pages 232-233

Page 232-233

                An old owl somewhere out there called, “Hoot, hoot” in its jeering way.  Then a bird up the canyon answered back.  This went on for some little time while Jim and I listened.  Finally getting cold, tiptoed in, shutting the door quietly, blew out the lamplight, and crept into bed.

                I was sleepy on the start and slept for some little time, but about midnight or so it seemed I awoke.  Jim still snoring.  I sat up for a few minutes, Shirley Creek seemed noisier than ever as I sat listening. The old hoot owl was still at it.  This time a wee bird like whistle answered his haughty hooting.  How long I had sat there I don’t know.  My shoulders became cold so I crawled back under the covers.  I was afraid I would wake Jim with my cold arms and shoulders.  Here I was home, why couldn’t I sleep?  No place else should I have slept better.  Jim, half asleep reached over putting his arm around me drawing me close to him and said “you are cold.”  I said nothing.  I did not want to wake him.  Then putting his warm hand on my forehead stroked it gently back and forth.  It worked like magic for a drowsy sleepiness came over me and soon I was fast asleep.  The nervous tension that had come over me before I went to sleep had caused me to dream.  For some reason I did not dream of things close but rather some several thousand miles away.

                I was playing again among the old Civil war forts.  I had my rabbit plugs set as they were called for most generally they were made from hollow logs and I was making the rounds to see if I had caught anything.  When I came upon the last one, opening the door a quick glance revealed two awful big stary looking eyes fixed on me.  Letting the door down with a bang.  I ran for my brother, who by that time had come looking for me because mother said I was lost.  Opening the door of the plug, he dumped it out saying, “you shouldn’t be afraid of that.  It’s just an old hoot owl.”  Then he gave a hoot, flying to a nearby pine tree for that country was noted for its white pine.

                The word hoot and the sound was as close as outside the window.  I sat up.  There it was again, the faint sound among the wild chokecherries I though I had heard.  Day was just breaking over the canyon.  Jim awoke saying, “what was wrong with you last night?” “I don’t know.”  I said but I wasn’t here in this bed.  At least something about me wasn’t.  I proceeded to tell him of my sleep-like wanderings.

                I heard father come downstairs to fix the fire in the kitchen range, then out to feed the stock.  Awhile later mother came down.  She called to us saying, ”You need not get up now.  Lay and rest.  It’ll be awhile before I have breakfast.” So we did, but Jim got to thinking of our stock at home.  He dressed and went out to take care of Beauty, but father had already done that.  When he returned I was helping by making up the muffins while mother fixed oatmeal, eggs and bacon.  Father came in and made the coffee.  My sister came down the stairway as I was putting the things on the table.  Jim returned thanks.  It was a very nice way in which he said the words in thanking the Lord.

                Father said, as things were being passed.  “I am pretty sure we had company again last night.  It sure looked like bobcat tracks to me when I saw them this morning.”  After breakfast all of us went out and there they were, quite plain in places.  Father said, “I’ll have to get a bear trap the next time I go to Rupert and see if I can catch that fellow.”  “Well it looks like we’ll have to do something,’ mother answered.

                Jim hitched Beauty to the buggy and we prepared to leave.  Mother went to the cellar to get some canned goods for us.  Those treats always come in handy I told Jim as Beauty trotted along out of the valley, looking behind I could see Toby had followed us for some little distance.  Finally he gave up and went running back with the white tip of his tail waving in the breeze.

                Jim and I surveyed this vast cattle country clear across the valley of many, many thousands of acres as we drove along to our own home.  We had been told by old timers that as many as fifty or sixty thousand head roamed these vast ranges, prior to the eighteen and nineties, mostly longhorns and some had horns so wide their heads had to be turned sideways in order to get them though the boxcar doors.  One old timer told us the grass all over the country was belly deep around Sublett when they arrived from Utah by covered wagon and took up a homestead on Sublett Creek.  Most steers got to be a thousand pounds by the time they were four years old and went to market, bringing around thirteen or fourteen dollars a head.  Some outfits were wiped out by severe winters and scarcity of food for the winters were much harder and there were times when five barbwire fences could be ridden over from the snowdrifts.

                These pioneers told us deer could be hunted and killed the year round or anytime one needed fresh meat.  He said the range now was nothing compared to then, because of the overgrazing by thousands of wild range horses that most generally eat twice what a cow would and cropped it much closer to the ground.  He also said putting the land up for homesteading, shortage of feed and drought had forced cattlemen who grazed from eight hundred to a thousand head out of business and that’s why we now have more ranches and less cattle.

                In this area especially the Black Pine Mountains around Albion, also ranches around the City of Rocks and Sublett he went on for his hundred and sixty as well as the drought which came later deprived cattle owners of much grazing.  This had been a cattleman’s (234) paradise in the early days for one found grass plentiful, also shadscale and white sage.  Later when sheep were allowed in some parts of the valley with deep snows and food covered, they would browse on the sage tops.  He also said there were native shrubs and plants the cattle ate.  “The Raft River country, part of the vast valley we called the flats, that we drove across each time we made a trip to Rupert was the grazing grounds for thousands of cattle summer and winter.  Jim and I never tired of the visit we would have with these early day pioneers.  In fact I was always all ears, trying to grasp and store all I could to be used in just the way I have above.