanen set a trap the next night and caught a big lynx.

As things went along, our drop band begin to get smaller and Seagraves could handle them alone. I had to go to helping with the lambs, some of which was old enough to mark, etc. We would build a pen out of juniper and sagebrush and get a bunch of about 100 or more and work them. In two or three days, we'd do it again with another bunch.

In the meantime, they had moved Seagraves and the drop band two or three miles to another camp known as the Three Lakes. The lakes were just potholes in the lava that were maybe 200 or 300 yards across. The antelope used to come and water there at night.

I worked at this camp with Seagraves picking up lambs and putting out flags and lanterns. Then I'd go back and help mark. This went on for a few days until there was enough marked and throwed together for a band.

There was quite a lot of lambs over towards this first camp, and the old Basco was left there with them. I was sent over to his camp to help him to get them moved together for some more marking. As I went along, I noticed his lanterns hadn't been taken in or the lights put out. So I gathered them up as I went along. When I got to his camp, there he was with a white cloth wrapped around his head. He had been knocked out.

There had been an old muzzle loading rifle in his camp all spring. I don't know where it came from. He told me the coyotes had been bothering around there in the early mornings. So, he had loaded the old gun with a good charge of powder and had got up early in the morning to blast it off to scare them away. The old gun had evidently had a load in it already, for it had blowed up and cut a big gash from over his eye to over his ear.
He didn't know how long he had been knocked out – whether for just a few hours or for over 24. Anyway, I cleaned his lanterns and filled them and offered to cook him something. But I knew he wouldn't let me cook. He wouldn't let anyone, besides himself, cook in his camp, even old Honga or Satanen.

So I took his lanterns and found most of his sheep and hung them out. He wouldn't let me do any more. He wanted me to stay all night, but I couldn't do that. I told him someone would be over in the morning. When I got to my place of duty, old Honga was there, so I reported the Basco accident to him. He took off first thing in the morning.

So this is the way things went along until we finally wound up with the main camp on Battle creek. Then one morning, as Seagraves and I were getting up (we had our beds in the same locality), he says to me, "Bill I have cause to believe that Jim is lousy. You and him were scuffling around together. You had better examine yourself." And, sure enough, I had 'em.

Old Honga went wild when he found it out – fired Jim right on the spot. He rustled around and found two or three empty coal oil cans and had me cut the tops out of them. "Now," he says, "you boil clothes, bed, everything. Then the next band you take, you go to the hills for the summer."

I says, "No, I don't want to go for the summer. When we get done with this lambing I would like to go back to Bruneau."

"All right," he says, "I go about a week or ten days." And that's the way it was.

Haying at the Reynolds

When I got back to Bruneau, I struck up an acquaintance with a young fellow about my age named Jim Whitson. He was tending the feed barn that belonged to a fellow by the name of Portlock. Portlock had some horses on the range there somewhere, and someone had stolen one. They had finished the trial the day we got into Bruneau. Portlock had got the horse back and wanted to get him broke, so wanted to know if I wouldn't ride him. I offered to flip heads or tails with Jim. We did, and it fell to me to ride him.

We caught the horse and he was well broke to lead. I could use Portlock's saddle because the stirrups happened to be just about right for me. We saddled him up, and I got on. He turned out to be about half bridle-wise – never done anything. I rode him around the corral a few times. Jim says, "How about if I saddle another horse, and we go for a ride?" So we did.

The next day Jim had to go over to Mountain Home. His folks lived there. So, I took off down the valley to look for a job.

It was about the first of June. I hadn't gone too far, when I stopped at a place, a nice-looking house with a man mowing out in the front. I went out and asked him if he needed a hand. He says, "I sure do." I told him I'd go back up to town and get my bed. He says, "Where is your bed?" I told him at Portlock's feed barn. "Well it's all right. Just leave it there. We have plenty of beds." So I went to work shocking hay.

Them days alfalfa was nearly always shocked by hand with a pitch fork. He didn't have too much hay, and we pitched it on the wagon and pitched it off by hand (no derrick).

