A Kick from a Playful Bullock—and a Joke.
Near Horse Creek lived a ranchman of the name of McDonald, a pioneer, and I believe a religious and perfectly sane and honest Scotchman, although I am not sure of his nativity; however, he had all the good qualities of that race. One June morning I joined a bull outfit owned by him and drove a team attached to the naked gears of two wagons into the virgin parks on Laramie Peak, along the streams and upon the sidehills of which grew the straightest aspen and small pine trees in all the territory. No ax had ever desecrated this beautiful forest. The trip was for the purpose of cutting some of these poles and building, while on the mountain, two dozen hay racks upon which was to be hauled to an army post the contract hay cut in the wild meadows. I was still something of a tenderfoot, for I knew nothing of this kind of work, and I soon discovered that I was regarded—much to my chagrin—as only a half-hand. I complained to other drivers when McDonald indicated that he thought me a burden because I had to learn how to use an adz and because I had mishandled my team on a winding new trail we broke in the hills.
One of the bulls, just before leaving the plain below, had playfully reached me with one of his heavy but unshod hind hoofs and keeled me over into a bed of prickly pears. For hours a kindly bullwhacker helped me pluck the sharp and brittle brads from my back. McDonald took a dislike to me, and naturally I lost any admiration I might have had for him. And here is where I made a fatal mistake. I shouldn't have noticed it; instead I took every opportunity offered to annoy him. One day, while in camp, at the instigation of an older man, I remarked that we were to have a change for supper.
"And what will it be?" queried McDonald.
"Bacon and coffee," I replied.
"But we had that for breakfast," said he.
"I know," said I, "but it was coffee and bacon—now it's bacon and coffee!"
The fact is there was no game in the hills, at least we got none. I knew McDonald wouldn't like the joke, but I never believed it would be taken as a personal affront. He was, as a matter of fact, a bountiful provider, but expected to find plenty of grouse, venison, etc., on the trip and had therefore provided only flour, bacon and coffee.
I met McDonald fifteen years later in the Middle West on a railroad train. He remembered me and hadn't forgotten the wound I inflicted by my alleged wit, for he said:
"Yes, I remember you, and you were a poor stick!"
I sincerely hope the last twenty-five and more years has softened his heart—if he lives—as it has softened mine, for I have only kindly thoughts of him, and even hold no grudge against the bull that reduced my efficiency by the playful caress he gave me with his hoof.
If you have ever tried to hoof it up a wild mountain stream running through towering cliffs of shale, without a trail, you can well imagine the task a bull-train outfit would have in working its way through the same maze of trees, rocks and rushing waters, winding from bluff to bluff. But these tasks were common undertakings for the men engaged in the business of freighting. "Corduroy" bridges consisting of gravel and poles had to be built, trees chopped down, fallen and dead trees removed, brush cleared away or used at the fording places.
A pioneer trip of this kind, and a fair example, was one which took our outfit from Cheyenne to the headwaters of the Cache de la Poudre river in what was known as the North Park, some years before Centennial Peak, one of Colorado's principal mountains, was of enough consequence to be christened by the government.
Cheyenne was passing from the camp to the substantial town stage and lumber was needed for building purposes. The North and Middle Park regions were virgin forests, untouched by the woodman's ax, and the earth and its precious store of gold hardly scratched by prospectors. There were no mines, no ranchmen, nothing but nature undisturbed; lakes of sweet, cold water, groves of white pines and other trees, wild and untenanted except by blacktail deer, bear, cougar and other animals. The Greeley colony, however, had been established many miles to the east in the valley of the Poudre. This was the first great American irrigating project and a few settlers had begun to till the soil.
Beyond Fort Collins and Livermore the country was as new as an unexplored country could be. Trout leaped at play along the narrow but fast-running streams, and if a sportsman had ever cast his lines in these places he must have been a red man or some daring white hunter who preceded the stage of development now under way and who left no record of his doings.
It took several weeks to chop and dig a road through this wilderness and set up in an open space a couple of sawmill outfits we had with us. Then it required a couple of months of chopping, hauling and sawing of logs, and loading of the green and heavy lumber upon our Murphy wagons. The lumber was unloaded in Cheyenne a month later; some of it was quite dry, but in much smaller quantities than would have been delivered had the owners been willing to wait for it to dry where cut.
But Cheyenne was in a hurry, and the boomers couldn't wait, consequently many of the green joists in the new buildings shrunk and there were several collapses.