CHAPTER 1
Part One
At home on the Range
The Roll Away Saloon
This is quite a notorious story on the Arizona Strip because it involves liquor. As far as I can remember, all the cowboys liked to drink alcohol. Oh, boy, they'd drink home brewed, they'd drink lemon extract and vanilla extract. The freighters couldn't get it in there fast enough. The stores would sell out right away. That's a fact.
So they built this little saloon and it was right on the Arizona-Utah line four miles south of Kanab and four miles north of Fredonia about seven or eight rods to the west of the present highway. It was just kind of a two-room affair, with a bar at one end and the barkeeper's bedroom at the other end. It wasn't very large, maybe twelve by eighteen feet, but it created quite a bit of disturbance among the Mormon housewives of Fredonia and Kanab because their men would come staggering up home on their horses, too late for dinner, unable to take their saddles off. So the men of these towns, fearing their women, built this saloon on rollers, log rollers that went clear under the joist.
Well, one day when the women in the Relief Society up to Kanab got together sewing and having a quilting bee, they decided among themselves that too many of their men were going down imbibing at this Roll Away Saloon. So they organized a posse to go and burn the thing down. And their plans were all kept a secret from their husbands, of course. So when the men all went out on the range or out in the fields or doing something, the women saddled up their horses, a lot of them rode, and some of them took their white-tops and they headed for this saloon.
Just fortunately for the saloon keeper there, there's a little raise of land to the north about a quarter mile from the saloon, and on the south side there's also a little incline up to a little ridge there, what we call Halfway Hill. And sure enough, this saloon keeper saw the dust coming from these women on horseback and these four or five white-tops as they came over the rise. And he got the crowbar and rolled the saloon back into Arizona. The women got down there and were all ready to light their torches, they had their bundles all ready, when the saloon keeper said, "You can't touch this business; it's in Arizona. We don't belong to Utah at all. There's the line."
It was well paved, the line was, and it always had been. So they had a little confab, then said to the saloon keeper, "Well, if you sell our men any more liquor, we'll get you next time." So they went back home all disgusted that they couldn't go over into Arizona and wreck that place, and went back to their quilting.
Well, anyway, in a few days or a few weeks maybe, why the women down in Fredonia would be doing the same thing, quilting and making things for the needy and so forth. They would find out that their husbands had been spending all the spare cash up there at the Roll Away Saloon, so they'd organize a posse and here they would come. They'd come over that little ridge down there a quarter mile from the saloon and the saloon keeper'd see them coming, and it'd just take a few little pushes on those crowbars under the logs under the saloon, and over she'd go, over into Utah. The women would come up and the same thing would happen. "You can't touch me, I'm over here in Utah. Look there, there's the line." So the women would give up, threatening, and go back to Fredonia. And this went on for years.
Well, now, that's the Roll Away Saloon story and I guess I'm the only one that ever told it. And I think if you want to take a picture, you might find a few of those old rollers still rotting over there.
S'n' Ostrich
Well, I'll tell you one more funny little story. We had these roundups in the spring in which all the cowmen in the country joined. It was necessary because it was a common drive and the territory was tremendous. We started up under the red ledges up there at Kanab and went all the way over to the Paria. We would drive these cattle, but they had been driven year after year so all you had to do was dash up to a bunch of them and hit your chaps with your quirt and let out a few war whoops and give them a start in the right direction. All those trails went like a tree backwards from the watering holes, branching out as they went. So all we had to do was ride the head of those trails and give the cattle a boot and there they would go. And you could see the dust for miles because of the cattle going toward Pipe Springs where the turnover was made, where the buyers came to buy the cattle. And that old Roll Away Saloon was there on the way.
I had as my riding partner that day, next to me, a cowboy from Missouri. His name was Amos, but he was the slowest man in the world and we all called him "Swift." He'd light a cigarette and before he would take the second puff it would be burned down so that he couldn't puff the second time. Well, Swift turns to me and says, "I've got to get a drink, Rowland." And I says, "Come on, Amos, you can't do it. We've got to keep the end of our line up." And he says, "It won't take me a minute. I haven't had one for months." I knew that this was true because he had been in the outfit that long and there was no liquor. So I says, "All right, if you'll only take one so that we can join the rest in the line." We went in and I went with him to see that he didn't stay too long and he drank one and put it down and drank another one before I could get hold of his arm. I said, "Come on, Swift. We have got to go." But by the time he got in his chaps to get the money out, why we'd got behind a little bit and so we jogged along.
