EXPEDITION TO THE OREGON DESERT IN 1877
At Monument Station, I was surprised to see Mr. S. W. Williston get
aboard with all his outfit. Williston did not know at first that I was
on the train, and when he entered my car, he was greatly astonished,
thinking that I was on his trail. He tried to find out my destination,
but failed. We slept together at Denver. Then he took a train south,
while I went north toward Cheyenne and the West.
Onward our train sped toward the land of the setting sun, through the
grand and impressive scenery of the Rockies and Sierra Nevadas. At
Sacramento I took the railroad for Redding, where, with seven other
passengers, I entered a Concord coach drawn by a team of eight horses,
and continued my journey by stage.
It was a lovely August evening. The moon was at its full, and the night
was almost as bright as day. No sound broke the deep silence, except now
and then the whoo of an owl as it called to its mate far away in the
depth of the forest, or the plash of running water falling in cascades
over the shelving rocks and dashing against the boulders.
Higher and higher we climbed, through primeval forests of spruce and
fir, whose branches clove the sky a hundred feet above our heads. The
rarefied air filled our lungs with its life-giving tonic, exhilarating
us like wine. We knew that far above us rose Mount Shasta, the giant of
the range, but for a time the heavy timber shut out the view, and we
could see only the road ahead, winding up and up through the forests.
Then suddenly, without warning, we moved above the timber-line, and
Mount Shasta stood revealed in all its beauty, a perfect cone, towering
four thousand feet into the air, its robes of everlasting snow
glistening in the moonlight. Above, in the clear blue of the sky, the
stars sparkled like jewels in an immortal canopy.
It was the first time that any of us had looked upon that majestic
scene, and whatever may have been the differences of temperament among
us, we were one in the feeling of awe which the glorious picture
inspired. It laid a spell upon us; we were dumb before the invisible
presence of the Power that had reared this stupendous pinnacle, and
involuntarily our thoughts turned to that “city that hath foundations,
whose builder and maker is God.”
Then to break the awful silence, and give some vent to our emotions, we
broke out into the old song, “’Way down upon the Suwanee River”; and so
we journeyed on for many hours, never out of sight of that majestic
form.
At Ashland I was obliged to wait for a driver with a buckboard and a
team of ponies to take me to Fort Klamath, Oregon. I was at that time a
great lover of the gentle art of fishing, and early in the morning,
before it was fully light, I was astir among the great live-oaks that
grace the town. Walking through the sleeping village, I ran across the
footprints of a large grizzly bear in the dust of the road, and followed
them through the vacant streets. Wherever a gate had been left open, the
bear had entered the yard, walked around the house, and come out at the
gate again. I hoped to get a glimpse of him, but was disappointed, as
the tracks led into the gloom of the forest. So I went fishing, and
caught some speckled beauties for breakfast.
That evening I was driven over to Fort Klamath, where I was kindly
invited to take possession of the commanding officer’s quarters and make
myself at home; an invitation which I proceeded to accept at once.
Learning that a sheep-owner a few miles away had killed a grizzly, I
went out to his camp to see it. Sure enough, there lay the mighty
carcass, encircled with four inches of grease, enough for the polls of
all the boys in Oregon. It seemed that as the time for his winter nap
was approaching, Mr. Bruin had been laying in a supply of fuel by
devouring the fat wethers of our friend’s flock. The latter had built a
heavy brush fence around the sheep, and with the help of a large number
of hounds, had kept his range free from coyotes, but he had been
helpless before the attacks of this big bear. When he watched on top of
the brush fence, he was not molested, but no sooner did he seek the
comfortable cot in his tent, than his slumbers were broken by the
piteous bleat of some sheep, as it was carried off to the woods by the
bear.
About ten days before I reached Klamath, he had been awakened in the
middle of the night by a commotion in the flock, and rushing out in his
shirt into the cool night air, had seen the bear only ten feet away,
across a deep and narrow stream. Without thinking of the consequences to
himself if he only wounded the creature, he opened fire with his
Winchester, and the first shot broke the bear’s neck.
