Trail Tales

JAMES DAVID GILLILAN
THE ABINGDON PRESS
NEW YORK CINCINNATI
Copyright, 1915, by JAMES DAVID GILLILAN
DEDICATED AFFECTIONATELY TO MY MOTHER, TO MY WIFE; LIKEWISE TO THE PREACHERS OF UTAH MISSION AND IDAHO ANNUAL CONFERENCE
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In his young manhood the writer of these sketches came up into this realm of widest vision, clearest skies, sweetest waters, and happiest people to engraft the green twig of his life upon the activities of the mountaineers of the thrilling West.
At that time the vast plains and the barren valleys were silvered over with the ubiquitous sage through which crept lazily and aimlessly the many unharnessed arroyo-making streams waiting only the appearance of their master, man. Under his scientific, skilled, and economic guidance these wild waters, lassoed, tamed, and set to work, taking the place of clouds where there are none, were soon to cause the gray garden of nature to become goldened by the well-nigh illimitable acres of grain and other home-making products.
The West has an abundant variety of life of a sort most intensely human. Life, 10 always so earnest in Anglo-Saxon lands, seems to have accentuated individuality here in a wondrous and contagious degree.
These few stories, culled from the répertoire of an active life of more than thirty years, are samples of personal experiences, and are taken almost at random from mining camp, frontier town and settlement, public and private life.