About a mile from the saloon there was a colony, and there has been for many years, a colony of ground owls, beautiful owls about the size of a pigeon with little ears and they look just like Siamese cats, except they have a beak instead of the cat's nose, and they got the ears stickin' up there and a big round face and, oh, boy, they are beautiful things. They build their nests in the springtime in the badger holes. The badger drills down there about three feet and it's there these owls nest. They build their nest down in these badger holes and the female sits on the eggs down in there, but the male sits on top and he's the guard, seeing that no rattlesnakes or anything can get down there to interfere with his mate hatching the eggs. And if you come over there he won't fly or run, he just sits there and dares you. He turns right around and just looks at you.
Well, we rode along and there was a lot of them along there and time we got out there about a quarter of a mile, Amos leaned over his saddle as he saw one of those things and says, "T' is it?" Well he meant "What is it?" so I knew his tongue was getting thick. I says, "It's an owl." And he says, "S'not n'owl, 's'n'eagle." In his condition he thought it was too big to be an owl, so it had to be an eagle.
And he rode closer and I can still see him looking over his horse on that warm spring day, looking toward that thing. Well I guess the poor owl finally lost his nerve because he ducked back down into his hole, and old Swift said as he saw that ground owl bury himself, "'Snot 'neagle, 'sneither, 's'n'ostrich."
Ground Owls
Well, you know, I had seen these little owls for so long riding in that area that whenever I did I would respect their nests, and I would turn my horse out around them, and naturally you would, and everytime I would do that they would look at me. And they'd look at me here in front and as I went along they'd turn their heads and keep lookin' at me.
So one day I thought I'd do this for an experiment. I rode toward this little ground owl and when he saw me, why he put his head up and watched, you know, and I rode along there with him watching me. And I was real careful because I didn't want to run over him. I rode around there again and he kept watching me and I rode around again making circles around him. He kept watching me come around and I went around three times and his head fell off.
Betting Gold Pieces
This'n's a wild cowboy story. No one will believe this. Those cowboys in Kanab had nothing to do. They didn't have a saloon, you know, because their wives would go down there and roll it back into Arizona. So they'd set around and whittle. I'm not kidding you, there was three or four inches of shavings all over everywhere up and down that main street. These men would sit around the post office, most of them waiting for the stage; we didn't have automobiles, we had a stagecoach pulled by four horses, and on a buckboard because it was five spoke sand from Kanab to Mt. Carmel over the sand dunes. (I don't know whether you know what five spoke sand is. That means if you've got a wagon wheel and you're pulling it through the sand, that the sand would touch five spokes on the periphery of that wheel. And that's the way it is on the way to Kanab-there's sand dunes across there.) These fellows once a year maybe would get some mail from the stage just before tax time and probably on Christmas. So these men would whittle to pass the time ... and would bet, bet on anything you can think of. They would bet gold. And one time the betting was on how far a horse I was riding jumped when he was bucking.
Eck Findlay owned this particular horse. Eck was a cattleman, one of the wealthiest down there. We brought his horse in on the Fourth of July for the rodeo. A bunch of us went out and rounded up a wild band so we'd have horses to ride and we brought him in with this wild band. He had Eck's brand on him. He'd branded him when he was a colt, but he was a stallion now and wild and had quite a few mares with him in that big herd. Eck decided he'd make a saddle horse out of him and I said to him, "Eck, that horse will never make a saddle horse." And he said, "Oh, yes, he's a good horse, good blood." And he hired Bud Wilson, the professional bronco buster, to break him.
Practically every man in Kanab would turn their horses to Wilson to break. He had so much business that he had his corral full of horses all the time. He had been a bronco buster a long while, was well-adapted to it. In fact, he'd ridden so long he was bowlegged. He had to ride a horse ten times before he could earn his twenty-five dollars. That's all they paid him to break a bronco. The horse had to be trained to the hackamore only, not the bridle, just the hack-amore-and had to stand still while you hobbled him, and had to receive the saddle. And then Wilson had to learn him to swing on his hind legs back and forth.
One day after we had brought this horse in, Wilson was riding him and it was about the third time that he'd ridden him. He rode him uptown to see how the whittlers were getting along and then turned around and went out of town and was going down by my brother Dave's place. I was there helping him put the feed boxes in the barn. All of a sudden, we heard this horse squealing and we felt the ground trembling. We come out of the barn and we looked up over a little orchard of peach trees my brother had down there along the road inside the fence. There were about three or four rows of peaches and they were young trees but they were up eight or ten feet at least. And we could see above these peach trees this Bud Wilson going up and down over there. He went high, I'll tell you. Well, all of a sudden, this Bud Wilson just kept on going and the horse went down in front of my brother's home and turned east on the road to his range where he was raised just as fast as he could go with Wilson's saddle and hackamore.