When I arrived, the skin had been removed, but the huge carcass, which
must have weighed at least a ton, had been lying in the hot August sun
ever since. The sheep-owner (I am sorry that I have forgotten his name,
as I was under heavy obligations to him) promised me that after
breakfast he would help me in the not very enviable task of removing the
decaying flesh from the bones. But after one whiff from the windward
side, he asked a pertinent question, was I fond of trout, and upon my
answering yes, remarked that he knew of a creek where he could get some
beauties, and immediately disappeared. I saw him no more that morning.
At the first thrust of my knife into the bear, the stench was so
horrible that I grew deathly sick. I filled my pipe and tried to find
relief in smoking, but even then the odor was overpowering, and I smoked
and sickened through the livelong day, until I had cleaned the filthy
flesh from the bones, and they had been tied up in gunny-sacks and hung
in a tree to dry. Then into the creek I went and with soap and sand
scrubbed and scoured my body; but the horrid smell still hung about me,
and I could eat neither supper nor breakfast the next morning, although
at dinner I managed to stow away a good square meal. But even now, after
thirty years, if you say “bear” to me, I can smell that bear.
At Klamath I hired for my assistant a man named George Loosely. I also
bought two saddle ponies and one to carry the pack; and with a
government tent and other outfit and rations purchased at the
commissary,—we had our flour baked into bread by the post baker,—we
started for Silver Lake, although no one at the post could give us any
directions. I had a department map, sent to me by Professor Cope, which
recorded, mistakenly as we found later, that Sprague River rose in
Silver Lake. The government road to the east crossed the Williamson
River on a government bridge, and came to an abrupt end in an Indian
village on the western bank of Sprague River. So we decided to take the
road as far as we could and then follow up the river to its source in
the lake.
When we reached the Williamson River, we found there the lodge of a
Snake Indian, who appeared dressed in red paint and a breech-cloth, and
demanded toll. But as American citizens we had paid taxes to help pay
for that bridge; so we refused to pay toll for the use of our own
property, and rode across in spite of the threats hurled at us.
We reached Sprague River that same evening, and went into camp a short
distance from a large Indian town. The houses, built by government
contractors of rough logs, consisted of a single room with a shake roof.
The Indians had torn out the board floors, and instead of using the
fireplaces and chimneys which the builders had erected for their
convenience, they had cut holes in the roofs, and built their fires in
the middle of the floor, sleeping around them at night as their fathers
used to do in their lodges or Sibley tents.
George, who was more familiar with them than I was, learned that a chief
lay dying in one of the houses, and after supper he left me and went to
witness the death ceremonies. After stowing away the bread and coffee
between our mattresses and covering them with blankets, and hiding the
bacon at the bottom of the mess box with tin dishes piled on top of it
so that I should hear the rattle if a thieving Indian attempted to get
at it, I, being tired, dropped off to sleep.
About three o’clock in the morning, George appeared, having been shut up
in the house with the dying chief all night. When the medicine man began
his incantations, the doors and windows were closed, while the steaming
Indians danced in a circle around the dying chief, forcing the unwilling
George to take part in the ceremonies. All night long they moved around
in their death dance to the music of their drums and the wild
gesticulations of the medicine man, and when George finally got away, he
was about exhausted. He was soon lost in sleep, and as I habitually lie
on my sound ear, neither of us heard anything through the night. But the
next morning, when George had put on the coffee to boil and went into
the mess box for the bacon, it had disappeared. The dishes had been
carefully replaced.
After a breakfast of bread and coffee, we were early in the saddle,
taking a heavy trail that led north and skirted Sprague River. By the
merest chance, we met a white man, the first we had seen since leaving
the post, and we stopped to ask the way to Silver Lake. A number of
Snake Indians were standing around at the time. The man told us to go
north on the trail to a sheep camp in Sican Valley, where we would
receive further directions, and thanking him, we rode confidently
forward.
