CHAPTER X.
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE SHEEPMEN.
After we buried Chuckwagon we walked across a bend in the road and caught up with the stock train and strolled on ahead with sad hearts and silent lips till we arrived at the top of Sherman Hill. We prepared to wait for the arrival of the stock train, so selecting a site on the south side of Ames monument, we built a snow hut by rolling up huge snowballs and piling them up one on top of the other for walls to a height of about seven and one-half feet, leaving a space for our room of about twelve feet square inside, and gradually drawing them together at the top for a roof, and making a big snowball for the door. After it was all finished we let the sheepmen and Jackdo go over across the canyon about two miles and build another hut for themselves. We moved our luggage (which we had carried to lighten up the train) inside, and after closing the door with the big snowball, we ate a hearty supper of boiled rawhide, and spreading down a sheet of mist, we rolled up in a blanket of fog and went to sleep.
We hadn't no more than got to sleep before a lightning rod agent by the name of Woods came along and put up lightning rods all over our snow hut and woke us up to sign $350 worth of notes for the rods. This matter attended to, we went to sleep again and the lightning rod agent went over across the canyon to the sheepmen's hut and put rods on it. This man Woods was a good fellar, got people to sign notes by the wholesale, but never did anything so low as to collect them, just turned them over to a lawyer and let him attend to that. He was always broke and borrowed your last "five" in a way that endeared him to you for life. He never bothered with paying for anything, always said, "Just put it down, or charge it," in such a lofty way that everyone in hearing would begin to hunt for pencils right off. He put lightning rods on everything, even to prairie dogs' houses and ant heaps, took anybody's note with any kind of signature.
Cottswool Canvasback, Rambolet Bill and Jackdo couldn't write, but he had Rambolet Bill make his mark to the note and then Cottswool Canvasback and Jackdo witnessed it by affixing their mark; then he had Cottswool Canvasback sign his mark as security and Rambolet Bill and Jackdo witness the signature with their marks; then had Jackdo sign his mark as security and Rambolet and Cottswool witness it with their marks.
We had put out a signal flag on our snow hut so the trainmen would know where to find us when they came along with the stock. When we awoke next morning and went outdoors a strange sight greeted our astonished vision. There had come a [1]chinook wind in the night and melted the snow off up to within one hundred feet of our altitude. As Jackdo and the two sheepmen had built their snow residence about 150 feet lower altitude on the other side of the canyon, their house had melted down over their heads, and as they were nowhere in sight it was safe to presume they had been carried away in the ruins. We had quite an argument now, whether we should try to find them or not. Dillbery Ike maintained they was human beings and as such was entitled to our looking for them. Packsaddle Jack said he didn't know for sure whether sheepmen were humans or not. He guessed it was a mighty broad word and covered a heap of things. Eatumup Jake said he reckoned they would turn up all right, that sheepmen didn't die very easy, that he knowed them to pack off more lead than an antelope would and still live; he guessed being washed off the side of the mountain wouldn't kill them. He said we'd better wait till the trainmen came along and then report the matter to them, as the sheepmen would want damages off the railroad or somebody and we'd better not hunt them up too quick as it might jeopardize their case. We all agreed there was some difference in sheepmen, and that Rambolet Bill and Cottswool Canvasback certainly belonged to the better class, and we all fell to telling stories of the generous, open-handed things that sheepmen of our acquaintance had done.
Packsaddle Jack said he knowed a sheepman once by the name of Black Face, who was so good-hearted that he paid $20 towards one of his herder's doctor bill when he lost both feet by their being frozen in the great Wyoming blizzard in '94. The herder stayed with the sheep for seventy-two hours in the Bad Lands and saved all the 3,000 head except seven, that got over the bank of the creek into ice and water and drowned. The herder having got all but these seven head out and getting his feet wet they froze so hard that Black Face said his feet was rattling together like rocks when he found him still herding the sheep. Of course, the sheep might have all perished in the storm if the herder didn't stay with them, and of course, the herder didn't have anything to eat the entire three days in the storm, as he was miles from any habitation and that way saved Black Face 30 cents in grub. But we all agreed that while Black Face would feel the greatest anguish at the loss of the seven sheep and giving up the $20, yet the satisfaction of doing a generous deed and the pride he would experience when it was mentioned in the item column of the local county paper would partially alleviate that anguish.
Eatumup Jake said he knew a sheepman by the name of Hatchet Face from Connecticut, who had sheep ranches out there in Utah, and he was so kind-hearted that when one of his herders kept his sheep in a widow neighbor's field till they ate up everything in sight, even her lawn and flower garden, he apologized to the widow when she returned from nursing a poor family through a spell of sickness, and told her he would pay her something, and while he never did pay her anything, yet he always seemed sorry, while a lot of sheepmen would have laid awake nights to have studied a way how to eat out the widow again. Eatumup Jake said old Hatchet Face, when he prayed in church Sundays (he being a strict Presbyterian), he always prayed for the poor and widows and orphans, and that showed he had a good heart, to use what influence he had with God Almighty and get Him to do something for widows and orphans and poor people.
Dillbery Ike said he knew a sheepman by the name of Shearclose, and while he never gave his hired help any meat to eat except old broken-mouthed ewes in the winter and dead lambs in the spring and summer, and herded his sheep around homesteaders' little ranches till their milk cows mighty near starved to death, yet old Shearclose gave $5 for a ticket to a charity ball once when a list of the names of all the people who bought tickets was printed in the county paper.
After we summed all these things up, our hearts got so warm thinking of these acts of generosity by sheepmen that we concluded to make a hunt for Rambolet Bill, Cottswool Canvasback and Jackdo. We now discussed a great many plans how to rescue them. While we were arguing the stock train came, and when we told the conductor, he immediately had the agent wire General Freight Agent C. J. Lane at Omaha the following message:
"Two prominent sheepmen swept away by freshet while camping ahead of special stock train No. 79531. Please wire instructions how to find them."
Lane immediately wired back not to find them, and if there was any trace left of them to obliterate it at once.
JACKDO'S STORY OF HIS ESCAPE.
We now sauntered down Sherman Hill ahead of the train to Cheyenne, expecting to get some help there to find Rambolet Bill and Cottswool Canvasback, and was much surprised to discover Jackdo asleep riding on the trucks of a car in a special that went by, and on waking him up he told us the following story of his escape:
He said when the flood came he got astride a big snowball and making a compass out of a piece of lightning rod he pointed it for the north star so as to not lose his bearings and started for Cheyenne. He said it was a wild ride, that he passed cattle and horses, forests and ranches in quick succession and his snowball was almost worn out when he got below the altitude of the chinook wind and struck a country of ice and snow again. But it was impossible to stop, he had acquired such a momentum going down the mountain that he slid through nine miles of cactus and prickly pears without having changed the sitting position he started in. However, after his snowball wore out, he just held up his feet and kept on till he struck a special stock train going East, and after knocking two of the cars off the rails and breaking the bumpers of a half-dozen more, he checked up enough to crawl on a brake beam and go to sleep. He knew nothing of Rambolet Bill and Cottswool Canvasback.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] For the benefit of our readers who do not know what a chinook wind is, I will explain that it is a hot, violent coast wind which blows at certain periods of the year at certain altitudes in the West.