This fellow's name was Milt Reynolds. His wife was a nice person and very good-looking. They had just been married and had come from somewhere back east and had bought the place that spring.

He asked me one day where I was from. He says, "Do you know a doctor up there by the name of Higgs?" I told him I had went to school to him before he had ever got to be a doctor. He told me that him and Dee and Ben Higgs had been in the Spanish American War in Cuba together. He had been sergeant of the bunch that Dee and Ben had been in. He said Dee was a good soldier, but he sure had a lot of trouble with Ben.

Later, Reynolds picked up another boy that had pulled out from home back in Minnesota, I believe. He was crippled – had a big ankle. Said it had been broken and was never set. His old dad wouldn't take him to a doctor when it was done.

It sure was hot weather – 115 degrees in the shade one day. I remember I got to having a nose bleed ever once in awhile. I had a nice place to sleep on a screened-in porch in a nice clean bed with sheets and a pillow. One night I woke up, and my nose was bleeding. Had bled all over the pillow and some on the sheets too. I sure hated it. The next morning at breakfast I told them what had happened, and his wife says, "Don't think anything about it. I have lots of pillowcases and sheets."

Going to Town

After we got his hay up, I went up to town and there was quite a commotion. Christenson, that run the store there in Bruneau, had went off his rocks and was running around the country. He had left the store unlocked and had taken the stage to Mountain Home. Everybody said he had been acting queer for several days.

There was no telephone them days, so they decided somebody had better go after him or, anyway, notify the authorities. Some fellow said he would go and says, "Anybody want to go along?" So I told him I would like to go over to Mountain Home if he had room for me and my bed. He says, "I got a whole buckboard. Where is your bed?" I told him it was up at the feed barn.

He says, "Go and roll it up and I'll be there in about 20 minutes." I can't remember that fellow's name and don't believe I ever saw him again after we got to Mountain Home.

Anyway, they found Christenson at Boise in a hotel trying to entertain the people playing a guitar and singing. I never did know how he came out.

About the first fellow I ran into at Mountain Home was old Honga. He says, "Well, now that you got your money all spent, maybe you want to go back and herd sheep this summer?" I told him no – that I would go back up on the prairie after awhile and get a job punching cows. Anyway, he bought me a beer.

Then I ran into Mick Skyres. He was a kid that had beat his way into Hailey a couple years before. He had been dead broke, with hardly enough clothes to cover him. Now he was dressed about the same as me, only he was wearing riding boots, and I had on hobnailed shoes.

He says, "For christ's sake. Have you been herding sheep?"

I says, "Yes. What have you been doing?"

He says, "I been over in the Bruneau country running horses for Kitty Wilkens all spring." Then he says, "We had better go over to a store and change them shoes of yours." So we did. I got me a pair of boots and felt a lot better.

We fooled around town there for two or three days – eat lots of strawberries and cream at a little stand that a woman had fixed up. She had grown her berries and picked them herself every morning and, I expect, milked the cow too. We also hired bicycles and went out to the reservoir about four miles out of town every day and had a good swim. There usually were two or three other guys that would go too.

In the meantime, I had seen Bill Koontz who had a place rented right outside of town. I was going to help him hay. He would have given Mick a job too, but Mick said no. He was going to try and make it ahorseback from then on, and I never seen him again. I asked Mrs. Alf Baldwin a few years ago if she knew whatever became of him. Her dad and Mick were cousins. She said he had been drafted in the First World War and they had never heard from him again.

Getting Doctored

Fred Koontz and Barney Card came down from the prairie to help Bill get his hay up. I started pitching in the field and blistered my hands the first thing, which was not uncommon. Had bought a pair of gloves of brown color that faded on my hands from sweat, and my right hand began to swell after a few days.

Right after breakfast one morning, Mrs Koontz says, "Let me see that hand of yours." After examining it she says, "You go see a doctor. You could get blood poisoning from that." So I did.

After examining it, the doctor says, "I will have to cut into it." I don't think they had anything them days to deaden any part of you, so he had me lay my arm down on a bench and strapped it down from my elbow down.

