CHAPTER SEVENTEEN THE YEAR OF THE MOVE
Soon after I reached home, another call was made for men to go out and stop the soldiers from entering the territory. I wanted to go, but my father would not let me. I said that I could shoot as well with my bow and arrows as they could with their old flintlock guns, but they said I was too young, so my older brother went, and I let him have one of my buffalo robes and my roan pony.
All of the grain was not out of the fields yet and all of the men had gone off to the “Echo Canyon War,” as it was called, except a few very old men who could not do much work. The women and little boys could be seen every day out in the fields hauling grain and stacking it. There would be about half a dozen women to each team and a little boy driving the oxen. I have seen as many as fifteen to twenty teams at a time out in the big public field hauling grain, and just as many women and children as could get around the wagons. They seemed happy as larks, for they were singing bravely.
After the grain was hauled it was threshed. An old man by the name of Baker, who could just get around by the aid of two walking-sticks, took charge of the threshing machine. It was not much like the steam threshers of these days. This one had a cylinder fixed in a big box, and it was made to turn by horse power, but we had to use ox power. Old “Daddy Baker” and as many women as could get around the machine began to do the threshing. We put on four yoke of oxen to run the old “chaff-piler,” as we called it.
The oldest boys were set to pitching the grain to the old machine. One of the other boys started up the cattle and away she went. I was to do the feeding. At first the boys pitched the grain so fast that I had to shove three or four bundles at a time into the mouth of the machine. This choked the old thing, and caused the belt to break, and it took half an hour to patch up and get going again.
The straw and chaff came out together. About fifteen women with rakes would string out and rake the straw along until they left the grain behind, then about forty children would stack the straw. After we threshed an hour or two we would stop and “cave up,” as we called it. That meant to push the grain and chaff in a pile at one side. Then we would go on again.
When we had finished Brother Martendale’s job, we moved over to Brother Pumpswoggle’s place, and after that we threshed for some other brother until all the grain was done.
After the threshing was done, we took the old-fashioned fanning mill and went the rounds to clean the chaff from the grain. Some of the women would take turns turning the old thing, while others would take milk pans and buckets and put grain into the hopper. The chaff would fly one way and the grain go another. At best we could thresh only about one hundred fifty bushels a day, and we had about twenty thousand bushels to thresh, so it looked a very discouraging task, with winter so near.
But as luck would have it, some of the men came in with a large band of mules and horses they had taken from the soldiers and four of the men were left home to help do the threshing. “Lonzo” Mecham took charge of the work, and we used some of the captured mules to help out, so the threshing went on much faster. They were good mules.
During all of that fall the women took the part of men as well as women. They hauled wood from the mountains, dug potatoes, and gathered in all of the other products from the gardens and farms. Many of the poor mothers were hardly able to be out, but they took their double part bravely while their fathers, brothers and sons were off in the mountains defending their homes and families. They were poorly dressed, too, for the cold weather.
Most of the people were very poor. The Indians and grasshoppers and crickets had kept them down so that it was hard at best to make a living, and now an army was coming, they feared, to burn and kill.
The soldiers probably would have made sad work, if Lot Smith had not stopped them by burning their wagon trains full of supplies out on the Big Sandy.[4] This held them off long enough to enable the officers of the government to meet with the leaders of the state and come to an understanding; the war was happily prevented.
[4] A branch of the Green River, in Wyoming.
During the winter many of the men came home. Poor though we were we had happy times. They had social gatherings at which they sang and danced and played games to while away the wintry evenings. Sometimes, to pay the fiddler, the people took squash or wheat or carrots. There was little money in the country.
Echo Canyon, Utah. The Overland Trail ran through this pass.
I have said that the people were very poor. They were poor in furniture, bedding, clothing, but generally they had enough to eat, and they were gradually getting cattle, sheep, pigs, and chickens to help out. Their furniture and dishes, however, had been broken and used up in their long journey across the plains and it was hard to get more. Sometimes a coat or a dress would be patched so many times and with so many different kinds of cloth that it was difficult to tell which piece of cloth it had been made of in the first place.
When spring came, matters had not been yet arranged between our leaders and the government. The leaders were uncertain how the trouble would end, so they ordered the settlers to abandon their homes for the time being and move south. This was a trying thing to do. The crops were all in when the order came to move. A guard was left to take care of what was left behind, and if it came to the worst, they were to burn everything that might be useful to the army. My father with his family and most of our neighbors moved down to Spanish Fork, Utah. Here we stayed for further orders from the authorities.
To make this move from their homes, the people had to use any kind of outfit they could get together. Everything from a wheelbarrow to an eight-mule team could be seen along the roads. An old wagon with a cow and a horse hitched up together was a common sight. Some had good buggies, others an old ox hitched between the shafts of a rickety old two-wheeled cart. Some of the women led the family cows with their bedding and a little food packed on their backs. Some were rich and many were poor, but they all were traveling the same road, and all appeared to be happy, and none of them very badly scared.
By this time I had traded my Crow Indian pony for a white man’s saddle and a two-year-old heifer. I wanted to go back to live with Washakie and my dear old Indian mother, but I did not care to do so until I found out what the army was going to do.
We had not been in Spanish Fork long before some Spaniards from California brought in a band of wild horses to trade for cattle. A good many people had gathered around the corral to see the mustangs. While sitting on the corral fence, I saw a little black three-year-old mare that took my fancy. I asked the man what he would take for her.
Remains of levee built by Utah troops to flood a canyon so as to impede the march of Johnston’s army.