Just as the sun was sinking, we entered a splendid forest of fir and
spruce, and soon found that our trail forked. The heavy, well-traveled
branch turned a little west of north; the other, leading due north, had
apparently not been used since last year, as it was covered with old
leaves. We did not know what to do, as the man whom we had met in the
morning had not mentioned this fork. While we were talking about it, we
heard the jingling bells of a pack horse or Indian cayuse, and soon a
boy hove in sight, driving a couple of pack ponies. Moving to one side
to let him pass, I asked him where he was going.
“To Sican Valley, to a sheep ranch,” he answered, and immediately was
lost to sight among the giant trees. We meekly fell in behind and
hurried after him.
Suddenly we came out into a natural park, the end of our trail. Five
Indian lodges stood about in the open space, and five valiant braves, in
their usual attire of paint and breech-cloths, with the inevitable
Winchester, stepped forward to inform us that “white man was lost in the
woods,” and that they would show him the trail for two dollars.
“Where is that miserable papoose?” I demanded, but they only grinned and
repeated, “We will show you the road for two dollars.”
It was my habit, in a crisis of this kind, to smoke, for I regret to say
that I was for many years a lover of the soothing weed; so, drawing out
of my saddlebag a pound of fragrant “Lone Jack,” I proceeded to fill my
pipe and decide upon my further course. Instantly the Indians crowded
around me, and dropping the butts of their guns to the ground, pulled
out their tobacco pouches, and opening them wide, held them up to be
filled, crying in chorus, “Me tobac! Me tobac!”
But the memory of the deceitful boy was still rankling in my mind. I
told George to follow me with the pack horse, and deliberately lighting
my pipe and filling my lungs with smoke to their utmost capacity, I blew
a cloud of it into the faces of the expectant beggars. Then I drove my
spurs into my pony’s flanks and started off in a mad race against time,
as the long shadows warned me only too plainly that the daylight, our
only guide now, would soon leave us. I did not look back, but George,
who did, saw the Indians, in anger, level their rifles as they shouted
to us to stop.
That race with darkness was an exciting one, but just before night
overtook us, we reached the trail which we had left to follow the lying
Indian boy. In our haste, our bread had been torn from its sack by the
outstretched limb of a tree, and was lost. However, we were so thankful
to have escaped paying toll to those filthy Snakes, that we cheerfully
made our supper of coffee, and sought our blankets.
At the first streak of daylight, after another meal of coffee, we were
in our saddles; and we traveled all day, until, just as the sun was
setting, we heard the welcome bleat of sheep and saw the herders driving
their flocks down the slopes of the neighboring hills to their corrals
in Sican Valley. Following them, we soon spied the camp in the heavy
timber and smelled the delicious savor of a pot of mutton that was
boiling over the fire. And before long, seated at the rude table, we
were enjoying to the uttermost the hospitality of the camp.
We had learned on the journey that Sprague River rises in the heart of
the mountains, instead of in Silver Lake, and we had crossed the divide
between it and the lake before reaching Sican Valley. The next morning
our sheepmen directed us on our way; and that same evening we were
skirting the lake’s lovely shores. Its wide expanse of water put me in
mind of my boyhood days on Otsego Lake or the Glimmer-glass.
We soon reached the hospitable home of Mr. Duncan, the postmaster of
Silver Lake. He had built a comfortable house of logs, with a large
chimney at one end and an old-fashioned fireplace, around which, as the
nights were cold, we gathered and talked until far into the night.
Mr. Duncan’s family consisted of his wife and daughter, a dear, good
girl, who will forgive me, I am sure, if I tell a story at her expense.
George and I were sent to bed in a lean-to, and as our bedroom was next
to that of the Duncans and the stoppings had fallen out of some of the
chinks in the wall between, we could hear everything that was said in
their room. In the middle of the night I woke up and heard the old
gentleman talking to his wife about their daughter.
“Mother,” he said, “I think John will be a good husband for Mary, don’t
you?”
Before she could answer, Mary, who had a bed at the other end of the
parents’ room, called out with great energy, “I think so too, father!”
In an instant all was still, while George and I, in our efforts to keep
quiet, stuffed the bedclothes into our mouths until we were almost
suffocated.