He says, "This is so I won't cut more than I want to. It is going to hurt some." He cut a gash in the palm of my hand and the puss came rolling out. Then he took a probe and probed around. He pushed up the skin on the back of my hand and says, "That poison has sure got in there in great shape, but we'll fix it up." Then he squirted something in there to wash it out and bandaged it up and says, "You be back here tomorrow morning."

I went back out to where they were stacking and Barney says, "I'll trade jobs with you." He was driving the team, rolling the hay off the wagons with ropes. Anyway, we finished the job.

I had to stick around town there for a few days on account of this hand. I saw the doctor every morning till he finally told me I could go. He gave me a prescription to get filled at the drug store. He cautioned me to keep it wrapped up and to wash it every day with this medicine in some water and, if it didn't keep on healing, to come right back. I forgot how much he charged me, but it made quite a dent in my little savings.

Ride and Tie

Barney Card hadn't gone back to the prairie yet. He had been working some place else after Koontz got done. When I seen him on the street, he says, "What you going to do now?" I told him I was going to the prairie the first time I get a chance. He says, "I got a pretty good old horse here, and I'll ride and tie with you."

I says, "Ride and tie? What do you mean?" He says, "We'll start out in the morning. You get on the horse and ride out here four or five miles and tie the horse up. I'll start out walking at the same time, and when I come to the horse I'll get on. When I catch up with you I'll go on four or five miles and tie him up."

I told him I hated to leave my bed. "Hell," he says, "they got lots of beds up there. Leave it over there with Bill." So I did, and we started out the next morning and made it to the prairie that day.

Riding for Hugh McMahon

We was just in time to help Dave Harness put up his hay. When we were through with that, I went over to Hugh McMahon's cow camp, on what is still known as McMahon creek, to see if he would need somebody to help him gather beef. He said he sure would.

He was a rugged individual – an old Minnesota logger. We had got pretty well acquainted from riding in the fall gatherings. He could keep the bunch laughing and, when things got serious, he could shut everybody up. So I went to work for Mc. He was one of the best friends I ever had and had been for three or four years before I came out with him.

When we got the beef gathered, we throwed in with the Corral creekers and Fletchers on Chimney creek. When we got to Bellevue, we had to wait two or three days for rail cars that had been ordered for a week or so. When we got ready to load, Mc asked me if I would like to go to Omaha, as he couldn't spare the time. For one thing, he had to get Neil, his boy, down to Boise to school. I can't remember just who all went on that trip to Omaha, but there was three or four of us.

Anyway, I stayed with Mc the rest of the fall and went to the Boise valley with him for the winter. Roy Carey, who's folks had bought the Hot Springs place on Corral creek, drove our camp wagon and cooked on the trip down. Roy was going on to Oregon to work in a saw mill.

Mc had sold his ranch in the valley and would have to buy hay. He didn't have too many cattle – about 300 head. He told me he would give me the job of feeding, if he could find the right set-up. He bought pasture, so we had a place to turn the cattle in.

We pulled the wagon into the pasture, and he left me there for a few days to see that none of the cattle got out (as the fences wasn't too good), while he was getting located for the winter. He had a nice home on Warm Springs avenue there in Boise and, of course, wanted to stay home a few days with his wife and two children.

Anyway, he showed up after four or five days. He had bought hay about three miles north of Meridian. But in the deal the fellow wanted to feed the hay himself as he had a grown son and they wouldn't have much else to do through the winter.

"But," Mc says, "the Barber Lumber Company is putting a dam across the river just about eight miles above town. They want about 300 men, so you can get a job there. I wish you would stay here and go out with me in the spring and stay with me until about the first of August. Then I am going to ship everything, as the prairie is going to settle up and my range will be gone. I'm going to file on some land myself and you had better too."

I says, "If it is going to settle up as fast as you think, I won't have much chance. I'll be 17 years old in just about another week."

"God, Billy," he says, "I thought you was older than that. Well keep your eyes open."

