Woman Learns to Stand on Her Own Two Feet on Colorado Homestead

As a 20-year-old bride, I went to live on a Ft. Morgan, Colorado homestead. My husband had filed claim to a 320-acre tract in 1909, a year before we were married. He built a small 10-by-12-foot house there, and after I arrived, he added a 12-by-14-foot half-dugout.

For two years after our baby daughter was born, she and I stayed on the homestead while Bob worked on a ranch. It was a large ranch with about 1,000 head of cattle and 500 horses. My husband worked for $30 a month, and it was like getting blood from the proverbial turnip to collect his wages from that tough, bewhiskered old rancher. When Bob would ask for his monthly wages, Old Mike would exclaim, "Hell, Laddie, why didn't you tell me you was goin' to need money so I could've made provisions for it!" The old duffer was wealthy, but hated to turn loose of a dime.

In his barn Old Mike kept three saddle horses ready for riding. There was Trix, a beautiful white mare with a gait as smooth as a rocking chair; Brownie, a horse that could shake your teeth even when he was walking at a slow pace; and Mile-Hi, a long-legged sorrel that could outdistance anything on the ranch. To be caught out after dark on the fenceless prairie with Mile-Hi or Brownie could prove disastrous, for they would travel in circles all night. But Trix would bring her rider home on the darkest and stormiest nights. Her homing instinct was amazing.

Bob's brother worked on another ranch during roundup time. The owner's wife did the roping; the men did the branding. Few men could match her when it came to swinging a lariat. She was a large woman, but attractive and feminine in spite of her size, and it was a marvel to watch her working the calves, riding a large brown horse she had trained herself.

The prairies were beautiful in spring and early summer, with the green buffalo grass and the cacti with their pink and white and yellow hollyhock-like blossoms. The cactus needles were wickedly sharp and stiff as nails. You were no longer a tenderfoot when you had learned to walk across the prairie without getting your shoes full of needles.

Everyone was advised to carry a snake stick when walking on the prairie as diamondback rattlesnakes were numerous. One day when I had forgotten my snake stick I met up with a rattlesnake. I took off my shoe and killed it.