I was 18 years old, living with my grandparents in Buffalo, Wyoming. My grandfather was on the police force there. I had an uncle and aunt living on the northwest portion of the Ogalalla Ranch established in Northern Converse County with headquarters, 75 miles north of Douglas, about midway in the triangle of Douglas, Gillette and Casper. It was a very large ranch of about 360 sections of land owned by the family of Mr. and Mrs. Leroy Moore. There were nine boys and one daughter in the Moore family. The ranch was divided up to each of the family, consisting of Lee, John, Jane, Bill, Bob, Frank, Tye, Dick, Tommy and Eddie. Eddie’s portion was the headquarters of the original ranch. Eddie Moore asked my uncle Clark if he knew of anyone who he could hire to live the winter and take care of 200 cows and a band of sheep (about 2500). Through the police department, my grandfather got word to me and I agreed to go. This was early in January 1949 and there was lots of snow. I was to meet Eddie at the turn off of the highway 11 miles north of the ranch headquarters. He had a one-ton Ford truck with a load of cake and chains on. He said for me to follow and he would break a trail through the snow. I chained up my 39 Chevrolet and following the ridges, we got there by doing some shoveling.  I parked my car in front of the ranch and loaded my bedroll and suitcase in his truck and headed out to a cow camp (The Finley Place, eight miles west). Several times we were stuck in the snow and the last time, snow was blowing in faster than we could shovel it out, so we started walking.  Eddie carried my bedroll and I, the suitcase.  We reached the cow camp at dark, there was an older man there and we made supper. Eddie drew me a sort of map of the area and the next morning, Eddie and the old man, “Tex”, started out on foot for the ranch headquarters, eight miles away. It was snowing and blowing really hard. I spent the next day checking out the area of the cow camp the best I could in the blizzard. There was a small flat roof building used for a barn with a corral, windmill and water tank.

The Moores had stocked the camp with lots of food, kerosene, matches, dried food like beans, rice, macaroni, flour and food that would “keep”. There was no electricity, phone, radio, clock, calendar or thermometer. In the corral, there were five horses that had not been used much, if any. I found one that I could catch and lead. The two biggest ones, I made into a team to pull the hay-rack that I had to use to feed. There was an oilfield tank full of range cake and several hay stacks. One was next to the back side of the barn on the west side. The wind was fierce. I could throw a pitchfork full of hay on the barn roof and the wind would blow it off into the corral. This would help. Every morning I would have to shovel a hole in the snow drift and into the barn. The wind kept the windmill pumping enough that there was not a big problem in the tank in the corral. When “Tex” left, he couldn’t carry his saddle and bridle so he told me if he couldn’t come back and get it, I could have it. The wind and snow never let up more than one day at a time and those days were far apart. I didn’t have a thermometer so I don’t know how cold it was but I’ve heard it was below zero almost a month at a time. It seems to snow every few days from the north and northwest and the wind was fierce and cold. When it wasn’t snowing, the wind blew from the west or southwest. It began to snow so bad that some days I couldn’t see to feed the cows and sheep. The country was pretty flat with some low rolling hills. The wind filled the draws and in some areas it was about level and fences going through the draws and low areas were completely covered and packed in hard enough that I could drive the team loaded with loose hay over fences. The tires on the hay-rack were two inches wide, made of iron. Neither the horses or the hay-rack would break through the hard snow. There was a dry draw about two miles southeast of the haystack that had some trees in it and a high bank. I fed there most of the time and the cows and sheep were usually close by. That was good because I had to take the wires off the stack yard. The haystacks were all native hay mixed with long-stem, sweet clover. I couldn’t tear the hay loose off the haystack with the sweet clover in it. I got two strands of barbed wire and twisted the two strands together about two or three hundred feet long. I took two of the big pitch posts from the stack yard fence and tied one to the end of the double barbed wire, placed the wire over the stack about three or four feet from the end of the stack and tied it on the back of my hay-rack and pulled it over the hay. It would saw a slice off of the haystack. When I got to the end, I would unload the post and tie it on the other end to pull it back the next day. This made it a lot easier to load. I didn’t have any fence around the haystack but the cattle never faced the storm to come to the stack so I didn’t need the fence.