Building the Barber Dam

So I went into Boise. There were a lot of men hanging around there on account of the dam. I ran into a fellow by the name of Campbell, who I had got acquainted with at Bruneau the spring before. We hiked up to where they were working to see about a job. They put us right to work driving team.

There were somewhere around 200 head of horses at work at that dam, and there were all kinds of skinners. They sure had some sorry teamsters and a few good ones.

They put me to driving a dump wagon, but that only lasted a few days as the men that owned the team I was driving pulled his horses off the job to work on the railroad grade they was building up to the dam.

The Cook brothers had the best horses on the job – 72 head. They were freighters from Nevada. I stayed until the first part of March when the Cooks pulled out.

Feeding for Wolfkeil

So in the spring of 1905, I found myself back in Boise. I was just hanging around for a few days till I ran into McMahon. After we had talked for a while, he says, "There's a fellow down the valley that lives close to where my cattle are. He wants to throw in with us and go to the prairie this summer. His name is Wolfkeil and he has some cattle and is buying more. He wants to hire another man. So if you want to go down and work for him for a month, we will all go out together."

While we were talking, Mc spotted him walking up the street, so he hailed him. "Yes," Wolfkeil says, "I could use you till we go out. Haven't got much to do, but could pay you 20 dollars a month and board." He had bought a pony for his boy that he said I could ride out. He took me over to a sale and trade corral and showed me the pony. I told him I would go over to the Hailey boys' barn on 16th street and get my bridle, saddle, and grip that had been there all winter.

So I went to work for Wolfkeil. If it hadn't been that he was going to throw in with Mc, I believe I would have walked back to town the next morning. His wife had died some time before and there was three children – a boy about 8 or 9, and two younger girls. An old lady in her 70s was trying to do the cooking and raise the children.

Me and the other hired hand slept upstairs on the floor. A bare floor is lots worse to sleep on than the ground, unless you have plenty of something under you. This other hired man was fresh out of Missouri and very wise.

Anyway, we were feeding 300 or 400 head, and the boss was buying more every time there was a sale. He would buy all the cattle, whether they were dairy or range breed.

The month drug along and finally the time come to start the cattle for the prairie. McMahon came down and we got his bunch and turned them with Wolfkeil's overnight. We also brought out Mc's wagon.

Mc told me that morning that I was working for him from there on. We would take turns driving his wagon, which would haul the camp. Wolfkeil would have a wagon to haul calves that would come along on the way and such.

Wolfkeil had a nephew named Charley Murry who had shown up from somewhere, and he was going to drive the other wagon. I don't believe he had ever drove a team before. Wolfkeil also hired his neighbor, Frank Mace, to help drive the cattle. He was a young fellow who was a pretty fair hand.

Cattle Drive

We started out the next morning. McMahon, Wolfkeil, and Frank were driving the cattle – about 600 or 700 head. Charley and I were driving the wagons.

Right from the start it was a mess. Mc's cattle knew where they were going and took off. But them Wolfkeil cattle (especially them 200 or 300 young stuff he had bought around the country) would crawl through the fences on both sides and would take off any direction. They would have to be chased down afoot mostly.

Anyway, Wolfkeil came back to us fellows on the wagons. He says, "We will have to double up the wagons (trail one wagon behind the other)."
I says, "All right."

Charley began to holler, "I can't drive four horses."

"Well," I says, "I sure can." So that is what we did. They liked to run poor Charley down, chasing them buttermilk doggies.

We got to the New York canal the second night. At least we were out in the open country. We uncoupled Mc's wagon, and he took his team and went to town and stocked up on groceries and so forth.

On a trip like this, the one driving the wagon is supposed to do the cooking. So as soon as it would start to get daylight, I'd roll out and get a fire started or, if I had been on night herd, I would come in and get the other fellows out. They would go out and let the cattle start to graze and scatter out, but not too far. There was always plenty of fire wood or sagebrush, as we would throw a rope around a big bunch of dead brush and drag it in as we come to camp.