We unloaded our weary pack horse, and the next day brought our supplies,
and loaded them into Mr. Duncan’s wagon. Then taking him with us for
guide, we started on our long drive to the boneyard, fifty-six miles
through the great sage-brush desert of eastern Oregon.
On we journeyed, through what seemed an interminable expanse of
sage-brush, greasewood, and sand. The bunches of sage-brush topped
conical mounds of sand, whose sides were scoured and polished by the
winds that howled in and out through the labyrinth of hills, laden with
drifting sand. If one could have gained an elevation above the level of
these sandhills, and looked out over the landscape, one would have gazed
upon a scene of even greater desolation than that afforded by the
parched short-grass plains of western Kansas,—a dreary, monotonous waste
of olive green, stretching away north, east, and south, as far as the
eye could reach, and shut in on the west by the great ranges of the
Sierras, whose flanks, dark below the timber line with heavy forests,
were deeply scarred above with glistening white glaciers.
We followed the California road to Oregon, for in those days Oregon was
practically an unknown territory, with the exception of the Willamette
Valley. And I suppose that it is still so, for that moist, fertile
valley differs as widely from the vast semi-desert east of the Cascade
Range as the Santa Clara Valley from the cactus-covered sandhills of
southern California.
At night, after a day’s journey through sand and sage-brush, we came to
a ranch beside an alkaline lake in the very heart of the desert. Here,
in a cabin built of logs from the neighboring mountains, lived the
hermit of this region, a man named Lee Button. Had it not been that the
road passed his door, he would have seen only a hunter now and then, out
after the deer which abounded in the desert, or perhaps the cattlemen
when in winter they turned their cattle loose in the desert to look out
for themselves. On all the neighboring ranches, the cattle were turned
into the desert for food and shelter in winter. Here, protected from
storms, they fed upon the alkaline grass and sweet sage and upon the
thick leaves which fell in handfuls from the greasewood bushes. These
cattle had cut innumerable paths at every conceivable angle, and one
unaccustomed to the country might easily become confused and lose
himself in the labyrinth of trails. There was horror in the thought of
being lost in that solitude.
Mr. Duncan put up his horses in the barn of the ranch, which was well
stocked with hay and oats, and we picketed our ponies on a flat covered
with alkaline grass on the borders of the lake. Then from under a
certain post which he knew of, Mr. Duncan dug up a tin can containing
the key of the cabin. Past experience had taught Mr. Button caution. He
had gone to California once, after a herd of horses, leaving his door
unlocked, and some prowling immigrant had abused his hospitality and
robbed his cabin of its store of food and blankets. So now, when he left
home, he locked the door and hid the key, giving, however, the secret of
its hiding-place to his neighbor, Mr. Duncan.
His cooking utensils, consisting of a camp kettle, a frying pan, a Dutch
oven, and a coffee pot, were brought out and cleaned, and the larder
searched for food. It was the custom of the country at that day to
consider food and shelter free to all. I was offered the next year a
house, blankets, flour, and bacon, as much as I could use for nothing,
if I wanted to spend the winter on a ranch in eastern Oregon. I was only
expected to cut my own wood and cook my own food.
Soon a cheerful fire was blazing on the hearth, and the burning
sage-brush was filling the air with that indescribable odor from which
one is never free while in the desert. We had traveled through great
droves of wild geese along the lake, and as they were so tame that they
simply stepped out of our way like barnyard geese, we did not think it
worth while to waste ammunition on them. So I set three traps, common
steel traps such as are used for catching coons, and strewed oats around
them. The next morning I found a brant in one, a magpie in another, and
the house cat in the third. We let the cat and the magpie go, and
breakfasted on the brant. Our usual fare was bacon, bread, and coffee,
and sometimes dried apples. I worked for years in Oregon with no other
food, except an occasional deer or mountain sheep.