“She is worth sixty dollars,” he said, “but if you will jump off that fence on to her back and ride her, you may have her for nothing.”
“That is a whack,” I said; “I’ll do it.”
He told me to wait until they were ready to turn the horses out. It was not long before he said, “Now we are ready to see the fun.” He had no idea that I would do it. He thought the colt would throw me off at the first jump, and they would have a good laugh on my account.
They let down the bars and drove the horses around so that the black came near enough for me to jump off the fence to her back. As she came close I made the leap and landed fairly. Away she went out through the bars and down the street. Every dog in the place seemed to be after us.
We passed over the hill and headed towards Pond Town. Then we circled to the west towards Goshen. The band of horses we started with were soon left way behind and we ran away from all the dogs.
Some one ran over and told my folks that I was on a wild horse, that it was running away and I would be killed. Mother was not much worried, for she knew I had been on wild horses before. My brother, however, jumped on my pinto pony and struck out after me. When he finally caught up, the colt I had been riding had run herself down, and had stopped. He rode up and handed me a rope, which I put around the mare’s neck, and then got off to let her rest. After a while I mounted her again and with my brother drove her back to town. The stranger kept his word. I had won the black mare.
When we got back, all of the men that had seen us start off came up to look at us. Among them was a Mr. Faust, “Doc Faust,” they called him. He said that I beat all the boys at riding he ever saw; that he had a good many horses on his ranch he wanted broken and would give me fifty dollars a month to come and do it for him. When I told mother about it, she would not give her consent, for my father was very sick and she was afraid he would not live much longer.
We stayed in the neighborhood of Spanish Fork until about the first of August, then word came that we could go back home. The leaders had come to a peaceful agreement with the government.
We started back to our homes with a hurrah! and when we reached them, we all went to work with a will. I never saw larger crops than we raised that year. Wheat ran from fifty to seventy-five bushels to the acre. It was the same all through the territory. Best of all we received the highest prices for it. The army bought all the grain, hay, straw, and other products that we had to sell.
All of our harvesting had to be done by hand, for there were no reaping machines in those days. We hired Owen Baston to cradle our grain, and my brother and I bound it. That fall, after our wheat was all harvested, my father died.
After the death of father, my brother and I did not get along very well together. He was a hard worker. I had never done much work and it went rather hard with me. Riding horses, I thought, was more fun than slaving on the farm, so I decided to go to Mr. Faust’s ranch and help him break his bronchos. After that I intended to go back to live with Washakie.
Mr. Faust lived at the south end of Rush Valley, about sixty miles southwest of Salt Lake. When I got to his ranch he was very glad to see me.
“We will have that old outlaw of a horse brought to time now,” he said to his other riders. “Here is the boy that can ride him.”
I told him that I was not so sure of that, for I had never ridden a bad horse for more than a year.
“Bad,” he said, “what do you call jumping off a fence on to the back of a wild mustang?”
“Oh, she wasn’t a bad animal to ride,” I said; “she did nothing but run.”
“My horses are not bad to break,” he went on, “but one of them has thrown two or three of the boys, and it has made him mean. I want him broken, for he is about as good a horse as I have, and I know you can break him.”
The next morning one of Mr. Faust’s best riders and I went out to bring in the band the outlaw was with. This man told me that if I was not a very good rider I had better keep off that horse, or he would kill me. I told him that I did not know much about riding, but I was not afraid to try him. We brought in the band and roped the outlaw.
Part of fortifications built by Utah troops to hold back Johnston’s army.
Mr. Faust asked me whether I thought I could ride him. I was ready to try. The man who had gone with me tried to get Mr. Faust not to let me do it, for he said I might be killed. I began to think he was afraid I should prove the better rider, for the outlaw had pitched him off several times.
When things were ready, I mounted the broncho. He went off very peaceably for a little way, and I thought that they were making a fool of me; but pretty soon the old boy turned loose, and he fairly made my neck pop. He gave me the hardest bucking I ever had; but he did it straight ahead. He did not whirl as some horses do, so I stayed with him all right.
When he stopped bucking, I sent him through for ten miles about as fast as he ever went, and when I got back to the ranch I rode up the corral where the man was saddling another horse.
Standing up in my saddle, I said, “Do you call this a bad horse? If you do you don’t know what a bad horse is.”
The fellow did not like me very much after that. I got along very well with the old outlaw; but I had to give him some very hard rides before he acknowledged me his master.
I had a number of similar experiences in taming horses which were hard to manage, and although I did not come out without a scratch or a bruise, I succeeded in making almost any horse I tried to ride understand that I was his master. However, I would not advise a boy who has not a particular faculty for riding unmanageable horses to engage in the sport on the strength of my remarks here. It takes quite a knack to establish the right understanding between a horse and a man. Some persons—women as well as men—seem to have this gift naturally, and without any idea of boasting I may say that I think I had it more than most of the boys in our part of the country.
One reason, perhaps, why I got along so well with them was that ever since I was a little boy I have loved horses and liked to be around them, thinking of them more as human beings than mere dumb beasts. It was the same way, I may add, with dogs; and horses and dogs know when a boy or a man has this feeling, and it makes a difference even in the toughest of them as to how they will treat you.
I am sorry that I cannot stop and make it a part of my story to tell about some more of my adventures in taming wild horses. But possibly this is just as well, as I am afraid true stories might not prove very interesting beside some which have been printed in papers and magazines, in which I think the writers must have drawn largely upon their imagination in order to make thrilling “yarns.”
“Their leader grabbed my horse’s rein.”