The camp wagon's grub box is set in the back end of the wagon. The end gate was taken out and its rods were run through the box which was about four feet high and the same width as the wagon. The box's end gate was fastened at the top and had hinges at the bottom. A leg was fastened to this end gate about three quarters of the way up from the bottom, so when you opened the box from the top, it would make a nice table to work on or set your plate on while you ate.

About the first thing the cook would do was throw the dutch oven and lid on the fire and peel some potatoes. Then he'd get out the sourdough, some flour, and the dough pan and mix up batch of bread. By the time the dough was worked to about the right thickness, the oven would be hot.

Then, throw a little grease in the oven and break the dough up to about biscuit size, dipping the biscuits and turning them greased side up. Repeat this until the oven's full. Then put the cover on and take a shovel and lay some coals to one side and set the oven on them. Lay some coals on top and in a little while you will have some of the best bread you ever eat. After you got the bread started to bake, the next thing was to get the spuds in the frying pan, then make some bacon and coffee.

Mc would get on his horse and go out and let the other fellows come in and eat. They would bring the horses in as they came. We would have a temporary rope corral with one end of the rope tied to the hind wheel of the wagon and to a sagebrush out about 20 feet and then to another sagebrush about 20 or 30 feet at the same angle as the wagon. This way we managed to get hold of our horses anyway.

After these fellows got their breakfast eat, they would lay down and sleep for about two hours. After I had the dishes washed and had everthing cleaned up, I'd get on a horse and ride around the drag end. Mc would be up towards the head end because some of these old cows of his knew where they were going, as they had been on the road before.

Driving the wagon and doing most of the cooking didn't exempt me from night herding. When Mc and I were night herding and daylight started to light up, he would tell me to watch them leaders, and he'd go get the other fellows out and get breakfast started. I was to bring in the horses in an hour or so.

We had been out three or four nights, when Mc says, "There will have to be a change." Mc had been helping me with the cooking and so forth when he could. But sometimes we wouldn't get the dishes washed and so forth until ten o'clock or after and there was night herding the last half of the night. Wolfkeil and Frank had the first half of the night, so that gave us just about two hours sleep. So Mc says, "Tonight, Bill and me will herd all night and tomorrow you fellows can have it all night." So this is the way it went from that time on.

Anyway, we finally got to Bennet creek north of Mountain Home and it just happened to be Wolfkeil and Frank's night to herd. It had been cloudy and storming a little, so we put up the tent the first time since we had been out. Mc and I was congratulating ourselves that we wouldn't have to go out, although we always kept up night horses in case anything happened.

Along after midnight we woke up. We listened a little while and heard Wolfkeil running his horse and hollering and cracking his bullwhip – the very worse thing he could have done. Mc says, "I'll have to get out there. You stay in bed, Bill." As soon as he got out there things quieted down a little.

The next morning they figured we had lost 100 or more cattle. There wasn't any use trying to get them back at this time because they had took off north and there was other cattle scattered all over that country. There were other outfits on the road at the same time. We kept in touch with them, for if we had mixed it would have taken a day to separate. If I remember right, it was about 12 days we were on the road as it was.

Nearly all the cattle that ran on the west end of the prairie, and north of the Malad, came from Boise valley them days. But we got through pretty well except that bad night at Bennet creek.

The cattle traveled better after that, as there was about six inches of snow and they didn't try to graze. We only had a few more days till we would separate the two herds.

The afternoon we got to Grave creek, the bosses decided to let the cattle graze, as the feed was good. We would loose herd them and everybody could get a good night's sleep. The next day we would round them up and cut Mc's out – which we did.

After cutting out his cattle, Mc and I night herded them on the flat that is now covered by the Cow creek reservoir. The next day we brought them on over to Three Mile.

When Mc had started in the cattle business, he had bought 160 acres for a camp and pasture from a crippled fellow by the name of Johney Andregg. There was a two room house on the place which served very well for a camp.

When we got to the prairie, he filed on 320 acres more as a desert claim to be irrigated from two or three springs. So we started building fence. We worked at this till the first part of June when the calf roundup started. Then he sent me up to the west end to pick up the cattle that we had lost that night at Bennet creek.