The next day, trusting entirely to Mr. Duncan’s guidance, we pushed on
without a trail, winding in and out among the hillocks with no landmarks
but the mountains in the west. At sunset, we came out into the open on
the shore of a small alkaline lake. “Fossil Lake,” I named it at once,
and it goes by that name to this day. This pond, as we should call it in
old New York, covered only a few acres then, and is now entirely dried
up.
“There,” shouted Mr. Duncan, as he pointed with his whip to the lake
shore, “there is the boneyard.”
I instantly requested him to help George get supper and pitch the tent,
and seizing my collecting bag, rushed down to the shore. The clay bottom
of the ancient lake had been dried out, and now formed the shore of the
remaining water. This old lake bed had once extended over a much larger
area, but it had been partially buried beneath large piles of drifting
sand. Scattered through the loose sand and on the clay bed were great
numbers of the bones and teeth of reptiles, birds, and mammals,
indiscriminately mingled. I had come upon a boneyard indeed.
I was down on the sand at once, picking up bones and teeth and putting
them in piles. No two bones seemed to belong together, and the skulls
and arches had been crushed beneath the feet of animals, probably cattle
and deer, which had come down to drink at the lake. What pleased me,
however, was the fact that scattered among these remains of an earlier
day, were arrow-heads and spear-points of polished obsidian, or volcanic
glass. I was too much excited then to notice that I did not find a
single bone or tooth in its original position in the clay matrix, but
that all were loose, detached, and scattered, and that the implements
were lying about in the same way.
As Mr. Duncan was to return to the post-office at Silver Lake the next
morning, I gathered a cigar-boxful of loose teeth, arrow-heads, and
spear-points, and packed them to send off to Professor Cope. And that
night, by a sage-brush fire, I wrote the letter which he saw fit to
publish in the _American Naturalist_, a magazine of which he was the
editor, under a title of his own, “Pliocene Man,” and signed “E. D.
Cope.”
For weeks I sifted through my fingers the fine sand of that lake shore,
picking out bone after bone. The only specimen which I found undisturbed
in the clay matrix was part of the skull of a hairy mammoth, or _Elephas
primigenius_.
Dr. Shufeldt is the author of a valuable memoir on the fossil birds of
this region,—“The Fossil Avi-Fauna of the Equus Beds of the Oregon
Desert,” published by the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences. He worked
over the collection made by the late Professor Condon of the Oregon
State University, the collection which Professor Cope made a few years
after mine, and mine.
In these three collections, he finds five species of grebes, and nine of
gulls, of which two species are new to science, Professor Condon being
the discoverer of one, while I found the other. Of cormorants, there are
two species, one discovered by Cope. One species, quite common among the
fossil remains, is now extinct. There is a new swan also, described by
Professor Cope, who writes of it: “This swan was discovered by
ex-Governor Whitaker of Oregon [who discovered the Fossil Lake locality]
in the Pliocene formations of the state. The same bird was afterwards
procured by my assistant, Charles H. Sternberg.” Altogether there are
nineteen species of Anseres, i. e., geese, ducks, swans, etc., of which
two are new.
One of my discoveries was a flamingo, which was dedicated to Professor
Cope under the title _Phœnicopterus copei_. Dr. Shufeldt says: “It is a
fact of no little interest that a flamingo inhabited the lakes of the
Silver Lake region of Oregon during the Pliocene Epoch.” The collections
include a heron and a couple of coots also. Among the fowl are four
grouse, discovered by Cope, and an entirely new genus and species which
I had the honor of finding. Of eagles, there are two species. There are
also a great horned owl, a blackbird, and a raven.
Among the other fossil remains taken from this region are six genera of
fish, a majority of them new, and fifteen species of fossil mammalia,
including two llamas, three horses, an elephant, a dog, an otter, a
beaver, a mouse, a great sloth, _Mylodon_, as large as a grizzly bear,
and other forms.
