THE POST-HOLE DIGGER'S GHOST.
The skeletons of Rambolet Bill and Cottswool Canvasback were found a
long time after this all happened by one of the Warren Live Stock
Company's fence riders. This fence commences in northeastern Colorado
near the 27th degree of longitude west from Washington, and extends west
over hills and valleys, plains and mountains, through all kinds of
latitudes, longitudes and vicissitudes. There is a legend in regard to
the building of this fence that is told in whispers when the fire burns
low of a night in western homes. It runs something like this:
Years ago Senator Warren, Manager Gleason and some other Massachusetts
Yankees started in the sheep business in southern Wyoming and northern
Colorado, and as the country was large they thought it would be a good
thing to fence in a few hundred thousand acres of government land and
save the grass so fenced in case of hard winters and other things and
graze their sheep in this enclosure only when there was no more grass
around the little homesteads taken here and there by settlers. So hiring
a young German from the Old Country, who couldn't speak a word of
English, to dig the post-holes, they got him a brand-new shovel, a
post-bar about eight feet long, the famous receipt for cooking
jackrabbits, and started him digging near the 27th degree of longitude
west from Washington. Pointing toward the setting sun in the west, they
went off and left him. The German was never seen alive again, but he
left a never-ending line of post-holes behind him. The Warren Live Stock
Company, it is said, put on a great many men setting the posts in these
holes and stringing barbed wire on them, and although they kept ever
increasing the force that built the fence, yet they never caught up with
the German, and time after time the post-setters would come to the top
of a high hill or a range of mountains and thought they would come in
sight of the German, only to see a long line of post-holes stretching
away over hill and valley towards the setting sun.
After a while the Mormons along the line of Utah and Wyoming complained
of seeing a ghost about the time they drove their cows home of an
evening. They said it was a German with grizzled locks and flowing
beard, with a large meerschaum pipe in his mouth and a shovel in one
hand from which the blade was worn down to the handle and a post-bar no
bigger than a drag tooth in the other hand. He was always looking toward
the setting sun, shading his eyes with his hand and muttering these
words: "Das sinkende Sonne, ich fange sie nicht."
But when they approached close to him, or spoke to him, he immediately
vanished. When the ghost wasn't disturbed it seemed to be digging holes.
It would go through the motions of digging a hole in the ground, then
rising up, take thirteen steps in a westerly direction, look back to see
if the line was straight, dig another hole, and go on. Sometimes the
ghost seemed to be studying a well-worn piece of paper, which was
undoubtedly the receipt for cooking jackrabbits, and would mutter in
German, "O wohene, O wohene ist er gegangen, mit Schwanz so kurz und Ohr
so lang? O wohene ist mein Hase gegangen?"
After awhile the ghost began to appear in western Utah and still later
on in Nevada, always digging a never-ending imaginary line of
post-holes. No one never knew where the actual post-holes left off and
the imaginary ones commenced.
As the Routt County cattlemen in western Colorado never allowed any
sheepmen to encroach on their range, and they always killed all the
sheep and sheepmen who dared to intrude, of course, the Warren Live
Stock had to stop building fence west and turn north before they got
there.
When the ghastly skeletons of Rambolet Bill and Cottswool Canvasback
were found lying by this fence, their bones picked clean by coyotes and
vultures, a small book was picked up near them which proved to be a
diary of their adventures and last hours of suffering. It will be
remembered that Rambolet Bill and Cottswool Canvasback couldn't write,
but they had drawn pictures in the book, and when we had gotten another
sheepman who couldn't write to examine them he read them just like
print. The first picture was a mountain with a lot of marks, which was
interpreted as the flood, and two men drawn crosswise laying down was
the sheepmen being washed away. The next picture was a wire fence with
two men clinging to it. He said that was when they washed into the
fence. The next was another fence picture showing two men walking along
it. There was about fifty pictures after this one, but they always had a
section of a wire fence in them. Several pictures in the front part of
the book showed the two men eating jackrabbits, but later on some of the
pictures showed them chasing a prairie dog, or trying to slip up on one,
indicating that they couldn't find any more jackrabbits. There was
pictures of them chewing bits of their clothes to get the sheep grease
out of them. Then there was pictures of them pointing to their mouths
and stomachs, finally in the last picture they were in the act of eating
a piece of paper with some writing on it, which was probably the receipt
for cooking jackrabbits. They probably had walked hundreds of miles
along this fence before they finally succumbed, and as it was a country
where they had herded large bands of sheep the grass had become so
exterminated that no jackrabbits could live there, and consequently
Rambolet Bill and Cottswool Canvasback had gradually starved to death.
Two guileless sheepmen lay sleeping on the side of a barren hill,
One's name was Cottswool Canvasback, the other was Rambolet Bill.
They were dreaming, sweetly dreaming, the fore part of the night
Of grazing their sheep on a homesteader's claim when he was out of sight.
But hark! to the wind that's rising; 'tis coming fast and warm;
Little recked the sleepers that it would do them harm;
But the roar was growing louder, as the pine trees bent and shook,
And the birds were screaming loudly, "Beware of the warm chinook."
When that hot blast struck their hut, built out of walls of snow,
That house turned into a river in a way that wasn't slow;
Washed off these dreaming sheepmen in the middle of the night.
As the waters swept the dreamers away, what must have been their fright,
Till tangled up in Warren's fence that's built o'er mountain and vale,
They followed it the rest of their lives, winding o'er hill and dale.
When found by the annual fence rider, they long since had been dead,
Their bones picked clean by coyotes, with vultures hovering o'erhead.