CHAPTER VIII
The next morning we had breakfast at Brown's Hotel. The landlord called my attention to a robin who was building her nest in a tree in front of the hotel; the only tree that I recall seeing on the bare, bald, yellow village street.
In our long ride of the day before, we had come through Edwards Creek Valley, the Smith Creek Valley, the Reese River Valley, the Antelope Valley, the Monitor Valley, and other great valleys of whose names I was not sure. We had seen the Clan Alpine Mountains from Alpine ranch, the Toyabee National Range, and other ranges whose names were too many and too local for me to be sure of them. And I had read of 275,000 acres that had been placed on the market in Elko County alone. I had read in the Elko paper that "For years, there was a popular prejudice in the East that Nevada was one grand glorious desert, the land worthless, and that nothing could be grown out here. But in later years the public back East has been shown that such is not the case, but on the contrary, we have the richest land in Elko County to be found anywhere in the United States, and that the crops here are the best and almost anything can be grown in Elko County."
Having seen the rich land of our brave homesteader in Monitor Valley, I was ready to believe this outburst of local pride.
It was the 23rd of June when the landlord of Brown's Hotel waved his farewell to us and we drove on. All day we were among the hills, not seeing them on far distant horizons, but continually climbing and descending among them. Twenty-three miles from Eureka we saw a wooded mountain, quite different from the bald grey hills we had seen the day before. Short, scrubby green trees, somewhat like our New Jersey junipers, grew on the mountain sides and gave this appearance of foliage and greenness. We saw many of them in our day's ride. When we reached Six Mile House, having passed Fourteen Mile House, we asked the ranchman's wife to give us some luncheon. She said that she could not accommodate us, having but few supplies on hand. She advised us to go on to Hamilton and said that she would telephone to the Hamilton House that we were coming. In accordance with her directions we took a turn to the right shortly after leaving Six Mile House and climbed up through a narrow, rocky canyon road. Finally, within a mile or so of Hamilton, when we had one more hill to climb, we came upon a morass made by the bursting of a water pipe. We could not go around it and we dared not attempt to go through it, no friendly settler with a powerful horse being in sight. So we turned carefully about, went down the rocky road to the fork where we had turned off, and took the other branch of the fork. Then we climbed up another mountain road until we reached the summit of the pass, 8115 feet. From here we had a grand view of the mountains and we also met the high ridge road from Hamilton. We pressed on down the hill past a deserted ranch house to Moorman's Ranch, a hospitable looking house by the roadside. At Moorman's Ranch we found an unforgettable hospitality. Our host and hostess were Missourians, and to our question as to whether they could give us any luncheon at 2 o'clock, they gave us a most satisfactory answer. Mrs. Moorman soon had a laden table ready for us, and we sat down to fried bacon and eggs, potatoes, lettuce, radishes, preserved cherries, stewed prunes, milk, tea, and pie. How refreshing it all was! And how pleasant was the soft Southern accent of our hostess which she had not lost in the years on the plains.
Moorman's Ranch is a large ranch with grazing rights in the hills near by. The adjoining ranch with its recently deserted ranch house is now a part of Moorman's Ranch, and there is a large acreage for the cattle. We learned that the wretched coyotes come down from the hills and steal the young calves at every opportunity. Only a few days before, a cow had gone to drink leaving her new born calf for a few minutes. When she came back, the little animal had been struck down by a waiting coyote. We learned too that the mountain lions come down from the hills and sometimes attack the young colts and kill them.
It was with sincere regret that we bade goodbye to Captain and Mrs. Moorman. May their ranch flourish from year to year!
Shortly after leaving the ranch and in crossing another wide valley, we saw a herd of several hundred wild horses feeding on the great plain—a beautiful sight. They were grazing in a rich part of the plain where the grass looked thick and lush.