“Thomas Condon,” writes Dr. Shufeldt in his memoir, “was the first
scientific man to visit the Fossil Lake region, with the results already
stated. Cope and his assistant Charles Sternberg came later, and
gathered many hundred bones and bone fragments.” And in the preface to
his “Tertiary Vertebrata,” Vol. III, page xxvii, Professor Cope writes:
“The Tertiary formations explored in 1878 were the John Day, Loup Fork,
and Equus beds. These were examined by Charles H. Sternberg both in
Washington and Oregon; in the former near to Fort Walla Walla, and in
the latter, in the desert east of the Sierra Nevada. The basin of an
ancient lake, originally discovered by Governor Whitaker of Oregon, was
found strewn with the bones of llamas, elephants, horses, sloths, and
smaller animals, with birds, and all were collected by Mr. Sternberg and
safely forwarded to Philadelphia. I examined this locality myself in
1879 and obtained further remains of extinct and recent species of
mammalia found mingled with numerous worked flints.”
The reader will notice that Cope puts my expedition in ’78 instead of
’77 and that Dr. Shufeldt gives Cope’s visit to Fossil Lake as before
mine, when, in reality, it was two years later.
On p. 420 of his memoir, Dr. Shufeldt writes: “We must believe that it
still remains problematical whether man was there, and further
comparative search is demanded to decide whence came, and at what time,
those stone implements of human manufacture, commingled as they are with
the bones of the animals, many of which are long since extinct.” And
Professor Cope says on the same subject: “Scattered everywhere in the
deposit were obsidian implements of human manufacture. Some of these
were of inferior workmanship, and many of them covered with a patin of
no great thickness, which completely replaced the luster of the surface.
Other specimens were bright as when first made. The abundance of these
flints was remarkable, and suggested that they may have been shot at the
game, both winged and otherwise, that in former times frequented the
lake.”
After I had written the letter already mentioned, having carefully gone
over all the ground in the vicinity of Fossil Lake, and longing for new
worlds to conquer, I started out one day on my pony through the desert,
hoping to find another locality in which the wind had uncovered a fossil
bed. I spent the greater part of the day in fruitless search, and was
about to return home when I was attracted by the top of a dead spruce
tree sticking out of a sandhill. The rest of the tree had been
completely buried by the sand.
My curiosity was aroused, and I climbed to the top of the hill to
examine the spruce. When I reached the top, however, I found myself
looking down into a pleasant little valley, which had been scooped out
by the wind, and, descending, I discovered that I had stumbled upon the
former site of an Indian village. Places near where the lodges had stood
were marked by piles of the bleached bones of existing species of
antelope, deer, rabbits, etc. None of these bones were petrified like
those at Fossil Lake.
Near the site of each lodge stood a large mortar, made of volcanic rock,
with a pestle lying in it. They had probably been used by the squaws for
grinding up acorns and other materials for bread-making. Doubtless a
storm of sand had forced the villagers to flee for their lives without
giving them time to save even these valuable mortars.
I found a spring of cold water which had built up a mound of white sand,
and from the side of a sandhill I pulled out the back part of a human
skull. I could not tell how large the village had been, as it extended
into the sandhill.
I soon found where the ancient arrow-maker had had his shop by the great
quantities of cast-off obsidian chips that covered the ground, as well
as by the broken and perfect arrow-heads and spear-points, beautifully
polished and finished, and the knives, drills, and the like that lay
about. I did not find a vestige of anything made of iron.
Having secured a number of the obsidian points, which I afterwards sent
to Cope, I started for camp; but I had delayed too long, and night
overtook me before I reached home. My pony and I came near being lost in
the desert. I gave him the lines, but I was much worried at not seeing
the welcome glow of the camp fire, when I had thought that I must be
near my tent. Finally I shouted, and at last heard a faint answer. But
even then, owing to my deaf ear, I could not locate the camp, and had to
wait until George came up and piloted me in.