I stayed with Wolfkeil, who had also bought 160 acres of deeded land that a fellow by the name of Osborn had proved up on. I was up there for two or three weeks and got 60 or 70 head of cattle and held them there in Wolfkeil's pasture. When the roundup was over, Mc came up and we took them to Three Mile with the rest.

Then in the latter part of July we gathered all 4 cattle (Mc's brand). The first part of August we trailed them over to Bellevue and loaded them on the train bound for Omaha and Mc went out of the cow business. We all hated to see him quit.

I don't know whether he knew, but at the time I suspected that he had TB, and about three years later he died of that disease. He was about the best friend I ever had.

A Year in the Life of a Cowboy

T. C. Catlin

There was a dance in Corral the night I got back from trailing Mc's cattle to Bellevue. I, of course, had to go. About the first fellow I ran across was Lee Barber, T.C. Catlin's foreman.

He says, "Did Mc ship everthing?" I told him he did.

He says, "Do you want a job?"

I says, "I sure do."

He told me to come up in the next two or three days, as they were going to start gathering beef. One of his men, Alvan Lalors, had got hurt when a horse fell over backward on him. They had taken him to Boise, to the hospital with a fractured skull, and he may not live.

So I went up to Catlin's camp. I didn't suppose I would last only till they got the beef gathered, but it turned out to be my summer home for the next three or four years. (What follows is a whole year's outline of a cowpuncher's life, or what it was like in the early days.)

Mr. Catlin was an old-timer in Idaho. He ran the biggest outfit in this era. He had been in Idaho City and Coeur d'Alene in the 1860s and had also tried out the Wood river country when the boom was on there. He had also helped clean up a mess where the Indians had massacred an emigrant train in the Nampa area. He was the first to file on land in the Boise valley and the first to take water out of the Boise river. On top of that, he was a very religious man – went to church ever Sunday when he was where he could.

When I got to the diamond camp [see summer range map], they had just finished building a new camp house (16 feet wide and 30 feet long), as the old log cabin had sunk down in the ground till they bumped their heads on the ridge logs. (The diamond was Catlin's brand.)

There were several men at the camp, including Mr. Catlin himself. Most of the men were ranch hands. There were four regular cow hands – Lee Barber, Clark Cox, Arthur Howard, and Lew Clark. I was acquainted with the cow hands, as I had worked with them before during the calf roundups.

When I was a kid my dad always had cattle – not too many, usually from 200 to 300 head, sometimes less. Anyway it was enough till somebody had to represent us at the roundup. I had one older brother who was a hard worker and good on the farm, but he was an awful poor hand on a horse – hated to ride. So I had to be the cowboy and had, after I had rode awhile, two or three pretty good horses. By the time I was 13, the roundup boss would let me in the herd to cut my cows out.

Anyway, when I got to the camp Lew Clark says to me, "How much of a bedroll you got, Bill?"

I says, "Not much – a couple of quilts and a pair of blankets."

He says, "We had better throw in together and sleep out under the trees." So we did and were bunk mates the rest of that summer and the next three.

I don't know just what kind of arrangement Lew had with the Catlin outfit. He had 200 or 300 head of cattle of his own and rode his own horses. I know Catlin thought a lot of Lew. Lew was one of the best cowmen and could handle things better than the foreman, we younger guys always thought. He was the stabilizer in the outfit. If any argument came up, or if Lee started getting after one of us younger guys, Lew would say "now hang onto yourself, boss" and everything would quiet down.

The first morning Lee says, "Bill, you will take Lalors' string. That little brown horse there is the horse that fell over backward with him. He was broke a year ago last spring, and the fellow never had too much trouble with him. He would buck sometimes and fell over with him a time or two, but outside of that he's a pretty good horse. Do you want to try him this morning?"

I says, "Catch him. I'll see if I can ride him."

When we all got saddled up, Lee says, "When you get on him, he won't move. Just let him stand there. We will all start off, and I think he will come too. He will buck some, and you can pull all the leather off your rig if you want, but don't tighten your reins, or he will come over on you."