There wasn’t any water in the area and I’m told that cattle and sheep have to have water but they will live on snow. Maybe they won’t do very good, but they will live. Sheep will paw down through the snow and get feed if there is any there and there was quite a bit of grass under the snow but the cows weren’t smart enough to go down after it. In some places, the wind would uncover the grass. After I got some of the hay off the corner of the boards on the floor of the hay-rack, I could string out the “cake” that I had loaded before I left camp. The cake was in 100 pound sacks so I didn’t have to shovel it on or off. I always left a little bit of hay on the corner of the hay-rack to stand on and kinda crawl into to go back to the house which was usually facing the snow and wind. I had trouble keeping my feet warm so before leaving “home” the camp, I would wrap my feet with gunny sacks and dip them into the stock tank enough to soak into the sack an inch or two. Standing on the hay, the ice would last all day. It would crack and break up but would stay on and turn the cold. I wore boots and overshoes. I didn’t have footwear like we have now-a-days. I also had a pair of sheepskin lined mittens and a wool coat and a muskrat cap. Pitching hay on or off the hay-rack was a good heater. I have also heard you can’t harness and unharness uncooperative horses with mittens on… but you can if it is cold enough. The horses I had were not mean but didn’t cooperate too well sometimes. I would have to harness one and fight it out to the yard where there were some tall posts and tie it up while I got the other one. These tall posts were good to tie the hay-rack to so it wouldn’t blow across the yard overnight. I had to tie the horses to these posts and then tie them to the neck yoke together, then put the neck yoke on the tongue. Sometimes it would take me a long time to get hitched up and ready to go out to the cake bin. Especially in the morning when the horses were still fresh, they would not stand while I loaded the cake. I would have to get off and tie the lines under the hubs and to the spokes so if they moved forward, it would wind around the hub and winch them down.  Any time I had to get off the hay-rack, I would have to do this. One time I didn’t and I had to run to catch the back of the rack. It’s pretty hard to run in the snow with gunny sacks covering your feet. 

I had my saddle horse tied to the back of the hay-rack and led him every place I went. He (the horse) didn’t like for me to get on him, so I would sometimes have to get him in the deep snow.  He didn’t buck hard and I could ride him in the deep snow. With my feet wrapped up I couldn’t use the stirrups. I owed these horses because many a time, the blizzard was so bad I couldn’t tell where I was or how to get back to the cabin. These horses knew where they got food and water and always took me home… and then it snowed some more. I didn’t have any flashlight or lantern and it was usually dark when I got in I think I almost became nocturnal. 

I always filled the stove with coal before I left so it was usually warm when I got in. I had plenty of coal, wood and carried water from the corral. At times, the weather was so terrible I couldn’t do any feeding. I must have done okay though because I only lost one cow and about 500 sheep. There was so much snow and wind that snow drifted over the barn in the corral. My milk cow climbed up the drift and started across the tin roof and fell into the barn. This was not all bad though, from then on, I could put hay by the hole and into the barn through the roof and didn’t have to carry it around and into the manger for the horses. The cow was an old Jersey with only three teats after she fell through the roof. She didn’t give much milk but it was very rich with cream. I had more than I needed so I made butter with it or, if I had a lot extra after it went sour, I would feed it to the six chickens. The chicken house was dug into the bank so it never froze inside away from the door. To feed the chickens, I would take part of a sack of cake and break it up with the side of the double-bitted ax. The two horses that I didn’t use hung around and ate off the haystack.  The stack was built about three feet from the back of the barn but the gap filled with snow and loose-scattered hay and was solid enough that I could walk across it. I would throw forks of hay on the barn roof and the wind would blow it off into the corral. 

My bed in the house was in an old room on the southwest corner of the house. It was only about six feet wide by twelve feet long but had a cot in it with no mattress but it was my bedroom. I rolled my bed out on the springs so I had a tarp under the blankets and one over the bed. The snow blew in through and around the window across the floor and across the lower end of the cot. It never got warm enough for the snow to melt but that provided a layer of insulation, made it much warmer for my feet and legs. 

I had a pair of big scissors so after a couple of months I gave myself a haircut. I didn’t have a mirror so I don’t know or care how it looked.  Finally, started getting some warm days and the snow would start to melt in places. I have heard that the air national guard would throw hay out of the cargo airplanes to rancher’s cows. This didn’t happen where I was. I didn’t see an airplane all winter.

One day the wind let up some and the sun came out. I heard an engine and soon there was a snow weasel that came into view. It was Dick Moore. I asked him what the date was and he said it was the 16^th of April. There was a prisoner of war camp at the west side of Douglas where the army kept Italian prisoners. The army disbanded this camp in 1947 and sold off everything. The Moores bought a lot of things – Big Iron wood stoves, dining room tables, pots and pans and the snow weasel, a half-track truck, and lots of stuff. A snow weasel was a track-type vehicle that would travel over snow or water. This was the first person I saw after the 21^st of January – it was a long winter. After some snow melted down on the south side of the house, a Ford pickup started to uncover. Dick told me that they would come and help me trail the cattle to the ranch which was eight miles away. After about two weeks, Dick and his little brother Tommy came to help me move the cows. Dick had to wait until after graduation from high school in Douglas. Tommy still had two years to go.

Bill Francis’ story will be continued in the next edition of the Lusk Herald.

AFTER the storm…

The weather got pretty nice and the snow started to melt off. The draws that had been full of snow all became boggy. I moved to the bunkhouse at the main ranch. The bunkhouse was in a long building that contained the post office, store, harness shop, meat house and blacksmith shop, all under the same roof. (After I left and a few years later, it all burned down.) The postmaster was the store clerk and bookkeeper for the ranch. He was a very educated man, probably about 60 and had graduated from Glasgow College but had a drinking problem so he had to stay out of town. He would go to Douglas about one trip a month and stay drunk for two or three days and the mailman would bring him back. We called this the stage but it was actually an old Ford pickup. It came once a week if the road was not too muddy. There were several men at the ranch. Among us was four cowboys, chore boy, cook and her husband, a man that filled in wherever he was needed and an old crippled Mexican that did odd jobs and raised a garden. I was the “kid” so I was the horse wrangler. The horses were turned out after we “cowboys” roped the one we were to use that day. They were then turned out. The horses ran in seven section pasture and I had to have them in the corral by time for 6:00 AM breakfast. If I was late, I didn’t eat. No one was late for breakfast, dinner or supper. If you weren’t there at 6, 12, 6, you missed it. We would take our lunch in our saddlebags which was usually pork and beans, crackers and a little can of peaches or apricots and a can of sardines. I never like sardines and still don’t. We rode lots of miles checking the cows and calving. There was not a trailer or pickup to pull it so we had to ride out and back. The month of May and most of June was too muddy for a vehicle anyway. Three times I had to ride to Douglas over the telephone line that was strung on fences. The heavy snow tore down a lot of the fence and phone lines.

I would take two horses – one to carry some insulators and wires. It was 75 miles to Douglas. It would take me two – three days to get to Douglas where I would put my horses in the stable at Slonakers. I would then go to the LaBonte hotel, stay for two nights, then go back to the ranch. I was usually gone a week.

One interesting trip over the line. Dick was going to take me with the “weasel” and help me. It was a nice warm day, snow was melting fast. When we got to the Cheyenne River, the water and trash were up to the bottom of the bridge. We were afraid to cross over the bridge and Dick said this weasel would run on water if we could clamp the paddles on the tracks. We did this and started into the river. We got part way across when we found out that we had put the cap over the crank hole in the front. The engine compartment soon filled with water and the engine died and we started to sink. We baled off into the icy water and made it to shore. The last we saw, the weasel was tumbling down the river. I don’t know if it was ever found. Years later I asked one of Eddie Moore’s boys if they ever got it and he didn’t know.

Where we got out of the river, there was an old log corral and part of an old fallen-down shed. Dick was a smoker and had a lighter and it actually worked so he started a fire to dry out and warm up. The next day the stage was going to the ranch but was afraid to cross the bridge and we rode in his pickup back to Douglas.

Back at the ranch, Alex Cunningham (the postmaster, store keeper and ranch bookkeeper) had a nephew in California who was going to college. His name was Lloyd Cunningham. He got out of college for the summer and his family had money so they bought him a saddle, bridle, rope and a .30/30 rifle and Lloyd wanted to come to Wyoming and learn how to be a “cowboy”. Lloyd was a likable young man in his early 20s. His only goal was to be a cowboy. He rode with us every day and we helped him as much as we could. We would catch him a broke horse and help him saddle up and kind of babysat him on his first couple of outings. . The days were now getting longer so we rode from after breakfast until usually dark. As most of the fences were down from the heavy snow drifts, the cattle would go anywhere they wanted to go. They would go off by themselves, sometimes several miles from the rest to have their calves. The draws were a boggy mess in most places and some yet with snow in them. Most of the calving was in May and June so it took a lot of riding and hard work to care for them. 

One day we were riding back to the ranch in the late afternoon. Dick liked to play tricks on Lloyd. There was a bull that wouldn’t stay with the rest and as we rode past the bull, Dick asked Lloyd to borrow his new rope. Lloyd had his rope down and was trying to rope every sage brush he could but Lloyd handed Dick his rope and Dick roped the old bull, dropped the rope and told Lloyd to have fun getting his rope back. Lloyd pulled the .30/30 out and shot the bull; got off and got the rope, not saying anything to anyone. Maybe college did teach him something. We thought this was something we wouldn’t tell Eddie or anyone else for a long time after Lloyd went back to California.

It got nice and warm in May and June and with all the moisture, grass grew in all the big round-bottom draws and on the hillsides and July 5^th we started haying, We would sometimes put up hay for as far as ten miles from the ranch and had a cook for haying crew and would be out a week at a time.  There was a man that was having fun always picking on me because I was “The Kid”. The old cook told “Red” that if he didn’t leave me alone that it would come back on him. Well,  “Red” didn’t let up. It was hot in July and the cook had a bench where he set a bucket of water and there was a pan on it for us to wash up for dinner. “Red” always laid his hat down to wash his face and the old cook handed me a sort of envelope filled up with red pepper. He told me that when “Red” laid his hat down on the other end of the bench to pour the red pepper under his sweat band.  When we quit work for the day, “Red” had red streaks all down his face and seemed to be in a lot of pain. He knew somehow that I put the pepper in his hat and started after me. The cook (we called Dad Allen) hollered to him and said not to do anything to me because he had it coming. He never bothered me anymore. It was a very eventful summer after an awful winter. I’m sure all of us who worked through it will always remember it.

MORE After The Storm…

It quit snowing and the sun came out and the snow began melting. Water made every draw run and most of them, boggy. After taking the cows and sheep to the main ranch, I moved to the main ranch too. Grass started and the livestock chased the new green grass and some forgot that they had babies to “mother”. Fences were down and the cows were able to go on their own. Moores hired herders from New and Old Mexico to herd the sheep but couldn’t keep up with them as they had begun to lamb. The rest of us had all we could do looking after the cows and new calves. We pulled many cows out of the boggy draws. Most of us rode green-broke horses and that didn’t always turn out good. We had to carry two ropes. One was used to pull the cow out of the mud and the second to catch “double hock” her to get our ropes off their neck. We (cowboys) usually were alone as there were only four of us riding thousands of acres. It was hard and tiresome but we preferred it over helping the fence crew. I might add here too, that a bogged-down cow was not always too friendly after we got her pulled out of the mud. If we felt we had the cow situation and calving under control, I had to go to the lambing sheds and help out where I was needed. The sheepherders were usually not too good with driving a team pulling a “gut wagon”. For those who are not familiar with a gut wagon, it was a wagon converted to a row of four jugs (cages) down each side of a flatbed wagon to put a ewe and lamb in to take to a shed or a place of shelter if it was cold and stormy, or, if the ewe had triplets and had to be kept separate.  The mud would ball up on the wheels and stick out in a cone shape. If this got too bad, sometimes it would require digging the mud off so the horses could pull it. On hot days, whoever put the name “gut wagon” on it named it right. If you were going with the wind to your back, with all the afterbirth in the jugs, it smelled better to get off and walk along side. 

Eddie Moore told me that after the snow melted in a certain sheep corral that he wanted me to come to the ranch and get their little Ford 9N tractor and scraper. It was about a half-yard scraper and was held up on the arms of the three point hitch and for me to clean out the sheep corral. This corral was about two miles from the ranch headquarters. I got started pretty good and was going up the hill along side of the corral to dump the dirt and manure. It began pulling pretty hard and I looked back to see why and the little scraper wheels were sinking in. Before I knew it, with the weight on the three point arms, the little tractor came over backwards.  All I had time to do was fall off and managed to turn over out of the way of the falling tractor. The spark plugs on those tractors are on top of the engine and gasoline tank above them. The engine was still running and the gas tank smashed down on the spark plugs, with the plugs puncturing the tank, it all caught on fire. I threw enough manure on it to finally get the fire out, after most of the tractor was burned up but it saved the tires. I began walking to the headquarters, not knowing what to do. The only thing on the ranch to use was the army half-track that the ranch had bought from the POW camp sale in Douglas and went to pull my “wreck” into the ranch. There was a deep, boggy draw and the half-track sank in too deep to get out. It was walking time again, to the ranch where I got in a team of horses.  Dragging the double tree behind the team, I tried to stand on it and not have to walk. This didn’t work either so I walked.  I got it all hooked together and the windshield will lay down so I ran the line through the louvers, over the glass and into the cab. The half-track still had all the armor plate on it. The big team pulled and everything came out so this is how we went to the ranch barn.

Mister Moore, “LeRoy” didn’t spend too much time out at the ranch. He only had one good leg and one wooden one. Everyone called him “Daddy Awk”. He drove a 1947 Chevrolet and drove it across the pasture like he was on the highway. One time I saw him going across the pasture and stopped. I rode over to see why and he had hit a big hole and tore a front wheel completely off. He got out and walked up to me and said get off/ I got off and without saying anything, he got on my horse and rode off. It was only about a four or five mile walk for me. I got in the cook house just at supper time and Daddy Awk said, “You’re about late for supper, better hurry”.

MORE about “Daddy Awk”

One morning at the breakfast table I announced to the crew that I found one of the two missing bulls. Daddy Awk said, “Go out and castrate the bull, if he won’t stay where he should with the cows, let him get as fat as a steer and I’ll sell him this fall”. Eddie said, “Who would you like to help you?” Daddy Awk said, “He don’t need no help. Do it yourself. If you can’t cut a bull, you are eating breakfast at the wrong ranch.” That ended the subject so after breakfast, we were catching our horses for the day, I roped the one I wanted to ride for my day’s work. I wasn’t looking to enjoy my day but we left the corral. I found the Hereford bull where I had seen him earlier in the wide, flat draw bottom. I got the rope on him and the struggle started.  I finally got him choked down and I never gave him any slack. The horse worked good. The bull laid out flat and never moved, so I thought he was dead but I really didn’t care. I did my surgery on him and he never moved. I threw the nuts out in the tall grass then I thought Daddy Awk wouldn’t believe me so I cut about an inch off each of his ears and put them in my saddlebag with my sardines and crackers. That night at the supper table, I laid them beside Daddy Awk’s plate. He looked up at me and said, “Have some supper”. The next morning when I went to wrangle the horses, the bull was gone. Boy, what a relief. A few days later, while riding into the ranch house and barn, down a little stream, I found the other lost bull. There was a lot of willow brush along this little trickle of water so I was going to take the bull to the corral. There was a high dirt bank along this stream, across from a clump of willows and the bull had been butting his head into this bank and had an inch or two of caked mud on his head. I went around him to start him towards the ranch. He was not in the mood for that and hit my horse and my foot in the stirrup. My horse went down in this little stream and lost me. The bull was coming and my horse was leaving. I managed to get my feet around this big clump of willows. My horse stopped but would not let me on him. The bull kept after us for quite a while and meant business. I carried a little worn-out 22 Harrington Richardson pistol to shoot snakes with. I shot the bull in the head until the pistol was empty and the mud caked on his head never fell off. This kept up for what seemed like hours but probably only a few minutes. After a while, the bull gave up and wandered off. I was able to catch my horse in the brush and went to the barn. I never knew where the bull went and I didn’t look very hard to find him. 

MORE after the Storm of ’49

After the long hot summer of 1949, most of the summer work was done on the ranch. Bob Moore’s portion of the ranch along with neighboring Taylor Ranch Co. wanted to build a telephone line to Midwest, 20 miles away. Eddie Moore asked me if I would help Taylor and Bob Moore build the phone line. I agreed to go to work for Taylor’s for the winter. My uncle that worked for Bob Moore and I took their trucks and went to Riverton, Wyoming and hauled home the poles, wire, etc. We finished the phone line and Chuck went back to Moore’s and I stayed with the Taylors for the next four years. I was called to the army during the Korean War. After the war, I came back to Taylor’s for the next several years. After about eight years on the highway patrol, I’m back to ranching. I now have a cattle and hay ranch in Goshen County along with my son, Kelly

-Bill