Passing through Ferron we made camp by an irrigation ditch, under a cottonwood tree, and did some laundry work, which was put to dry while we ate lunch, after which we drove on into Castledale, stopping at Jim Jeff’s Camp House, making twenty miles for the day. Here we decided to stay a day and rest the horses, so after feeding them all we turned Bess and Kate into his pasture, keeping Dixie up so we could take better care of her neck, which was quite sore.
Castledale we found to be the largest town in Castle Valley. There is Emery on Muddy Creek, Ferron on Ferron Creek, and Castledale on Cottonwood Creek, and beyond is a town called Huntington on Huntington Creek. These creeks or brooks are all supposed to flow into the Cottonwood farther down, but each little town takes most of the water into its irrigation ditches as the water leaves the mountains, and so very little of it ever gets far on its way to the valley below, except in freshet times. Any one expecting to find water in these creeks below the towns is usually a tenderfoot, and needs a water barrel, and some good advice. We did not have the advice, but we had the water barrel and so far have not suffered for good water.
Our camp was in Jim Jeff’s yard. He had a house for the accommodation of freighters, but we preferred the ground. However, we did make away with a great many of his eggs and some green stuff from the garden.
We put in the next day, Wednesday, cleaning up, writing, and making a few purchases. I remembered that this was the day my sister was to have been married, and here I was, fifty miles from the railroad in a desert town, unable to telephone or telegraph, and I had expected to be able to send her a message. Doc and I were walking down the road to the store, when on the side porch of a house I saw the American Telephone and Telegraph Company’s long distance sign nailed to a post.
“Hold on,” I said, “there is a familiar look to that sign; just you go on and I will follow it up and see whether it is going to do me any good or not.”
So into the house I went. Here I found a girl who was running all the telephone business for the town and surrounding country. She said the line ran to some town on the railroad, the name of which I didn’t catch, but that didn’t interest me. What I wanted to know was if I could talk to the station agent at this town, and when I found I could, I said, “Well, you just call him up quick. I want to say something to him real sudden.” In about an hour I got that message off to my sister, which shows how suddenly things happen in that country.
When I came out of the house I found Doc had made the necessary purchases at the store and was patiently waiting on the porch. We had left Bob at Jeff’s place, cleaning up, and so went back and helped.
Our day here was not especially interesting. The town has about five to six hundred people scattered about over quite a large area. During the afternoon, however, things began to liven up. Young fellows from a few miles out began riding in to Jeff’s and putting up their horses and changing clothes. It seemed such a funny performance that I asked Jeff what was up. “Just a dance,” he said, and walked off huffy-like. I couldn’t see why that should bother him, but I found out afterward that he was too much of a dyed-in-the-wool old Mormon to appreciate the beneficial results to the young folks of indulging in a free-for-all dance.
He had lived here thirty-one years and had ten children. Incidentally, I might say one wife. We did not see anywhere any evidence of polygamy and I guess that it is a dead issue. His house, one of the best in town, was brick, and had running water in it. He had all kinds of fowl around the yard, including peacocks and hens. Five miles east toward Green River he had a ranch of several thousand acres; so on the whole he was quite a substantial citizen, and was able to give us some good advice about our trail between here and Green River.
Just as a sample of some of the instructions we had been getting from the natives en route, it may be interesting to give Jim Jeff’s instructions as to how we were to reach Green River. They were something like this, but not verbatim: “It is about sixty miles over there and not a house on the trail, and on account of the dry weather (it hasn’t rained here in three months) probably all the water holes are dry except Huntington Creek, which is alkali. Don’t drink any yourself and don’t let your horses drink much. I guess, to be on the safe side, you better plan not to find any water, so fill both your barrels and be careful to get through on that, because, although there may be water the horses can drink thirty miles from here, you may not find it as it is off the trail, and if you depend on it and miss it you will be awfully dry before you get to Green River.”