When they started to ride off, this horse swung his head around and sized me up a time or two. Then he gave one big jump, bucked a few more times, and broke into a run till he caught up. I never tightened them reins or pulled leather either, and I never had any more trouble with him. He never got to be a good cut horse, nor too good a rope horse, but he was a joy to ride to get over the country. In fact, he turned out to be the best walking horse in the cavy.

Cavy

I should say something about the cavy. Cavy is short for some Mexican word meaning a bunch of saddle horses. One of the main things is to have a good bell mare and, if possible, one with a colt. We had a good one – a little black and white pinto we called Butterfly. She had been the colt of a former bell mare.

When we were at camp, we used rope corrals. They consisted of a one inch rope about 100 feet long. We would tie the rope around a tree or a bunch of willows and would sometimes have to set two or three posts to wrap the rest of the rope around. At one end of the corral was an opening for the gate. The rope was just about high enough to hit the horses just about the breast.

The colts would usually be given a few lessons about the rope corral in a big pole corral. After they had been caught by the front feet and throwed a few times, they had some respect for the rope. As the horses would try to run around the corral, two or three men would grab hold of the rope and would wave it up and down. When the horses come up against this rope, they would nearly always stop. If a horse tried to go over it, the men would try to throw him if they could. The horses soon learned to stop when they got up against it and would all line up against the far side.

Nobody went into the corral to catch his horse. Someone that was good with a rope (in our case, Lee or John Hailey) would ask each man what horses he wanted. He would stand on the outside of the corral with the horses lined up with their heads away from him.

There would be no slinging the rope around over your head. It was just a straight throw. The fellow whose horse was caught would go in and put his bridle or hackamore on him and lead him out.

If the horse that was caught didn't want to turn and come out, the fellow that had rangoed would be standing there on his horse and would take the rope and drag him back. This didn't have to be done very many times until the horse would come, and easy.

Roundups

The spring and fall roundups usually started at the east end of the diamond range. Of course, there were lots of other cattle there besides Catlin's, so some place would be designated for the representatives of each outfit to meet and elect a foreman of the roundup. There were usually 25 men there.

Sometimes one man would represent a dozen or more brands. Usually a group of farmers would throw their herds (mostly young dairy stuff) together and would pay this good hand so much a head to take them out for the summer. One such fellow was Bill Palmer. He also had a good hand working for him by the name of Harry Maddin.

Anyway, a representative could nominate anyone he wanted to be the boss of the roundup, and sometimes it would get a little warm. Everybody could vote – not just the owners.

After the boss was elected by vote, he would scatter everybody out. He would say, "Jack, you take two men with you and ride such and such." This man then could choose the two men he wanted to go with him. If this man was an old hand, he wouldn't take two other old hands, for he knew the boss would want to send them somewhere else.

We rode no farther than Three Mile on the east and to the Malad on the south. Everthing was brought to just a little west of Corral creek – to where the Herman Miller place is now. I don't know just about how many cattle we would have to work, probably about 1,500 or 2,000 head, and we would also have about 50 or 60 horses in the cavy.

Anyway the roundup would be under way, and about noon there would be cattle coming from every direction. When they were all together, the boss would ride around the herd while we held them. He would tell which men to start cutting out. He would sometimes put some fellow's hired hand in the herd and put the owner to holding what the hand cut out. Lew Clark and Clark Cox cut out the diamonds and Mr. Catlin cut out a few, but didn't last long.

In the fall roundup, we usually cut cows and calves first. These were the calves that had come since the calf roundup in June. There wouldn't be too many of them, probably about 50 or 75. Later, we'd cut the beef which was three-year-old steers.

The next day's roundup would be held just east and a little north of the Mink place on Cow creek. At this place we would get more diamond cattle than at any other gathering.

The third day's gathering would be held at the flat where Nigger creek and Wildhorse come together. The next day we'd meet at Wood creek, which was the first creek west of High prairie. The next day we'd move on to Cat creek, and then we would move north to Moores flat and then east to Hunter creek. That would about wind up the gathering.

