“Fifty cents,” answered the barber.
“How many weeks has your tub been gone?” the court asked.
“Three,” the barber said.
Then the court summarized: “Seventy baths at fifty cents each equals thirty-five dollars per week. Three weeks at thirty-five dollars is $105.”
So he fined the cowboy $105 and costs, and reimbursed the barber for his lost business.
The same frontier conditions that produced the cowboy have served also to make the westerner a more rugged and ever-ready man than the easterner. The westerner may lack some of the culture and finish of his New England cousin, but he is better equipped to fight the battle of life both in his training and in his inherent qualities. The west is developing a fine and unique type of manhood. Its vast distances, its noble hills and far-stretching plains make an atmosphere of bigness that alone must influence, even inspire the race that is native to them. It is said that a little girl, fresh from the western plains, was asked how she liked the east. “I don’t like it,” she said. “I can not see anything because of the trees.” And the same cramped conditions that oppressed the child have perhaps done their part in narrowing the easterner. However that may be, the easterner is usually a man of more narrow ideas and of stronger prejudices than the westerner.
We have one other inhabitant in Bannock county who deserves notice before he vanishes in the face of civilization—the coyote. No one who has not heard the yell of a coyote on a still night knows what the phrase, “blood-curdling” means. These animals are often crossed with dogs and make cowardly curs, until they are taught to fight. Having once learned the noble art, it is hard to make them keep the peace. Their pelts have a market value today, and in time to come will probably be highly prized.
Another class of men who made a winter rendezvous of the present site of Pocatello were the freighters—men who drove the old freight stages from Salt Lake to Butte. These men were true pioneers, camping along the old trails until they knew them blindfold for hundreds of miles, and encountering great risk from exposure and from the Indians. Sometimes an impoverished traveler worked his way with these freighters. He was called a swamper, and to his lot fell all the chores of the camp—chopping wood, carrying water and building fires. He usually paid well for his passage.
There was always bad blood between the Indians and freighters, the former resenting the intrusion of the teamsters as they passed through the reservation along the old trail. The freighters prepared for trouble as they neared the reservation limits, and frequently met it.
In August, 1878, two men, Orson James, and another named James, but not related to the former, were taking a load of merchandise from Salt Lake to Butte, and were attacked by a hostile Indian on the road between Pocatello and Fort Hall. The red man opened fire unexpectedly and shot James in the back. The freighters returned the fire from behind their wagons, but in time the Indian succeeded in hitting Orson James in the neck. Then he rode off into the sagebrush, but was later captured and taken to Malad City, at that time the county seat, for trial. He was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment in the penitentiary at Boise, where he died before his term expired. Both men recovered but Orson James was lame during the rest of his life.