Well, I had a good horse, the only palomino in the country at that time, a big, tall fellow. And he was trained so that when I'd whistle, he'd come. This day he was out in a little alfalfa field there next to my brother's orchard with some of my brother's other saddle horses. And he heard this squealing and he was excited. So I whistled and he came and I just held the bridle out-I didn't have time to saddle him because I wanted to catch that horse right away and get Bud's outfit-and he grabbed the bit and I slipped it over his ears. My brother run and opened the gate. When that horse started running I grabbed his mane and leaped right on. We took after that stallion and drove eight miles on a fast run. I caught him at Cedar Ridge. He was given out and running down and he didn't think anyone was after him, I guess. I rode alongside of him and picked up the hackamore rope. He'd been trained to be snubbed, so I just took him in a circle since there were no fences. I just let him keep running and finally changed directions and come back to Kanab, slowed down, of course, and come in on a walk.
When I arrived in town I was really tickled; half the town had come out to meet me to see whether I'd caught the stallion or not. They didn't think anybody ever could. Bud was riding bareback behind someone else. He was sure glad to get his outfit back, but said, "I never want to see that horse again. Eck, I wouldn't ride him, I'd kill him first." And so Eck Findlay says to me, he said, "Rowl, do you want to finish breaking him? I have seven more rides comin' to me, so that's all you've got to do, just ride him seven times." I says, "Okay, I'll do it."
I took him down to my corral and because I knew he'd been broke to lead and saddle, I put my outfit on him, saddle and hackamore. Along with the hackamore was always a six- or eight-foot rope that you used to tie the horse up to the tying post or held to when you was sitting on your haunches. Mine had a big knot at the end made of rawhide that Orson Hamblin, a little fellow, a little dwarf who was an expert on making rawhide ropes, had woven. Lucky I had had him weave that on the end because that knot saved my life that very day.
Well, I decided to try the stallion out, and he went along fine. I was watching for him, though, because I knew that he had taken Bud unawares, so I kept alert. And he went out of town all right and went right on down south toward the Roll Away Saloon, passed it up and went right on down into the White Sage flats below. I was giving him a good workout, going along at a nice big gallop down the grade there towards the little town of Fredonia, when we came to all these trails that all came into one big trail where the horse and cattle went to water. And that horse apparently had come, over the past years, in there to water. When he came to those trails where they crossed the road, he stopped of his own accord and he threw his head up in the air and he whistled. I don't know if you've ever heard a mustang, or a stallion especially, whistle. You can hear them a mile. They just bulge up their chest and they let loose. Then he broke to the right on this trail toward the creek and he started to buck and boy, did he buck.
I didn't expect he was going to buck. I'd never been thrown but I knew I had to really ride that time because I'd seen him throw the best cowhand in the country, that professional bronco buster. I stuck and I stuck to him until he stepped in a badger hole. His front feet went down one of those and he went end for end and I went the end of that eight-foot rope that had the knot in it. That horse when he come up wheeled around and come right at me but I was up on my feet by then. He come right at me striking, and he grabbed with his great big old teeth and then he'd strike. He'd rear up and strike and squeal and the only thing I could do was take that knot, give it a little leeway, and when he'd strike I'd hit. I knew I had to knock his eyes out or he'd kill me, so I knocked out his left eye first because I was right-handed. I got that out but that didn't even slow him down at all.
Now I had a time getting that other eye, though. Boy, I thought I was a goner several times. If I had stumbled or anything, there wouldn't have been anything left. He would've just tromped me to pieces, which I had seen them wild horses do, not to men, but to other horses. I finally got the other eye out but even then I didn't dare go near him. Anytime I'd move he could hear me and he'd rear and strike. He'd come up in the air and down fast with his big old sharp hooves and his mouth wide open. I let go of the hackamore and ran over to the highway and walked up beyond the saloon up the fields a little ways. I walked about two miles and Homer Spencer was coming out of his field on his horse. He'd been down irrigating and I told him what had happened. He said, "Jump on. We'll go uptown and get some horses."
By the time we got uptown and told some of the other boys, and by the time I got my six-shooter, why, all the whittlers were out there on their horses. They all wanted to go back with me to see that horse. Now there was a fellow there we called Highpockets. His name was John Cram. He was six foot six and everyone called him Highpockets. He wasn't known by anything else. And he would bet on anything.