Everything would be turned loose after the calves were branded in the spring roundup. But in the fall roundup, the three-year-old steers and dry cows would be cut out and taken to pasture to be shipped later on after the calves were branded.

If we were farther than five or six miles from any corrals, we would brand in the open, which was usually better if there was plenty of help. The cows and calves would be brought in about the middle of the afternoon. Someone would have went on ahead and got a fire started and the dozen or so branding irons in the fire.

The foreman would notice what horses we were riding and would tell two of us that were riding good rope horses to limber up our ropes, and the others would wrestle the calves.

It was quite a job to get the calves mothered up. No calf was let out of the herd without its mother when branding out sick (outside of the corrals).

When you was sure a calf belonged to a certain cow, you'd ketch the calf by the hind legs and drag him out to the fire, and the other fellow would see that the cow came too. One fellow would sit down and grab the calf's hind legs and slip the rope off and another would hold the front end. Then the iron man and the knife man would go to work.

When the calf was branded and marked, then you'd turn them loose away from the herd. We'd usually turn a calf loose one a minute which amounted to 200 or 300 a day. When we were finished, we could go to supper.

Grub

During roundup we would butcher a beef and have a cook, as there were usually ten or 12 men. Mr. Catlin would come up and bring a bunch of his farm hands to help wrestle calves from what is now the prison farm on Eagle Island.

As far as food, we had just about the same as everbody had in those days – sourdough bread; beans; potatoes; and canned stuff, mostly corn and tomatoes; cured meat such as ham and bacon; and dried fruit – peaches, apricots and prunes. The dried fruit came in ten pound wooden boxes, and we would have a cold box set in a spring with a good lid to keep the beans, sourdough, and sometimes meat.

Breakfast was before sun up. We would have hot sourdough biscuits; steak, ham, or bacon; fried potatoes; fruit; coffee; and oatmeal or some other kind of cooked cereal. There was no Corn Flakes or Shredded Wheat in them days. Later we usually had a pot of beans, a pot of fruit, and a few biscuits ready. So if someone came along hungry, and in a hurry, he could have a plate of beans.

Fall Roundup

In that first fall roundup [1904] I worked for Catlin, we cut out about 1,100 head of steers. It had been a dry year – not much snow in the mountains – so the feed and water was getting pretty short in the pasture where we were holding the steers.

Mr. Catlin says to me "Billy, they tell me you are pretty well quartered in Corral creek. Do you suppose we could get some pasture to hold these steers for a few days?"

I told him to see the McGowan boys, Jim and Dave, about it. They were working for the Ake outfit and were at roundup ever day. He talked to them and got some of their pasture.

So the next day he took me down with him to investigate and see about the water. He thought it would do, but he would like to see a little more water in the creek.

He says, "Do the people irrigate out of the creek?" I told him they sure did.

He says, "You know everybody here. How would you like to go up the creek and see if you could get them to turn a little more water down for a few days?" He says, "Your folks live here don't they?" I told him they did.

He says, "Why don't you visit with them overnight and then meet us tomorrow. We will be bringing the steers down here." So that was what we did.

After we put the steers in the McGowan pasture, he says, "We are not going to start these steers to the railroad in Hailey until they ensure us that the cars will be there."

In a few days, he got the word over the telephone that the cars would be there. In the meantime, the water had got a little short where they were, and we took them to the Malad just east of the Gibbons place where they got filled up. We night-herded them and started them out the next morning right across the prairie for Willow creek.

We found plenty of water below the Willow creek ranch and night herded just east of the creek. The next morning Catlin took the lead and headed them up in the hills west of the canyon. He was the only one of us that knew that the first road from Hailey to the prairie came down that way.

We got to the old Gelman place that night and, for 100 dollars, he let us turn them in a pasture of 200 or 300 acres which had been pretty well grazed out. But the boss figured it would be worth it to give them a good night's rest.

The next morning we took them down through Hailey without too much trouble. The stock yards wouldn't hold near all of them, so some of us had to hold them outside, while some loaded. It took us most of the day.