my mind that I would get away from there and that I would keep trying until I succeeded ... and, eventually, that’s what I did.”
For all his muddled childhood, Gutzon loved his father. James Borglum was kind, tolerant and a philosopher. He sensed his son’s unhappiness, even though he would have had trouble explaining it, and a great bond developed between them. The boy went everywhere with him when not in school, even on his sick calls out in the country. Gutzon remembered that they would ride along for miles and miles in sunshine or cold or wet, sometimes talking, sometimes silent, but always in perfect peace.
One afternoon the doctor called to him and asked him to help hitch the horse. Gutzon at the time was a little over eight years old, but he did what he could with the harness and thereafter believed that he had been just as skilled and agile as any professional horse handler.
“I want you to come with me,” his father said. “There is a wounded man out on Rawhide Creek and I may need some help.” And Gutzon saw nothing wrong about that, either.
“We’ll fix him up fine,” he said. “Maybe we’ll have to sew him up.”
“Sure,” said the doctor as he lifted Gutzon into the buggy.
Rawhide Creek was a stream with a sorry reputation. It had taken its name from an English hunter who had turned away from slaughtering buffalo long enough to murder a young squaw. Other squaws had tied him to a cottonwood tree near the creek and skinned him alive. Gutzon recalled in his chronicle: