That winter a man by the name of Ed Town and myself started across the reservation with a freighting outfit, which he owned. He lived at the foot of the Big Horn Mountains. We had forty head of work cattle (which was Texas steers) and six wagons (which was two teams, three wagons hooked together—ten yoke of cattle made a team). It was in the month of January and the weather turned bitter cold.
We were near froze to death one night. We made camp and unyoked the steers, turned them loose without any feed except a few willows that grew on the creek. We finally got the tent up and I was kicking around in snow up to my knees, trying to find wood enough to build a fire, but there wasn’t any to be found. About the time I had given up, an old Indian came up to me and made signs he had a good lodge and no grub and that we had plenty food and no fire, and invited us to bring our food to his tepee. We were sure glad to make the trade.
His lodge was about 200 yards from our camp. We took all the bacon and flour the three of us could carry and went with the Indian. That was as cold a night as I ever saw and am sure we would both lost our lives if it wasn’t for that Indian.
I don’t think they had ate for a long time, as the squaws made bread and fried bacon all night. There was ten Indians in the camp and did they eat!
The lodge was round with a hole at the top. The fire was in the middle of the lodge. They cooked the bread in a frying pan.
We stayed there three days during the blizzard and outside of a little smoke we were fairly comfortable, but I think when we left there we were two of the lousiest men ever walked. I traded an Indian a $12.00 Stetson for a muskrat cap—I could brush lice and nits off it in swarms.
When the storm broke we found enough steers to pull one wagon to the ranch. As far as I know the rest of them died.
The winter of 1886 and 1887 was the toughest winter of my life and I believe it will be verified by all cattle men of that period. There was men in Montana and Wyoming that had 5,000 cattle that didn’t roundup 100 head the next spring.
My boss paid me off when we got to the ranch. I met up with another kid about my age. We had about $20.00 between us and no place to go. So we made a dugout out of cottonwood poles and dirt. We had no stove, so built a fireplace to cook on—and on the coldest days it always smoked the worst. In the spring we smelled and looked like Indians. We rustled a quarter of beef, a few beans, a little sugar and coffee and lived on that until spring. We got a little tapioca somewhere for dessert. We cooked that with water but we couldn’t spare much sugar—there was no place to get any more (that was on the line of Montana and Wyoming and was 100 miles from the railroad).
That winter the Indians suffered terrible from hunger and after we set up housekeeping squaws and papooses would come to stay until we cooked our meal with the hopes of getting something to eat. We fed them for awhile but we were getting low on food and had to quit, but they would come every day and stay all day and we wouldn’t eat while they were there.