I went from there to the Horse Shoe Bar Ranch on Warm Spring Creek in the Judith Basin. It was owned at that time by T. C. Powers, who was a pioneer of the state and quite a politician of his day.
I remember a rather amusing thing happened to him. He was running for Senator one year and was having a pretty hard race and it was known he was spending plenty money to get votes. There was a precinct about fifty miles from the railroad on the Teton River where there was about fifty votes—mostly half breed Indians. There was a half breed lived there and claimed he had great influence among his people. So he looked up T. C. Powers and told him for one hundred dollars he could swing every vote in his precinct. Powers gave him the hundred. When the votes were counted in that precinct, Powers had not got one vote. Some time after he met this big politician. Powers said, “What was the matter in that precinct of yours? I didn’t get a vote out there.” The breed said, “I just couldn’t get them to vote for you, Mr. Powers.” He said, “Why?” and the names he called him wouldn’t look good in print, “You didn’t vote for me yourself!” He said, “I dassent, Mr. Powers, they would have kill me out there if I do.” Evidently Powers wasn’t very popular in that precinct.
When I got to this ranch I found a man there alone in bed and very sick. The outfit had left a few days before on the fall roundup, and as he was not feeling well at the time he figured to stay at the ranch a few days and when he got better would follow up, but he got worse. I stayed with him a couple of days and still he got worse. At night the only way he could rest was to prop him up in bed, then I would put my back against his and my feet against the wall, and move to any angle that suited him. I would have to change his position every few minutes and his back was becoming hot, as he had a high fever and wanted water very often. So he finally wore me out and I decided to go for a doctor, who was twenty miles away. At this time it was about nine o’clock at night. There was a good-looking horse in the barn, so I saddled him and started. It was very dark and for the first few miles he bucked several times (if anyone reads this that has rode a bucking horse in the dark he will know what the sensation is). I didn’t know where I was half the time—whether I was in the air or in the saddle. But after I got him going, I didn’t give him any time to buck anymore until I got to the doctor.
Well, when I found the doctor he would not come to the ranch that night, as he had been up with a sick woman for a day and a night and was very tired. After describing the symptoms of my patient, he gave me a bottle of quinine and a bottle of morphine with directions. I went back to the ranch.
This fellow was suffering terrible when I got there. I gave him a shot of quinine first, which I believe was in powder form and very bitter. Then shortly after I tried to give him some more quinine but he refused to take it, so I gave him some more morphine, but didn’t seem to relieve him. Now I was very tired and he was cussing me all the time, so when he would get very bad and in pain I would give him some more morphine. Along about morning he went to sleep and wouldn’t wake up, which was all right with me as I was getting some sleep myself.
About noon the doctor came. He tried to wake him up, but he couldn’t. Then he took his pulse. While doing so, he picked up the morphine bottle and said to me, “Where is the rest of that morphine?” I was sure scared then, I knew I had given him too much. I told the doctor I had spilled some of it. He said, “I guess you did!” He told me to heat a tub of water at once. We put that fellow into it—and I don’t know what the doctor done but we finally brought him to—and was I glad! I know now I gave him an overdose, but I believe I saved his life at that, as he was suffering terrible. The doctor said he had a bad case of pneumonia and made arrangements to take him to a hospital and I took his place on the beef roundup.
The boss put two of us night herding the cattle. We moved camp every day and they put new cattle in the herd every day that they gathered and the nights were long and cold—so we sure had a hard job.
We had a good cook that year—but like most good cooks he was sure cranky. He couldn’t drive four horses, so the boss told me to drive the mess wagon from one camp to the other, and we didn’t get along well at all. We called him “Big Nose George” and he was so mean I think he hated himself. I have seen him drop something out of his hands when he was cooking and would jump on it and stamp it in the ground.
After we had night herded about a month we had about a thousand head in the bunch—and the nights got long. We used to get hungry during the night. One day I asked George for a lunch to take with us. My partner spoke up and said, “How about a pie, George?” He looked at us like a grizzly bear and said, “Yes, I will give you fellows pie.”
That night when we started for the herd, he handed us what looked like a nice pie. On the way to the herd we talked about it and decided George wasn’t such a bad fellow after all. That was a tough night and the cattle drifted about three miles. We couldn’t carry the pie very handy, so set it down by a cut bank where we thought we could find it if the cattle settled down, but we didn’t get back to where we left it, which proved to be a good thing for us.