Now without doubt the arrow-heads and spear-points mingled with the
bones at Fossil Lake are of the same manufacture as those which I found
at this Indian village, although the latter are not so much weathered,
having evidently been recently covered with sand. I conclude, therefore,
that the implements mingled with the bones are no older than the
village, perhaps a hundred years old. They were probably shot by the
Indians of the village at the wild animals which doubtless came in great
numbers to the lake to drink. Then some powerful wind, like that which
covered the village, drifted away the sand that lay over the fossil
bones, and the flints, being too heavy to be carried away with the sand,
dropped down and mingled with the bones. This seems to me the only
possible explanation. And I am glad to say that so high an authority as
Professor J. C. Merriam of the University of California, after the most
careful study and explorations, agrees with me in this. He has recently
been over the Fossil Lake region, and he assures me that it is a mistake
to suppose that the human implements found there were contemporary with
the extinct animals of the Equus Beds.
Whenever George and I had collected a load of fossils, we took them in
to Button’s ranch. One day we were late in starting, and realized that
we should have to hurry to reach the ranch before dark. As so often
happens, this was the very occasion upon which we were fated to be
delayed.
At a certain place on our route, we had to pass some mud springs,
circular wells filled to the brim with thick, yellowish mud of the
consistency of mortar. In wet weather they continually boiled up without
overflowing, but to-day they were covered with a hard coating of dry
mud, cracked deeply in all directions.
I called to George, who was driving the pack horse, to watch him and see
that he did not jump into the spring that we were just passing; but the
words were hardly out of my mouth when the miserable wretch made a
running jump, and landing in the middle of the crust, broke through and
went down into the thick, nasty mud. As he was going down, he seemed to
realize what he had done, and managed to get his front feet over the rim
of solid earth. And there he hung, the broad pack—we had brought along
our tent and blankets—helping to buoy him up.
We sprang from our horses, and made a rush to save our precious fossils,
beside which everything else, including the mischievous pony, was of no
account. We had to cut the ropes that bound the fossils and camp outfit
to the animal, and when we had them safe on solid ground, tie a rope
around his neck and pull him out. Of course he was thoroughly
frightened, and did everything in his power to help us. Such a looking
horse you never saw as he was when we got him out. His whole body was
covered with a coat of sticky, yellow mud, which we could not scrape
off. We had to take him into a creek and give him such a scrubbing as, I
think, no member of the genus _Equus_ ever had before or since.
All this took time, and it was late at night before we reached the
ranch. It was our habit, when we got to the cabin and felt that it would
be too much trouble to open our pack and get out our own supplies, to
help ourselves from Mr. Button’s store. So, after we had put the horses
in the barn and given them a liberal feed of oats and plenty of hay, we
went into the larder to get something for our own supper, for by that
time we were pretty hungry.
After supper I lay down on the absent lord’s blankets, and was smoking
the pipe of peace, when a knock was heard at the door. It surprised me,
as it was the custom of the country to walk in without the formality of
knocking. I shouted, “Come in!” and a short, heavy-set man entered. He
said that he had been overtaken by night, and as both he and his team
were in need of food, rest, and shelter, he wanted to know whether we
would take him in.
“Why, certainly,” I answered. I have noticed that most men are liberal
with other men’s property. “I don’t own the ranch, but we have just put
our horses in the barn, where there is plenty of hay and oats, and there
is plenty of food here. George will show you the way to the barn and
help you unhitch, and I will have supper ready when you return.”
He thanked me, and while they were putting up the team, I got a hot
supper with materials from Mr. Button’s larder. This meal was greatly
relished by our midnight guest.
I returned to the bed and my pipe, and was entering into a lively
conversation with the stranger, when the thought suddenly flashed into
my head, What if this man owns the ranch? I sprang from the bed on the
instant, and fired pointblank the question, “Do you know Lee Button?”
“Yes, I’ve seen him,” was the answer.
“That’s your name, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Yes,” said the stranger, and I felt so cheap that I would have sold out
for nothing. But this was Mr. Button’s chance to show what sort of a man
he was, and when I apologized for the freedom with which we had made
ourselves at home in his house and used his goods, he told me that we
had done exactly right, and that he would have felt hurt if we had acted
otherwise.
He became a true friend and helper, and his log cabin proved a valuable
place of shelter for my party during some of the cold October nights. If
these lines should ever reach his eyes, they carry to him my cordial
thanks for his hospitality.