My Trip Out West: A True Adventure From 1873 (Part 1 of 4)

In the days of Noah, when the lifespan was nearly a thousand years, many generations could share stories about what it was like when they grew up.  Today, it is rare to go back even a hundred years.  Our own family has a true-life adventure story from 1873, when my great-great grandfather decided as a young man to see the Old West while it was still wild, and buffalo still roamed the plains.  Here is Part One of the letter he wrote to my father in 1931.

MR. F.L HORNING

756 S.24TH ST.

MILWAUKEE, WIS.

Milwaukee, September the 15th, 1931

My Dear Donnie Boy,

Donnie!  Let’s you and me go and sit down some place where we won’t be disturbed by anyone.  Then I can tell you all about my trip out west when I was a young man 21 years old.

LEAVING MILWAUKEE BY RAIL

It was in 1873, with three friends of mine of the same age:  Jonas Boorse, his cousin, and Ed Brown.  We left Milwaukee on the first day of April with our trunks packed with our clothes, our Winchester rifles, and enough ammunition to shoot a whole tribe of Indians.  We got to Omaha the second day, and left that night about midnight on the Union Pacific Railroad.   The next morning, we were out on the open prairie of Nebraska.  There wasn’t a house in sight-- it was all open country.  You could look for miles and not see a tree of any kind.  Every once in a while we saw flocks of Prairie Chickens.  Not hundreds, but thousands.  I never saw so many chickens in my life.  That’s about all we saw, except for little railroad stations 30 or 40 miles apart.  But the next day we began to see Antelope and Coyote (they are a small Prairie Wolf).   In the afternoon we began to see Prairie Dogs.  (They are about the size of a Rabbit and live in colonies.  That is, they make their homes underground, and not very far apart.  That is why they call them Prairie Dog towns.  And a queer thing about it is that a small Owl and quite often a Rattlesnake live together in the same hole with the Prairie Dog.)  At one station where we stopped we saw an Indian and two small Indian Boys, about 10 or 11 years old.  The Boys had Bows and Arrows and would shoot pennies put up on a stick by the passengers to see how the boys could shoot.  And believe me, it was very seldom they missed one.

CHEYENE, WYOMING

Eventually we got to Cheyenne, Wyoming, a small town then, about half as large as Green Lake, where we got off the train and stayed for a few days.  Boorse’s cousin and Ed Brown had a job on a Cow Ranch spoken for before they left home, but Boorse and me had to look around for a job.  Found nothing in Cheyenne, but we met a party that was freighting store goods between Fort Collins, Colorado, and Cheyenne.  We told him that we were carpenters, and he said he thought Collins might be a good place to go, as there was a colony coming there, and they would need houses to live in.  So, we made arrangements with him to go to Fort Collins.

I SHOOT "THE THING"      

We left Cheyenne on a Sunday afternoon and drove to a small Ranch 14 miles south of Cheyenne.  Just before we got there I noticed something queer sitting behind a little sagebrush about 100 yards from the wagon.  So, I grabbed my Rifle, hopped off the back end of the wagon and got ready to take a shot at the Thing.  My first shot missed, but it made the Thing stand up.  Well, I couldn’t make out what it was. At first, I thought I had better make a run for the wagon.  But by that time the wagon had gone quite a distance, so there was nothing for me to do but stand my ground and fight it out.  So, after taking good aim I pulled the trigger and let her go, and the Thing fell over on its side.  After my nerves quieted down a bit, I walked up to the Thing with my gun cocked, so as to be ready if it showed fight: well, it didn’t.  So, I picked it up by the hind legs.  And what do you suppose it was?  A big Jack Rabbit.  The Ranch was only a quarter of a mile away, so I didn’t call for the wagon but carried it to the Ranch.  I skinned and dressed it, and we all had fresh meat for supper.   There were two other freight wagons stopped at the Ranch that night, and every one had all the meat he wanted to eat that night and the next morning.  During the night it began to snow and it turned into a regular blizzard.  We didn’t get away from that Ranch for three days. 

FORT COLLINS: WORK AND ADVENTURE

We finally got to Collins on Thursday evening of that week, and got work as carpenters before we had our supper.  The air was so clear that you could see the mountains--they didn’t seem to be more than one mile away.  On the following Sunday, Boorse, me, and a couple of other young men that had gotten to Collins a few days before started to hike it out to the mountains to see what they looked like.  We started about nine o’clock in the morning (didn’t take a lunch with us).  Well, we walked and walked and walked.  We were talking so much with one another that we didn’t notice the time pass until one of the men looked around and said, “Hi there, what is the matter with us?  We don’t seem to be getting any nearer to the mountains.”  None of us could give any reason for it, so we decided to walk on if it took us all summer to get there.  Well, we did manage to get there by three o’clock in the afternoon.  We didn’t poke around long, but thought best to make a "B. line" to where we could get something to eat, because we were getting a kinder hollow under the Belt.  So we hiked away again in the direction of Fort Collins, and we got there at 9:30 P.M.  The first thing we asked for was to be invited in to have supper, which the kindhearted landlady (Aunty Stone) did.

           

I worked at the carpenter trade until summer.  Then me and a man by the name of Doty went out

on a sheep Ranch to make hay for the winter for the owner.  It took us about three weeks to find him enough hay for the winter.  This man had about 15,000 sheep.  Got back to Collins the latter part of July.  Then I took a job in a logging Camp up about 50 miles in the Mountains on the Pooder River.  We worked clear up until the first part of October without seeing any game.  At the time I had a bad fall on my left hand and couldn’t work.

THE CINNAMON BEAR EPISODE

The men were working down river about three miles, so I used to take their dinner down to them.  Coming back to camp one day, I was thinking how strange it was that we had not seen any game, when all at once I heard a limb crack, just as if something heavy had stepped on it.  On looking up I saw a big Cinnamon Bear come walking out from behind a pine tree that had fallen down.  Gosh, what to do.  There I was, without a gun, nothing but a sack full of tin dishes, and a sore hand.  The first thing I thought of was "tree!"  But the Bear was nearer to me than any tree.  But I started for one anyway.  Before getting to one, I looked back over my shoulder, and there was Mr. Bear, standing up on his hind legs, as nice as you could wish.  I suppose, laughing, to see me run.  I took another look before I got to a tree, and the Bear had just gotten down on all four feet again, and [had] started to walk in the opposite direction, so I changed my mind about climbing a tree.  The Bear was going in the same direction I had to go, so I waited a while to give the Bear time to get out of my way.  When I got within 100 feet of the camp, I felt my Hat a kinder settle back on my head.  I hadn’t noticed that it had been floating a few inches above my head.

Next Time: Living on Deer Meat